Bullying and Cyberbullying in Adolescents: A Meta-analysis on the Effectiveness of Interventions

SANTIAGO RESETT; BELÉN MESURADO

Psychiatry and Neuroscience: From Epistemology to Clinical Psychiatry ? Vol. IV

Springer Nature

Año: 2021;

The abstract is published online only. If you did not include a short abstract for the online version when you submitted the manuscript, the first paragraph or the first 10 lines of the chapter will be displayed here. If possible, please provide us with an informative abstract.Bullying and cyberbullying are important risk factors for the mental health of adolescents. Bullying is defined as an intentional aggression, repeated on time, and characterized by a difference of powers between the victim and the aggressor. Cyberbullying is an aggression with the same characteristics of the bullying but carried out on the cyberspace. Despite the relevance of this problem, there is no meta-analysis that determines the effectiveness of interventions directed to reduce both problems. In this way, the objective of this book chapter is to present meta-analysis that addresses the effectiveness of interventions directed to reduce bullying, victimization, cyberbullying, and cybervictimization in adolescents. A systematic review of scientific papers published in Spanish, English, and Portuguese was conducted between 2000 and 2018. The databases included were as follows: SciELO, PubMed, JSTOR, Dialnet, EBSCO, Latindex, and PsycINFO. After the research, 16 articles were included in the traditional bullying meta-analysis, 14 articles were included in the traditional victimization meta-analysis, 11 articles were included in the cyberbullying meta-analysis, and finally 8 articles were included in the cybervictimization meta-analysis. The size of the effect of bullying and cyberbullying interventions was analysed to establish which one is more effective. Comparing bullying and cyberbullying, the results of the present study indicated that bullying programs were a bit more effective than cyberbullying programmes, while the effect size of the intervention programme on victimization and cybervictimization were similar. Explanations about why interventions on bullying are more successful and implications of these findings are provided and analysed in the conclusion. Finally, suggestions for future studies are discussed.