The relationship between bullying type, bullying effect, social support and safe school among bully victims

Abstract

This research is about bullying problems at schools in South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The focus of the study includes three variables namely types of bully, effects of bully and social support extended to victims. This is a quantitative study which uses questionnaire as its data collection instrument in order to address the designated research questions. The questionnaire has been validated and improved through comments from experts, pilot study and Rasch Model Analysis. A total of 545 students from six districts of South Sulawesi Indonesia which include Pangkep, Maros, Gowa, Tator, Luwu and Palopo were involved in this study. They were students who have been bullied at schools. Descriptive analysis shows that in the analysis of types of bullying, verbal bullying is the most common type of bullying experienced by the students followed by social bullying, physical bullying and cyber bullying. Whereas the analysis of effects shows that depression is experienced by most of the students followed by low self esteem, anxiety, low academic achievement and feeling shy. Analysis on social support shows that teachers are the main sources of social support for the students followed by parents and classmates. Analysis of correlation shows that there are significant relationships recorded between bullying types, bullying effects and social support. The regression analysis shows that the tested variables of bullying types, bullying effects and social support significantly predict a safe school environment. This study has proposed a Safe School Model for South Sulawesi schools in Indonesia. Several other suggestions are also presented.