Abstract
The goal of the present study was to identify predictive factors related to cyberbullying by using supervised machine learning in a sample of Chinese adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants included 2053 (Mage=16.36 years, SD = 1.14 years; 44.6% boys) adolescents from Fujian province, China. Data on cyberbullying, cybervictimization, socializing online, problematic smartphone use, parental trust and alienation, and media habits were collected from self-reports surveys. Several machine learning algorithms were used to train the statistical model for gender. The psychological variables for modeling cyberbullying were trained using many simulated replications on a random subset of participants, and externally tested on the remaining subset of participants. Shrinkage algorithms (lasso, ridge, and elastic net regression) performed slightly better than other algorithms. Results from the training subset generalized to the test subset, without substantial worsening of fit using traditional fit indices. The results indicated that cybervictimization demonstrated the largest relative contribution in predicting cyberbullying, followed by gender, parent alienation, and problem internet use. Implications and suggestions on the importance of cybervictimization when studying cyberbullying are discussed.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Bowen Xiao, Wanfen Chen, Xiaolong Xie, Hong Zheng,, Junsheng Liu, and Jennifer D. Shapka. Danielle Law and Hezron Onditi conducted literature searches and provided summaries of previous research studies. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Bowen Xiao Wanfen Chen, and Xiaolong Xie and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Xiao, B., Chen, W., Xie, X. et al. Exploring the Risk Factors of Cyberbullying Among Chinese Adolescents: The Important Role of Cybervictimization. Int Journal of Bullying Prevention (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-023-00195-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-023-00195-5