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Consequences of Bullying on Adolescents’ Mental Health in Germany: Comparing Face-to-Face Bullying and Cyberbullying

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Abstract

The present study explored whether face-to-face bullying (physical as well as relational), cyberbullying, and teachers’ bullying have a negative impact on adolescent’s mental health and whether there are gender differences. Analyses are based on a representative cross-sectional standardised survey of 10,638 students of the nineth grade of one federal state of Germany. Findings show that psychological cyberbullying is most strongly associated with poor mental health for both boys and girls. Relational bullying by classmates as well as by teachers also show a significant correlation with poor mental health. For girls, there appears to be an additional relationship between sexual cyberbullying and mental health. Physical forms of bullying were not found to be associated with mental health. Implications for research are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Work, Institute for Delinquency and Crime Prevention, ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, Postfach 707, CH-8037, Zürich, Switzerland

    Dirk Baier

  2. School of Social Work, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, USA

    Jun Sung Hong

  3. Department of Social Welfare, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea

    Jun Sung Hong

  4. Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony, Hanover, Germany

    Sören Kliem & Marie Christine Bergmann

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  1. Dirk Baier
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  2. Jun Sung Hong
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  3. Sören Kliem
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  4. Marie Christine Bergmann
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Contributions

D.B.: designed and executed the study and did the data analyses. J.S.H. collaborated with the data analyses and the writing and editing of the manuscript. S.K. and M.C.B. designed and executed the research project in that the data were collected, and they assisted by the data analyses and editing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Dirk Baier.

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This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards (no IRB approval by an University was necessary to conduct the study in Germany).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Baier, D., Hong, J.S., Kliem, S. et al. Consequences of Bullying on Adolescents’ Mental Health in Germany: Comparing Face-to-Face Bullying and Cyberbullying. J Child Fam Stud 28, 2347–2357 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1181-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-018-1181-6

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