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Relationship between cyberbullying and health-related quality of life in a sample of children and adolescents

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Abstract

Purpose

Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is a well-known construct that refers to a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being. Its relationship with multiple forms of violence, including bullying, has been widely explored, but this is not the case for cyberbullying. The main objective is to analyze how HRQoL varies depending on the role played in cyberbullying, its temporal stability, and gender and age differences.

Method

An analytical and longitudinal study was conducted at two temporal moments. At Time 1 (December 2015), 920 Spanish students aged between 11 and 18 years participated (Mage = 13.36, SD = 1.83: 48.9% boys and 51.1% girls). At Time 2 (April 2016), there were 313 participants (Mage 12.81 years, SD = 1.59: 53.4% boys and 46.6% girls). We used the Cyberbullying Test (technological scale) and the Spanish version of the KIDSCREEN-52.

Results

Cybervictims and cyberbully–victims present worse scores in all dimensions of the KIDSCREEN-52 (p < .001), compared to cyberbystanders or uninvolved individuals. There are gender differences only in cyberaggression and cyberbystanding. There are significant inverse correlations between all the dimensions of the KIDSCREEN-52 and cybervictimization, with Bullying (r = − .603, p < .001), Mood (r = − .329, p < .001), and School environment (r = − .327, p < .001) being particularly relevant. There were statistically significant differences between T1 and T2 for cyberbystanding (lower scores at T2).

Conclusion

Cybervictims and cyberbully–victims have worse quality of life in all the dimensions than uninvolved individuals, especially in Psychological well-being, School environment, and Bullying.

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Acknowledgements

The funding was supported by Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (Grant No.: Bienio III 2015/17 y Bienio IV 2017/19).

Funding

This project was supported by Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR, http://www.unir.net), as part of the Research Plan 3 [2015–2017], Research Group “Analysis and prevention of cyberbullying” and Plan 4 [2017–2019], with the Research Group “Cyberpsychology: psychosocial analysis of online contexts”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Internacional de la Rioja (UNIR), Logroño, Spain

    J. González-Cabrera, A. León-Mejía, M. Beranuy, M. Gutiérrez-Ortega, A. Alvarez-Bardón & J. M. Machimbarrena

  2. Open University, London, UK

    A. León-Mejía

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  1. J. González-Cabrera
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  2. A. León-Mejía
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  3. M. Beranuy
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Correspondence to J. González-Cabrera.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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González-Cabrera, J., León-Mejía, A., Beranuy, M. et al. Relationship between cyberbullying and health-related quality of life in a sample of children and adolescents. Qual Life Res 27, 2609–2618 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-018-1901-9

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