Cyberbullying in Rabat area Morocco: A Middle School Student Survey

Abstract

Background:Despite being a widely debated health issue in several countries around the globe, in Morocco there is still little research on this phenomenon of cyber bulling.To examine the occurrence of cyber bullying among students in middle schools in Rabat area and to discover risk factors among students’ cyberbullying profiles is the main purpose of the present study.Methods: The study that is a cross sectional one is based on a nameless self –report questionnaire about subjected cyber bullying in the course of the previous twelve months. Indeed, it was in16 middle –schools in the urban areas of Rabat that data were collected. Aged 12 to 16 years, a number of 1914 students took part in the survey.Seeking the interconnection between the cyber bulling groups and independent variables we used a Multinomial Logistic Regression.Results:Cyber bullying has been announced by 54,5%(n=1043) CI 95% (52,26-56,72) of the sample, of which 18,8%(n=360), being victims only, 11,7% (n=224) being perpetrators only, and 24,0% (n=459) being perpetrators/victims. But there wasn’t any important difference to be mentioned in profile between genders. Text messages and exclusion from internet groups were the most common genre of cyber bullying behavior. Concerning traditional bullying, the prevalence were 35% (n=669) of whom 16,4% (n=313) victims only, 7,6% (n=145) perpetrators only and 11%(n=211) perpetrators/victims. Our research showed that traditional bullying was the basic risk factor of cyber bullying. Conclusion:In brief cyber bullying is one of the most widely spread phenomenon among adolescents in middle schools in Rabat area. Being involved in traditional bullying is the main risk. Consequently, urgent is the need to take actions against it either to eradicate violence in schools or at least reduce it.