Abstract

Recent studies have found that increasing numbers of students are experiencing cyberbullying during middle and high school. The current study examined how school psychologists and school counselors are involved in the prevention and intervention of cyberbullying as well as what practices their schools are implementing to address this issue. Results found that school counselors were more involved than school psychologists with cyberbullying prevention and intervention efforts. However, 50% of school psychologists felt that their skills were being underutilized and 59% expressed a desire to be more involved in cyberbullying prevention and intervention efforts. Receiving training on cyberbullying was found to be related to increased feelings of preparedness to be involved with cyberbullying prevention and intervention. Though, in this study, only 8% of all participants felt very prepared to help select cyberbullying prevention and intervention programs. Participants rated creating a cyberbullying taskforce, positive school climate programs, peer mentors, and teaching empathy as the most effective prevention and intervention strategies. Based on these findings, schools need to provide the staff more training on the issue of cyberbullying and develop strategies to reduce school psychologists’ barriers to involvement in this area. This will allow schools to develop knowledgeable teams to help address the issue of cyberbullying prevention and intervention.

Advisor

Carlos J Panahon

Committee Member

Kevin Filter

Committee Member

Daniel Houlihan

Committee Member

Sean Wachsmuth

Date of Degree

2019

Language

english

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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In Copyright