Appraising prevalence and perceptions of cyberbullying among Italian adolescents through the CyberTies questionnaire

The purpose of our study - which illustrates some of the findings of a wider research we conducted on cyberbullying and its psychosocial correlates (empathy, aggression, moral disengagement, social adjustment) among adolescents - was to investigate the prevalence and the perceptions of various forms of electronic bullying in the Italian context, together with suggested and adopted coping strategies related to cybervictimization. Method: Our sample comprised 219 Italian high-school students (females 64%, males 36 %; mean age: 15.4) who completed a new self-report instrument, the CyberTies Questionnaire, including both closed- and open-ended questions. Results: In addition to data showing roles distribution (bully, victim, bully-victim, non-involved), gender differences in the participation in cyberbullying acts and the occurrence of each different form of electronic violence our questionnaire explored (text messaging, e-mails, web pages, blogs, chatrooms, social networks, pictures and videos diffused on the Internet), some of our most remarkable results are discussed: in line with previous international research, the highest perceived seriousness was associated to the spreading of pictures and videos through the web, regardless of its being rarely experienced; the discrepancy between the coping strategies adolescents considered adequate (e.g. telling adults like parents, teachers or police agents) and the ones victims of cyberbullying actually adopted was noteworthy; the lack of parental and teachers' monitoring of the cyberspace and of the use of electronic devices was pervasive. Conclusions: The present study shed some light on cyberbullying among Italian adolescents, revealing its resemblance with several expressions of the phenomenon in other countries; the findings we described here indicated that further investigation and wider samples are needed to explore issues referring to the relations between electronic bullying and the need of connectedness that seems to represent an important dimension of the construction of identity during adolescence.