Research Proposal for Statistics in Psychology

Research question

The research question: How does childhood bullying affect the victims’ physical and emotional health as an adult?

Hypothesis

H0: There is no difference in the means of long term effect of childhood bullying amongst young adults.

H1: There is a difference in the means of long term effect of childhood bullying amongst young adults.

Theoretical Framework

Bullying has been found to affect the mental and physical state of an individual both in the short term and the long-term. Previous studies have concentrated on the immediate effect and solution for bullying. However, several researches have shown that long-term effects of bullying are serious and far more reaching. A Previous research done by researchers from King’s College London, UK discovered that social, mental and physical health effects that arise from childhood bullying can last up to 40years (Wolke and Lereya, 2015).Bullying is still considered as a passage of rite in schools with over 77% percent of American students experiencing it whether mentally and physically or verbally (McNamee, 2014).Worldwide at least up to 35% of the population is believed to have experienced bullying (McNamee, 2014). Studies have shown that a majority of individuals who experienced bullying during the childhood have experienced difficulties in forming lasting relationships and have suffered from low self-esteem in their adult life (Reece, 2008). Studies in childhood bullying have also shown that there is a risk of one developing anxiety, depression and mental issues. Adolescents’ and children who have experienced childhood bullying are at an increased risk of substance use and acquiring violent behaviors in their later lives (Smokowski and Kopasz, 2005). Currently there is a new form of bullying known as cyber bullying (Kennedy, 2017). Social media has made the world a global village and has increased the spread and sharing of information. A social media post currently can face backlash and trolls would be formed and trend even if the post had been deleted earlier on. This prompts the need for research in these forms of bullying and its impact on someone’s later life. According to a research funded by the National Institute of Child health and Human Development (NICHD) showed that youths who have faced cyber bullying (electronic bullying) are at high risk of being depressed compared to the youths who bully them (Kennedy,2017)..

Methodology

Proposed sample. At least 130 in-patient and outpatient individuals are required to participate in the study. The category of individuals involved in the study will be young adults from the age of 16-25yrs.The participants will be required to fill a questionnaire. One of the questions in the questionnaire will be if the participants has ever been bullied or bullied someone else and at which age. The other question will require the participants to sate if they have any mental disorder and the age at which they were diagnosed to suffer from it. If the respondent has no mental disorder they will be required to fill the follow-up segment to the above question, which requires them to fill a yes or no answer if they do suffer from other disorder such as depression, self esteem and if they are able to establish long term relationships and so on. The participants will be recruited through social media and upon meeting the terms and condition provided (in-patient and outpatient individuals over the last 3 years) they will be issued with questionnaires. The recruitment will target at least 200 individuals since the use of questionnaires has got its limitation such as there is a risk that all questionnaires might not be returned.

The inferential statistic method. The inferential statistic method which will be used in the research is one-way ANOVA. The independent variable or factor in the study will be the mental and emotional health of young adults. When using ANOVA independent variables are always organized in categorical groups and in this case there will be three groups. The first group will contain young adults who have never been bullied. The second group will involve young adults who have been bullied. The third and last category will involve individuals who were involved in bullying. The firs assumption is that there should be normality. This means that each sample is taken from a normally distributed population. The other assumption is that variance in the data will be the same. To ensure this the f-ratio will be determined and compared to the f-critical provided, this will determine if the hypothesis can be accepted or rejected. In this case, for the alternative hypothesis at least one group among the three listed should differ from each other. The other assumption is that the independent variable which in this case is the mental and emotional state of young adults is continuous. This is because it is because it is measured in terms of percentage whereby the more young adults are not supposed to be affected by childhood bullying (h1).

References

Kennedy, E.(2017). How does bullying affect health and well-being? National Institute of Child health and Human Development.Retrieved March 1, 2020 from https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/bullying/conditioninfo/health

McNamee,D.(2014). What are the adult health consequences of childhood bullying?Medical News Today. Retrieved March 1, 2020 from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/283042

Reece, T. (2008). Bullies beat down self esteem. Retrieved June 17, 2016, from http://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/at-play/Pages/Bullies-Beat-Down-Self-Esteem.asp

Smokowski, P. R., & Kopasz, K. H. (2005). Bullying in school: An overview of types, effects, family characteristics, and intervention strategies. Children and Schools, 27, 101–109.

Wolke, D., & Lereya, S. T. (2015). Long-term effects of bullying. Archives of disease in childhood, 100(9), 879-885.