Swedish and English secondary school pupils' attitudes towards, and conceptions of, bullying: concurrent links with bully/victim involvement

Thirteen and fifteen year old Swedish and English secondary school pupils (n = 210) completed a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes towards, and conceptions of, bullying. The older participants also provided peer nominations of classmates thought to be bullies and victims. Significant differences between pupils from the two countries, between younger and older pupils, and between girls and boys emerged on a number of these variables. For example, a significantly larger percentage of English pupils than Swedish pupils indicated that name calling is bullying, whereas the reverse was true for leaving somebody out. These results suggest that findings concerning incidence of, and beliefs about, bullying may not generalise from one group of pupils to another. Overall, participants tended to express anti-bullying attitudes. The present results also add to the small but growing set of findings which suggest that pupils' attitudes concerning bullying and their actual involvement in bullying are associated concurrently. Attitudes were found to significantly predict involvement in bullying even after the variance shared with participants' sex had been controlled. Specifically, those pupils that expressed the weakest anti-bullying attitudes were found to be most often nominated by peers as a bully. The implications of these results for anti-bullying interventions were discussed.     

Children's self‐reports and parents' reports of internalising and externalising problems in Chinese and Anglo‐Celtic children in Australia

The Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self‐Report (YSR) are widely used measures of internalising and externalising problems in children and adolescents, but cross‐cultural differences in these problems have not been examined in Australian children of Chinese and Anglo‐Celtic ancestry. Fifty‐nine Chinese (27 boys and 32 girls) and 65 Anglo‐Celtic Australian (35 boys and 30 girls) children aged 10–13 years completed the YSR, and one of their parents completed the CBCL. Cross‐informant agreement between these two measures was also examined. No differences were found between the Chinese and Anglo‐Celtic groups on parents' and children's ratings on any syndrome or overall scales. The overall level of agreement between YSR and CBCL scores was poor in the Anglo‐Celtic group (intraclass correlation coefficient for total problems = 0.33), but there was no agreement between these scores in the Chinese group. Results highlight the need to obtain multiple sources of information in assessments of mental health problems in children from different cultural backgrounds.     

Let There Be Variance: Individual Differences in Consecutive Self‐control in a Laboratory Setting and Daily Life

The large body of research used to support ego‐depletion effects is currently faced with conceptual and replication issues, leading to doubt over the extent or even existence of the ego‐depletion effect. By using within‐person designs in a laboratory (Study 1; 187 participants) and an ambulatory assessment study (Study 2; 125 participants), we sought to clarify this ambiguity by investigating whether prominent situational variables (such as motivation and affect) or personality traits can help elucidate when ego depletion can be observed and when not. Although only marginal ego‐depletion effects were found in both studies, these effects varied considerably between individuals, indicating that some individuals experience self‐control decrements after initial self‐control exertion and others not. However, neither motivation nor affect nor personality traits such as trait self‐control could consistently explain this variability when models were applied that controlled for variance due to targets and the depletion manipulation (Study 1) or days (Study 2) as well as for multiple testing. We discuss how the operationalization and reliability of our key measures may explain these null effects and demonstrate that alternative metrics may be required to study the consequences of the consecutive exertion of self‐control. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Development of the multidimensional peer‐victimization scale

Although researchers have traditionally distinguished between direct (e.g., name‐calling, hitting) and indirect (e.g., ignoring, scapegoating) types of peer‐victimization, there remains disagreement concerning how best to categorize types of peer‐victimization. The aim of the present study was to delineate, using Principal Components Analysis, types of peer‐victimization and to develop a multidimensional psychometric self‐report scale. Respondents were 812 children aged 11 to 16 years and attending a secondary school in England. Once it was established that respondents were familiar with a definition of bullying, they rated how often they had experienced 45 different victimizing acts. Four main factors were identified—physical victimization, verbal victimization, social manipulation, and attacks on property—and subscales constructed that possessed satisfactory internal consistency and convergent validity with self‐reports of being bullied. Aggr. Behav. 26:169–178, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Melatonin and Sleep Qualities in Healthy Adults: Pharmacological and Expectancy Effects

The impact of expectancy on melatonin's effects on sleep qualities was investigated. Both the pharmacological dose of 6 mg of melatonin and the expectation of receiving melatonin were predicted to improve subjective ratings of sleep qualities. The balanced placebo design varied 2 factors within-subjects: actual treatment and expected treatment. Adults (N = 53; 21 men and 32 women) between the ages of 26 and 71 years were administered either 6 mg of melatonin or a placebo for 8 nights. An instructional manipulation directed participants' expectations. Participants rated their nightly sleep experiences. Results revealed that feelings upon awakening differed between genders and that expecting melatonin increased ratings of sleep continuity. Most important, high ratings of “grogginess/tiredness” were associated with receiving melatonin, regardless of expectancy, as well as with receiving placebo when melatonin was expected. Overall, the findings underscore the need to consider expectancy and gender differences in research on melatonin and sleep experiences.