Moral disengagement and parental monitoring as predictors of cyberbullying among first year secondary school students

الملخص EN

The purpose of this study was to investigate the combined effects of two variables, namely, moral disengagement, parental monitoring on one outcome measure, namely, cyberbullying.

Moreover, it aimed to investigate the relative contribution of moral disengagement, parental monitoring to cyberbullying among first year secondary school students in Egypt.

Additionally, the aim was to find out if there were correlations between and among moral disengagement, parental monitoring and cyberbullying among first year secondary school students.

A total of 140 (80 males, and 60 females) students participated in this study.

They ranged in age from 15 to 16 years (M = 15.90, SD =1.03).

Quantitative survey research was employed.

The Cyberbullying-specific Moral Disengagement Questionnaire (CBMDQ-15) (DAY and LAZURAS (2016), Parental Monitoring Scale (Kerr, Stattin and Burk, 2010) and Revised Cyber Bullying Inventory (RCBI, Erdur-Baker and Kavsut 2007) were employed for data collection.

Findings indicated that moral disengagement correlated negatively with parental monitoring.

On the other hand, moral disengagement was found to be positively correlated with cyberbullying.

As predicted, moral disengagement related positively and significantly to students’ cyberbullying.

The two independent variables (moral disengagement, parental monitoring), as presented in table 2, when put together yielded a coefficient of multiple regression (R) of 0.631 and a multiple correlation square of 0.

626.

This shows that 62.6% of the total variance in cyberbullying of those who participated in the study is accounted for by the combination of moral disengagement, parental monitoring.