- Internal Code :
- Subject Code : SOC202A
- University : Jansen Newman Institute Assignment Help Era is not sponsored or endorsed by this college or university.
- Subject Name : Introduction to Research Methods
Introduction to Bullying in Elementary School
Bullying is an everlasting problem experienced by the kids of elementary school. Its impact is severe. It affects all the students, the one who is bullying, the one who is the victim and the students who are witnesses of the violence. It can be conducted through verbal and nonverbal forms of communication (Jan & Husain, 2015). Physical assaults, mockery, jokes, insult of the students are some common forms of bullying. The study investigates on this social cause. It is very difficult for elementary school to completely eradicate it. It is because students are effectively using bullying to threaten their juniors. This report analyses the research paper and critically evaluates research design, data collection methods, sampling process, data analysis part of it. It also emphasis on the ethical issues in conducting research (Brace, 2018). At last, the findings of the critical analysis are concluded.
Aims and Objectives of The Study
Thus the study aims to find and formulate various strategies to reduce the bullying behaviour of the students so that they start learning for their betterment instead of indulging themselves in bullying (Jan & Husain, 2015). The major objectives of the study are to understand the nature of bullying and causes that results students to bully their juniors and to find out the impact of pupil-pupil bullying on students.
Rational and Background of The Study
Bullying is an assertion of dominance on those who do not have the power to retaliate (Reijntjes et al., 2016). It is one of the most dangerous forms of abuse. Researchers found that it has various forms of bullying. Some of these include gesture threats, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, dating violence, bullying on social networking sites, insult and so on. Students who bully or are part of bullying innocent kids are at risk of abuse, misbehaviour and absenteeism. It is one of the biggest behaviours in learning and cognitive thinking. It is observed that bullying decreases the performance of others (Jan & Husain, 2015).
It also causes mental health problems or sometimes even physical injury. It is a phenomenon of getting picked on. There are different theories aligned with it like group perspective theory, bullying as socialisation practice, cognitive view of bullying and bullying as a group perspective and so on. It is very important to initiate a healthy and disciplinary environment in the schools so that the students can concentrate on learning instead of focusing on bullying activities. Anti-bullying policies can help in controlling this practice in the school.
This study is very important from the perspective of child growth and development. It is because bullying is an act of aggression which make other person feel awkward and makes the presence of the person uncomfortable. All the students of the school have the right to feel safe in the environment. The school needs to take stringent action to eradicate the cause of bullying from its roots (Jan & Husain, 2015).
It is because a person who becomes a victim of bullying is unable to concentrate on the studies. He or she will feel frightened, embarrassed to face the people. It affects the student’s work and also deteriorate the relationship with the parents. These kind of students are found to feel confused and they may not even know how to fix the situation and to whom they should talk about it. These are some reasons that justify the need for the study to be conducted.
Research Methodology of Bullying in Elementary School
It is a process of collecting data and carrying out an analysis on them. The research design of the study is the process by which the research integrates different components of the study into a logical and coherent manner. The research design is a blueprint of the entire research that is used for collecting, measuring and analyzing the data. There are different types of research design but here the researcher has selected cohort design (Kumar, 2019). It is because cohort designs are usually applied in the studies of social sciences as there is a need to statistically measure the cause of bullying, in a student which is like a subgroup of the population.
The research objective of the paper is to find the nature and cause of bullying therefore the research is conducted in schools of Minwali district. Random sampling was chosen in it. To constitute the study, stratified research questionnaire was used as a tool for collecting the data. The data collected through this method was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences. The data were analysed by calculating the mean score, frequency, percentage and standard deviation. The findings of the paper highlights on the various causes of bullying.
Critical Analysis of The Research Design
The research design of the paper is sound and reasonable. All the frameworks in the paper are properly placed. A research design conducts a disciplinary inquiry approach to study the problem. The research design of the study is based on a quantitative approach. Use of the mixed approach can open new dimensions in the research. The tool for collecting data for the study is a questionnaire (Schabenberger & Gotway, 2017).
It has the limitations that are it cannot record the subtle message of the students that is their facial expressions cannot be observed in an interview. The single framework for the study is fine but for a border horizons mixed approach would be beneficial. The deductive approach is used for the research as it is based on the quantitative analysis (Ridder, 2017). It is clear from the research as it begins with a different type of hypothesis. This research emphasises on the victims of bullying. There was no option for inductive research because the inductive study is conducted for exploring the new phenomenon. Inductive research approach does not deal with the hypothesis therefore it is not used in this research.
Reliability and Validity of Research
These are the two important concepts used for evaluating the quality of the research these are reliability and validity. These concepts help in evaluating how well these concepts are. Reliability is all about measuring the consistency of the data that has been collected through instrumentation whereas validity is all about the accuracy of the data measured (Shields, 2016). For getting the better result of the researches, the researcher must use internal as well as external validity. It was found from the research instrumentation that there was 100 per cent response of the participants. This indicates that the consistency of the research was good. Even the validity of the research was also good as there was a minimum error in the research.
Sampling Process
The stratified sampling process was used in this research. Two independent cultures were formed. In the first cluster, 8 government and private schools were selected. In the second cluster, all the students of the 8th grade were selected. The sampling method used in this research is prefect because for getting high precision the sample population must always be divided into subgroups. It is also seen that such sampling does not require a large number of the population. It saves the money of the researcher is conducting a huge survey (Francis, 2017). But there are some disadvantages of this sampling method as well. Higher computation is required and it is a complex method to generate the results. There is no justification provided by the researcher about why this sampling method was selected. The research study must be improved by providing a responsible explanation for it.
Data Collection Methods
There are four different methods used for data assimilation. These include analytical and descriptive, quantitative and qualitative, fundamental and applied, and empirical and conceptual data. The research here uses a quantitative method for data collection it is because a questionnaire-based approach is used for collecting data. The questionnaire was developed and was given to 234 students of the 8th grade. Since the nature of the study is quantitative, therefore it has made it possible for the researcher to collect the data from the single tool (Francis, 2017). But there is a limitation of this technique. It is often observed that the results of the questionnaire are often biased as the people get the time to rethink their response which is not possible in verbal methods. As it is a primary research study, therefore the researcher must justify the data collection technique. To improve this study, subjective data must also be collected using some other methods.
Data Analysis
The data collected goes under various statistical test to calculate frequency, mean deviations and so on. To independently test the data of boys and girls a t-test was conducted. The data were analyzed by the four scholars who are skilled in it. The test conducted on the data were sufficient. However, the data collected can be tested for errors to get accurate results. The software used for the analysis parts is SPSS (Babbie, Wagner III & Zaino, 2018). It is a standard product of analyzing data. Since the mean, frequency and standard deviations were only to be calculated therefore instead of using SPSS, MS excel could have been used. It would decrease the time of the analysis. The researchers will also be able to sort the data for error ratio. No doubt SPSS is a good technique for data analysis but it is time-consuming. Percentage, frequency, mean and standard deviations can easily be calculated in Excel.
Data Interpretation
The interpretation of the data in the research is done properly. The questionnaire contained different themes. Each theme had certain questions. Interpretation of each theme was conducted in the research. Apart from this, the data is analyzed based on frequency, percentage, standard deviation and mean (Achor, 2017). There is no ambiguity in nature and the data is reliable and validity of it is ensured. There is a weakness in the data interpretation as there is differentiation in the data based on gender and other demographic features. The study may also have some biases in it. As the sample that has been collected may not be that reliable. It is because the sample that has been collected may not be able to provide an objective opinion. There are many inherent attributes in the study and needs to be justified.
Ethical Issues
Before researching schools of Minwali district and consent had been taken from the school authorities to find whether a study can be conducted or not. The committee will look at the research objectives and aims, based on which it will decide whether to permit for research or not. After getting consent from the school, the questionnaire was given and data gathered through it was collected. The language used for developing the questionnaire is offensive and discriminatory. The research participants are not subject to harm. The research participants are treated with respect and dignity (Artal & Rubenfeld, 2017).
In the entire research, personal identity of the student were kept confidential. These are not revealed in the entire project. The research conducted was based on anonymity because data privacy was required. Besides this, the research paper is free from plagiarism. The data has not been copied from any source. The entire research paper is written based on the information gathered. There is no misleading information in the research. This indicates that while conducting the research researchers have taken care of all the ethical issues.
Conclusion of Bullying in Elementary School
It can be concluded from the above findings that the bullying is one of the major problems experienced by the students in school. It is important for the organisations to take steps to eradicate it from its roots. A research was thus conducted in Minwali district to find out the main cause and nature of bullying. The research methodology used for this study is sound and reasonable. But there are some areas where there is a need for improvement like a mixed approach could have been used in the research to make it more precise. The data collected is quantitative. Stratified data sampling is used to get more precision in the research. The critical analysis states that the research is well organised and conducted properly but it could have been improved more. The data analysis was conducted through SPSS but it is a time-consuming analysis tool instead of it MS excel must have been used because it can also perform the calculations required for interpreting data. It was analyzed from the findings that ethical issues were met properly by the researches while conducting the research.
References
Achor, E. E. (2017). Research matters: Choice of appropriate statistics, data interpretation and explanation of often misused terminologies. Chapter, 9, 148-177.
Artal, R., & Rubenfeld, S. (2017). Ethical issues in research. Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 43, 107-114.
Babbie, E., Wagner III, W. E., & Zaino, J. (2018). Adventures in social research: Data analysis using IBM SPSS statistics. United States: Sage Publications.
Brace, I. (2018). Questionnaire design: How to plan, structure and write survey material for effective market research. London: Kogan Page Publishers.
Francis, G. (2017). Equivalent statistics and data interpretation. Behaviour research methods, 49(4), 1524-1538.
Jan, A., & Husain, S. (2015). Bullying in Elementary Schools: Its Causes and Effects on Students. Journal of Education and Practice, 6(19), 43-56.
Kumar, R. (2019). Research methodology: A step-by-step guide for beginners. Sage Publications Limited.
Reijntjes, A., Vermande, M., Thomaes, S., Goossens, F., Olthof, T., Aleva, L. and Van der Meulen, M., 2016. Narcissism, bullying, and social dominance in youth: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 44(1), pp.63-74.
Ridder, H. G. (2017). The theoretical contribution of case study research designs. Business Research, 10(2), 281-305.
Schabenberger, O., & Gotway, C. A. (2017). Statistical methods for spatial data analysis. United States: CRC Press.
Shields, M. D. (2016). Refined Latinized stratified sampling: A robust sequential sample size extension methodology for high-dimensional Latin hypercube and stratified designs. International Journal for Uncertainty Quantification, 6(1).
Remember, at the center of any academic work, lies clarity and evidence. Should you need further assistance, do look up to our Research Methods Assignment Help