The investigation relationships among contingencies of self-worth, risky internet behaviors, and cyberbullying/cybervictimization

The aim of this study is to investigate relationships among risky internet behaviors, internal and external contingencies of self-worth, and cyberbullying and cybervictimization. The another aim of this study is to investigate gender, age and family income differences in cyberbullying and cybervictimization.505 undergradute students from different departments of University of Sakarya took part in this study. Of the participants, 360 were female and 145 were male. The Socio-demographic Form, the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale, the Risky Internet Behaviors Questionnaire, and the Revised Cyberbullying Inventory were used in this research. Socio-demographic form includes three questions in relation to gender, age, and family income. The Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale was developed by Crocker and colleagues (2003) and translated into Turkish by Çetin and colleagues (2011). This scale consists of seven subscales. These subscales are academic competency, God?love, virtue, family support, appearance, competency, and approval. On each subscale higher scores indicate that basing self-worth on that subscale is higher. It can not be computed total score for scale. The Revized Cyberbullying Inventory was developed by Topçu and Erdur-Baker (2010). Revized Cyberbullying Inventory consists of two paralel forms; on efor cyberbullying an d one for cybervictimization. In cyberbullying form, higher scores indicate more frequent cyberbullying experience. On the other hand, higher scores indicate more frequent cybervictimization experience. Risky Internet Behaviors Questionnaire was developed by researcher. It includes 28 items.To predict cyberbullying and cybervictimization from risky internet behaviors, external and internal contingencies of self-worth structural equation modelling was used. In structural equation modelling, academic competency, approval, and competency were explained by external contingencies of self-worth. On the other hand virtue and family support were explained by internal contingencies of self-worth. Also relationships among domains of contingencies of self-worth, risky internet behaviors, cyberbullying and cybervictimization were calculated using Pearson correlations. Gender, age and family income differences in cyberbullying and cybervictimization were examined using three way ANOVA.The overall results of this research supported basic assumptions of this study. The goodness of fit indices (?2/df= 2.80, p=.000 RMSEA=.06, % 90 RMSEA CI= .055-.064, CFI=.92, TLI= .91, RMR=.06 ve SRMR=.06) indicated that the model were accepted fit.According to path analysis results, cyberbullying/cybervictimization was predicted positively by external contingencies of self-worth and risky internet behaviors and negatively predicted by internal contingencies of self-worth. The model explained 42% variances of cyberbullying/cybervictimization. According tothree way ANOVA results, cyberbullying and cybervictimization differentiated only in relation to gender and did not differentiate related to age and family income.Keywords: Cyberbullying, risky internet behaviors, contingencies of self-worth