People are increasingly using the Internet and mobile phone technology to communicate with others in their daily lives. Despite researchers’ claims that cyber-harassment is becoming increasingly widespread, little is known about the phenomenon. This thesis adopted a mixed methods approach to gain a holistic understanding of the experience of cyber-harassment, how it is perceived by non-victims, and police officers’ perceptions of, and role in combating the crime. Although cyber-harassment is a crime within the UK, prosecuted using the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), few may perceive it as such due to the virtual nature of the perpetrator’s behaviour. Using data gathered in an online survey completed by 320 undergraduate students, principal axis factoring revealed three dimensions underlying perceived criminality of 18 cyber-harassing behaviours – deception/disclosure, harassing messages, and malicious software. Sending malicious software and harassing messages were perceived as criminal but participants were unsure about more ambiguous acts associated with deceiving or disclosing information to the victim. High Internet self-efficacious individuals (i.e., those who feel more in control of online interactions) were more likely than low Internet self-efficacious individuals to perceive malicious software as criminal. Low-agreeable individuals were more likely than high-agreeable individuals to perceive harassing messages as criminal. Whilst personality and Internet self-efficacy influenced perceived criminality for some cyber-harassing behaviours the findings were not consistent. However, females were more likely than males to perceive harassing messages and behaviours associated with deception/disclosure as criminal. Males were more likely than females to perceive sending malicious software as criminal. Participants reported experiencing a range of cyber-harassing behaviours and males were more likely than females to receive malicious software, be subscribed to unwanted services, receive abusive/threatening messages via the Internet, or to report that someone sent their friends/family/work colleagues email messages in an attempt to damage their reputation. Internet self-efficacious individuals were less likely to receive harassing messages via the Internet or be subscribed to unwanted services. Agreeable individuals were less likely to receive harassing messages to their phone, and neurotic individuals were unlikely to be subscribed to unwanted services. Participants’ ratings of upset following their experience of cyber-harassing behaviours were positively associated with the number of behaviours they experienced, and females were more upset than males. Personality and Internet self-efficacy were not associated with ratings of upset but upset was associated with specific behaviours, indicating that the nature of cyber-harassment was problematic for participants. Furthermore, interpretative phenomenological analysis of 12 victims’ experiences revealed the impact of cyber-harassment resembled PTSD-like symptoms, highlighting the detrimental impact cyber-harassment can have on victims. Despite the impact of cyber-harassment reported by victims, the qualitative research conducted for this thesis revealed that the virtual nature of their experiences caused confusion, as they struggled to understand whether their experiences were real in comparison to their offline experiences. The views of 17 non-victims and 8 police officers were subjected to thematic analysis which revealed victim-blaming tendencies. Non-victims were likely to blame the victim for their experiences and would offer support if they had adequate knowledge of the victim and evidence of cyber-harassing incidences. Police involvement in cyber-harassing cases was dependent on threats being made to the victim, and victims were perceived as unhelpful in providing evidence and following their advice. Non-victims viewed perpetrators more sympathetically than victims, and there was little understanding about the impact that cyber-harassment can have on victims. The findings from this research are discussed in terms of psychological theory, and suggest that ‘just world’ beliefs may play an important role in perceptions of cyber-harassment. A caveat is raised that the findings from this research are drawn from small, qualitative studies but the research provides some interesting insights to cyber-harassment, and it is hoped that the findings will be transferable to future research investigating the phenomenon.

This research aimed to explore issues surrounding the discrimination of students on supervised work experience undertaken as part of their HND or degree courses in tourism, hospitality and leisure. The research questions centred on whether such students experienced discrimination and, if so whether this affected their learning and career choices and whether they could offer any suggestions for appropriate support strategies. The research was conducted within a social constructionist framework and the research design comprised over three hundred questionnaires and fourteen interviews with students at a university in South East England. These were conducted during 1998 and 1999 as the students returned from placement in a wide variety of establishments within the international tourism, hospitality and leisure industries. The questionnaire aimed to generate possible areas for future discussion and to identify possible discriminatory factors in the macro environment such as rates of pay, conditions of work, opportunities and student attitudes to their placements. The interviews focused on personal experiences and the effects of unfair treatment as perceived by the students. Analysis was undertaken using SPSS software for the questionnaire and NUDIST software for the interview data. A substantial minority of students considered that they had been unfairly treated. They considered this to be due to their conditions of work and poor management style and skills. These factors had an appreciable effect on learning opportunities and efficacy. A smaller number of students reported experiencing or witnessing various forms of discrimination. The additional effect of discrimination on learning was to affect self-efficacy and reduce self-confidence. There appeared to be no significant effect on career choices. Students wanted to resolve issues independently at work, were reluctant to report discrimination to tutors but welcomed academic support. However, in all cases where racial discrimination or sexual harassment was reported to an employer, no action was taken.

When reviewing the literature on workplace bullying it became evident that numerous studies had been conducted with the aim of identifying what expressions workplace bullying takes. Equally there had been a multitude of studies researching either targets of bullying or bullies. What seemed to be missing from the research was knowledge about bystanders, who are individuals that are often present in the workplace bullying situation. Therefore I decided to dedicate my second year research project to this topic, namely targets’ perception of bystanders. This study uses interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Smith, 2004) to investigate targets’ accounts of their experiences and refers to the studies on bystanding behaviour presented by Darley and Latané (1968). It was found that targets found that bystanding behaviour could sometimes be equated to bullying behaviour and that they even felt that supportive behaviour could be construed as a way of placating them rather than an effort to improve their situation. During my research it occurred to me that much of the studies in the field of workplace bullying had been undertaken using qualitative studies. I therefore felt compelled to see if I could use a quantitative method as this may result in information not possible to gain using qualitative techniques. The challenge was to find a quantitative technique that would still respect participants’ own subjective opinions. After much searching I found what I was looking for in the repertory grid technique (Jankowicz, 2004). I choose to investigate the nature of positive and negative relationships in the workplace bullying situation as it seemed to me that previous studies tended to focus only on negative behaviour in bullying situations. Whilst important, I felt that this area had been nearly exhausted. Furthermore I am aware that there is a considerable difficulty in rehabilitating bullying targets as well as their colleagues after the occurrence of workplace bullying. Therefore I felt it was appropriate to aim my research at gaining understanding what behaviour targets felt were supportive and useful. By knowing this it will be possible to design better interventions to combat workplace bullying.

This study examines the relationship between the personality construct empathy and two forms of antisocial behaviour, namely self-reported offending and school bullying. This study reviews the empirical evidence for the widely held theoretical belief that low empathy is related to antisocial behaviour by undertaking a systematic review and meta-analysis. In order to develop a better understanding of the relationship between empathy and different forms of antisocial behaviour, an anonymous questionnaire was administered to a group of 720 Year 10 students in England. Information about empathy, self-reported offending and bullying was collected. Information about additional factors, which previous research has found to be related to both offending and bullying (such as impulsivity, parental supervision and low socioeconomic status), was also collected. The key question for the offending component of this study was: was low empathy related to self-reported offending? Furthermore, if differences were found to exist, were they independent of the associations between offending and the other variables which previous research has established to be related to offending? The results suggest that empathy was associated with some forms of self-reported offending, but not others. The association between empathy and offending also differed for males and females, and also the frequency of offending. The implications for interventions to reduce offending are discussed. Although similar to offending in some respects, bullying in school is a different form of antisocial behaviour. The key question of the bullying component of this study was: was low empathy related to bullying others? Also, if differences were found to exist, were they independent of the associations between bullying and the other variables which previous research has established to be related to bullying? The results suggest that empathy was related to bullying for females and for more serious bullying among males. Differences also existed for different types of bullying. The implications of these findings for the development of strategies to address bullying behaviour are discussed.

Abuse and harm to individuals, through harassment and bullying, coexist with Identity Theft as criminal behaviours supported by the ready availability of personal information. Incorporating privacy protection measures into software design requires a thorough understanding about how an individual’s privacy is affected by Internet technologies. This research set out to incorporate such an understanding by examining privacy risks for two groups of individuals, for whom privacy was an important issue, domestic abuse survivors and teenagers. The purpose was to examine the reality of the privacy risks for these two groups. This research combined a number of approaches underpinned by a selection of foundation theories from four separate domains: software engineering; information systems; social science; and criminal behaviour. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, workshops and questionnaires gathered information from managers of refuges and outreach workers from Women’s Aid; representatives from probation and police domestic violence units; and teenagers. The findings from these first interactions provided specific examples of risks posed to the two groups. These findings demonstrated that there was a need for a selection of protection mechanisms that promoted awareness of the potential risk among vulnerable individuals. Emerging from these findings were a set of concepts that formed the basis of a novel taxonomy of threat framework designed to assist in risk assessment. To demonstrate the crossover between understanding the social environment and the use of technology, the taxonomy of threat was incorporated into a novel Vulnerability Assessment Framework, which in turn provided a basis for an extension to standard browser technology. A proof-of-concept prototype was implemented by creating an Internet Explorer 7.0 browser helper object. The prototype also made use of the Semantic Web protocols of Resource Description Framework and the Web Ontology Language for simple data storage and reasoning. The purpose of this combination was to demonstrate how the environment in which the individual primarily interacted with the Internet could be adapted to provide awareness of the potential risk, and to enable the individual to take steps to reduce that risk. Representatives of the user-groups were consulted for evaluation of the acceptability of the prototype approach. The favourable ratings given by the respondents demonstrated the acceptability of such an approach to monitoring personal information, with the provision that control remained with the individual. The evaluation exercise also demonstrated how the prototype would serve as a useful tool to make individuals aware of the dangers. The novel contribution of this research contains four facets: it advances understanding of privacy protection for the individual; illustrates an effective combination of methodology frameworks to address the complex issue of privacy; provides a framework for risk assessment through the taxonomy of threat; and demonstrates the novel vulnerability assessment framework through a proof-of-concept prototype.