Cyberbullying has been defined as “an aggressive, intentional act carried out by a group or individual, using electronic forms of contact, repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him or herself” (Smith, Mahdavi, Carvalho, Fisher, Russell & Tippett, 2008, p. 376). The aim of this research was to investigate cyberbullying in Irish secondary schools in relation to personality and self-concept. A sample of 876 students (n = 534 male: 61%; n = 342 female: 39%) aged between 12 and 16 participated in the research. Respondents completed a Cyberbullying Questionnaire, the Jr. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975), and the Piers-Harris 2 (Piers & Herzberg, 2002). A total of 6.3% reported cyber victimization during the previous three months. Analysis of the Jr. EPQ indicated that victims of cyberbullying and victims of traditional bullying displayed significantly higher (P<.05) Neuroticism levels compared with non-involved students (i.e., those uninvolved either as bullies or victims). The cyber and traditional victims displayed similar patterns across personality and self-concept. Findings are examined in the context of the existing literature.

Concerns have been raised about behaviour management and bullying in schools; this has led to an increase in relational approaches to conflict management. One relational approach to conflict management is restorative justice (RJ). The present study reviews the theoretical underpinnings of the RJ approach and evidence of its efficacy in the criminal justice system and educational contexts. Research has supported the efficacy of the approach in the criminal justice system, and has highlighted the effectiveness of RJ in developing empathy. Despite a lack of high quality research in school contexts, this approach is already being utilised in schools. Therefore, the literature review was followed by a study which aimed to investigate the efficacy of RJ in developing empathy and reducing behavioural difficulties in schoolchildren. 65 children attending a school using RJ approaches to behaviour management and 44 children attending a school using traditional punitive approaches completed selfreport measures of empathy and behaviour at baseline, and again four months later to examine the effects of RJ on empathy development and behavioural difficulties. In addition, the researcher identified children with low empathy and high behavioural difficulty scores in both schools and compared their empathy and behavioural difficulty scores at baseline and after four months. After controlling for baseline scores, there were no significant differences between the schools in terms of changes in empathy or behavioural difficulties. This was also the case when focusing on the subset of children who had low empathy and behavioural difficulties at baseline who may have been expected to have greater exposure to RJ approaches/interventions over the 4 month follow up period. Implications of the present study and limitations are discussed.

Research has identified that workplace bullying is a significant problem within healthcare, with healthcare trainees at particular risk. However, there are no studies of workplace bullying within clinical psychology or of trainee clinical psychologists. The aim of the current study was to explore the experiences of workplace bullying from the perspectives of trainee clinical psychologists. Fourteen trainee clinical psychologists were recruited from UK universities and participated in semi-structured telephone interviews. Data was analysed using thematic analysis within a critical realist epistemology. The analysis generated four main themes: workplace bullying ‘activating threat responses’, the process of trainee clinical psychologists ‘making sense of bullying’, ‘difficulties navigating power within the system’ when experiencing and reporting bullying, and ‘finding safety and support’ within and outside of work contexts. The results are considered in relation to existing research, as well as Compassion Focussed Therapy theory and the Power Threat Meaning framework. Clinical implications are recommended at an individual level, within the profession of clinical psychology and for the wider healthcare system.

Cyberbullying refers to individual or group behaviours involving the use of offensive language online, and it is a global issue that causes serious social problems. Research on cyberbullying has thus emerged in several fields, such as psychology, sociology, computer science, and linguistics. However, studies of cyberbullying in China have met with limitations and challenges, despite cyberbullying there becoming a serious and prevalent problem, making China a meaningful case study for cyberbullying investigations. This thesis thus used a new combined theoretical framework, a Socio-ecological Framework with Language Feature and Management Approaches, to analyse cyberbullying language features and usages, cyberbullying motivations, and the variables affecting cyberbullying in the Chinese context. Based on its overall findings, this research also made some extrapolations to cognate social issues in order to discuss the consequences of cyberbullying, and to develop potential measures for detecting or regulating cyberbullying. The methodologies selected for this thesis were content analysis, social network analysis, and interviews; thus, the work is both qualitative and quantitative. Content analysis was used to examine cyberbullying language usage, formations, and features using an author-created 2,000-word database. Based on these results, social network analysis was applied to provide deeper insights into how contextual and sociolinguistic variables affect cyberbullying, while the interviews helped to gather additional views on cyberbullying, providing new ways to examine the challenges of regulating cyberbullying, as well as highlighting potential approaches to doing this. The main finding of this thesis is that not all cyberbullying words are inherently offensive; emotional and even ordinary words may have cyberbullying functions in context. Additionally, during cyberbullying, the context for communication, current events, and the forms adopted all affect the use of cyberbullying language. Both males and females both use a range of offensive words in cyberspace, and cyberbullying can affect any internet users, not only minors. The consequences of cyberbullying may also be more serious than those of traditional bullying. These findings were then adopted to draft a set of preliminary measures for addressing cyberbullying.

The children that are the focus of this study attend separate mainstream schools and are between seven and eleven years of age. Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) were, respectively, the theoretical and methodological approaches employed to explore the perspectives of children. Individual children’s constructs about the emotions they named as important to them were elicited over a series of meetings. The findings from this project are drawn from the descriptions provided by the children themselves and indicate that social experiences of happiness are grounded in peer relationships from experiences during play; these are also based on certain beliefs and achievements within the educational context. Furthermore, themes of bullying are commonly cited in experiences of more negative emotions such as sadness and anger. Relationships with key adults in school, particularly teachers are important for bringing resolution to experiences of anger, and providing support when sadness is experienced. Relationships between each case need to be understood through the unique contexts of children’s lives, which is in addition to the label used to describe these children. Implications for future research are discussed.