Risk factors for involvement in cyber bullying: Victims, bullies and bully-victims

Objectives

The purpose of the current study was to examine the frequency of cyber bullying among youth by distinguishing among the three categories of involvement in cyber bullying: victims, bullies, and bully-victims, to compare these to a fourth category of students who are not involved in the three categories of cyber bullying and to explore the factors that contribute to involvement in cyber bullying.

Method

This study utilized a large and diverse sample of 2186 middle and high school students, who completed self report questionnaires during class time. We performed a Multinomial Logistic Regression to examine the relationship between the cyber bullying categories and our independent variables (gender, age, technology use, parental involvement and safety).

Results

Over 30% of the students in this study identified as involved in cyber bullying, as victims or perpetrators, and one in four of the students (25.7%) reported having been involved in cyber bullying as both bully and victim during the previous three months. Students who were involved in cyber bullying were more likely than others to report perpetration of violence toward peers, to use computers for more hours a day, and to give their password to friends. Other risk factors, such as gender, age and safety, were found to be specific only for one category of cyber bullying.

Conclusion

The findings revealed that students are highly involved in cyber bullying. Several unique characteristics emerged regarding the frequency and risk factors of students' involvement in cyber bullying. In traditional bullying the category of bully-victims represents the smallest and most vulnerable group of children, whereas in the current study the bully-victims category emerged as common. In addition, females were more likely than males to be bully-victims, in contrast to research on traditional bullying, in which more males than females are typically involved as bully-victims. In addition, several risk factors were common among the three groups of children, including the amount of hours per day students use the computer, and giving passwords to a friend. These results point to the need for further examination and to focus on the risk factors for students' cyber bullying involvement in each of the three categories.     

Analysis of Means Using Ranks

A nonparametric procedure, called the analysis of means using ranks (ANOMR), is proposed for testing the equality of several population means. The ANOMR procedure may be used graphically in the form of a Shewhart control chart and so has the advantage of pinpointing which population mean, if any, is significantly different from the others. Exact and asymptotic critical values are given for the implementation of ANOMR. Results from a Monte Carlo power study are presented which indicate that for light-tailed distributions such as the uniform and the normal, ANOMR is only slightly less powerful than the parametric competitive procedures based on analysis of variance and analysis of means. For heavy-tailed distributions such as the Cauchy, ANOMR is shown to provide greater power than the parametric procedures. The results also indicate that for both light and heavy-tailed distributions the use of the ANOMR test instead of the Kruskal-Wallis test leads to only a small loss of power for a range of alternatives.     

The Impact of Spiritual Intelligence on the Health of the Elderly in Malaysia

In an attempt to study the impact of spiritual intelligence on the health of the elderly, research has been carried out on 378 elderly people in Perlis, Malaysia. The primary objectives of the study were: (i) to identify the levels of spiritual intelligence and general health of the elderly; (ii) to examine the relationships between spiritual intelligence and health of elderly; (iii) to examine the differences in the level of spiritual intelligence and health based on selected demographic factors; and (iv) to predict the most dominant dimension of spiritual intelligence that affects health. Sets of questionnaires were distributed to gather data. The findings showed that the majority of respondents were in good health, and had excellent spiritual intelligence. It also suggested that spiritual intelligence was positively associated with general health. Those who had higher levels of spiritual intelligence tended to have higher levels of health. The ability to conduct daily life with sanctification based on one’s spiritual belief was the most dominant factor of good health. The study suggested that spirituality is related to health and has a positive effect on participants’ overall health. Based on our findings, we recommend that health practitioners introduce the biopsychosocial‐spiritual model when assessing the health of the elderly.     

Prey preference of the wolf spider,Pardosa pseudoannulata (Boesenberg et Strand)

Summary Functional responses of the wolf spider,Pardosa pseudoannulata (Boesenberg et Strand) attacking the rice brown planthopper,Nilaparvata lugens (St?l.), and the mirid predatorCyrtorhinus lividipennis Reuter were both those of Holling Type II. The attack rate was higher and handling time lower forC. lividipennis. However, when caged with the two prey, the wolf spider showed a significant preference forN. lugens at a lower prey proportion. Proportions of prey attacked were significantly different from the expected ratios of prey available as well as from the predicted preferences derived from the functional response parameters. As proportions ofN. lugens attacked changed from greater to less than expected as the proportions ofN. lugens available increased, a “reverse switch” behaviour seems to be evident.     

Nonparametric quality control charts based on the sign statistic

Nonparametric control chart are presented for the problem of detecting changes in the process median (or mean), or changes in the process variability when samples are taken at regular time intervals. The proposed procedures are based on sign-test statistics computed for each sample, and are used in Shewhart and cumulative sum control charts. When the process is in control the run length distributions for the proposed nonparametric control charts do not depend on the distribution of the observations. An additional advantage of the non-parametric control charts is that the variance of the process does not need to be established in order to set up a control chart for the mean. Comparisons with the corresponding parametric control charts are presented. It is also shown that curtailed sampling plans can considerably reduce the expected number of observations used in the Shewhart control schemes based on the sign statistic.     

Packing trees in communication networks

Given an undirected edge-capacitated graph and given (possibly) different subsets of vertices, we consider the problem of selecting a maximum (weighted) set of Steiner trees, each tree spanning a subset of vertices, without violating the capacity constraints. This problem is motivated by applications in multicast communication networks. We give an integer linear programming (ILP) formulation for the problem, and observe that its linear programming (LP) relaxation is a fractional packing problem with exponentially many variables and a block (sub-)problem that cannot be solved in polynomial time. To this end, we take an r-approximate block solver (a weak block solver) to develop a (1−ε)/r-approximation algorithm for the LP relaxation. The algorithm has a polynomial coordination complexity for any ε∈(0,1). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approximation result for fractional packing problems with only weak block solvers (with arbitrarily large approximation ratio) and a coordination complexity that is polynomial in the input size. This leads also to an approximation algorithm for the underlying tree packing problem. Finally, we extend our results to an important multicast routing and wavelength assignment problem in optical networks, where each Steiner tree is to be assigned one of a limited set of given wavelengths, so that trees crossing the same fiber are assigned different wavelengths. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Internet and Network Economics (WINE 2005), LNCS, vol. 3828, pp. 688–697. Research supported by a MITACS grant for all the authors, an NSERC post doctoral fellowship for the first author, the NSERC Discovery Grant #5-48923 for the second and fourth author, NSERC Discovery Grant #15296 for the third author, the Canada Research Chair Program for the second author, and an NSERC industrial and development fellowship for the fourth author.     

Related party transactions and audit fees: the role of the internal audit function

Related party transactions (RPTs) are viewed as genuine transactions that rationally fulfil other economic demands of a company. However, RPTs can also be used to transfer wealth from minority shareholders to controlling shareholders. The existence of such transactions may deteriorate financial reporting quality, increase audit risk, and as a result increase audit fees. This study examines the relationship between RPTs and audit fees in Malaysia, where ownership is often concentrated within a controlling family and corporate governance mechanisms are poor. It also investigates the moderating effect of the internal audit function (IAF) on this relationship. We find that external auditors base their fees on the types of RPTs undertaken. Specifically, our results show that audit fees are higher for firms that undertake RPTs involving the sale and purchase of assets, goods, and services. We also document that external auditors rely on the IAF, and thus their fees are lower for firms that undertake RPTs and that have made a large investment in an IAF. Our study is the first to provide evidence that RPTs in Malaysian firms may be abused as a channel to facilitate tunnelling and that the IAF plays a vital role in controlling such transactions.     

Capturing and Integrating Knowledge for Managing Risks in Tunnel Works

Risk‐related knowledge gained from past construction projects is regarded as potentially extremely useful in risk management. This article describes a proposed approach to capture and integrate risk‐related knowledge to support decision making in construction projects. To ameliorate the problem related to the scarcity of risks information often encountered in construction projects, Bayesian Belief Networks are used and expert judgment is elicited to augment available information. Particularly, the article provides an overview of judgment‐based biases that can appear in the elicitation of judgments for constructing Bayesian Networks and the provisos that can be made in this respect to minimize these types of bias. The proposed approach is successfully applied to develop six models for top risks in tunnel works. More than 30 tunneling experts in the Netherlands and Germany were involved in the investigation to provide information on identifying relevant scenarios than can lead to failure events associated with tunneling risks. The article has provided an illustration of the applicability of the developed approach for the case of “face instability in soft soils using slurry shields.”     

Predation ofCyrtorhinus lividipennis Reuter on eggs of the green leafhopper and brown planthopper in rice

Summary The functional response ofCyrtorhinus lividipennis feeding on brown planthopper (BPH) and green leafhopper (GLH) eggs was found to be Holling’s Type II. The Random Predator Equation fitted the data satisfactorily. Using Manly’s preference index, α, both the male and femaleC. lividipennis were found to prefer BPH eggs. There was, however, no evidence of switching and the ratio of the respective searching efficiencies could account for the preference.     

Impact of Marital Dissolution on Men's and Women's Incomes: A Longitudinal Study

This study adopted a longitudinal framework in examining economic consequences of marital dissolution for men and women. Data collected in the Survey of Labor and Income Dynamics from 1998 to 2005 were used to compare men's and women's incomes for up to 5 years during and after marital dissolution. Marital dissolution was defined as divorce or separation from a spouse or a common-law partner. Results revealed a dramatic drop in women's income and a slight drop in men's income during the dissolution year. One year later, women's income was 80% that of men's; 4 years past dissolution, it reached 85% that of men's. Gender differences in adjusted incomes were statistically significant for up to 3 years postdissolution. These findings suggest that the level of deterioration in women's economic well-being after marital dissolution has not improved in the last 2 decades.