Study of the Relationship of Bullying with the Levels of Eudaemonic Psychological Well-Being in Victims and Aggressors

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The aims of this paper is to investigate the possible relationship between subjective psychological well-being and involvement in bullying situations from different roles or positions, given the relevance of well-being for the individual and, in addition, given the relationship between well-being and other purely academic variables such as school performance and school dropout and failure.

The following hypotheses have been developed in line with these objectives: H1. There is a statistically significant and negative relationship between involvement in bullying as aggressors and perceived psychological well-being. H2. Individuals involved in bullying situations as aggressors score significantly lower on well-being than individuals who are not involved in bullying situations as aggressors. H3. There is a statistically significant and negative relationship between involvement in bullying situations as victims and perceived psychological well-being. H4. Individuals who participate in bullying situations as victims score significantly lower on well-being than individuals who are not involved in bullying situations as victims.

 

The results obtained may be interesting for publication, after some revisions have been made

 

COMMENTS:

1. References included in the text and in the references section do not meet the criteria specified in the "instructions for authors" section:
   1. References must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including table captions and figure legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. 
   2. Example: Journal Articles: Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal NameYear, Volume, page range.

 

2. INTRODUCTION:
   1. To facilitate the understanding of the text, it would be better to first name the two types of victim and then describe each one (lines 99-112).

 

3. METHOD:
   1. Different authors suggest as an important risk factor for being a victim of bullying the fact of having: intellectual disability, neurodevelopmental disorder or learning disorder. It would be very interesting to include these variables as control variables, as well as intelligence quotient. If this is not possible, it should be added to the limitations section of the study.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments

Although the effects of bullying on subjective well-being are extensively reported in the literature, the paper focuses on a topic with social and political relevance, with important implications for practice, as bullying is a major public health concern. This paper allows understanding the effects of bullying on well-being and as an indicator of psychosocial adjustment, as well as understanding the Spanish reality regarding the engagement of adolescents from this country in bullying behaviors.

However, the current version of the manuscript does not meet the criteria to be published. Therefore, it requires a careful and deep reorganization and revision, considering both its content and structure. Some grammatical revision is also needed. I made a revision section by section, to help the authors to identify, in a more detailed way, the major issues of concern.

 

Abstract

The goal of the study requires clarification, as it is too vague. In the sample description, the age rank of the participants may be included, along with its mean and standard deviation. The students’ sex should also be added. Instead of describing statistical results, their interpretation must be reported (e.g., students who are victims of bullying exhibit lower levels of well-being). In line with this, the sentence ‘mean differences, bivariate correlations and multiple linear regressions 14
were calculated’ requires revision. The main conclusion and its implications should also be included in the abstract. In the keywords, it would be useful to only consider ‘subjective well-being’, removing the keywords ‘psychological well-being’ and ‘eudaemonic well-being’, as well as to add ‘adolescents’, as this is the targeted population of the study.

 

Introduction

The inclusion of subtitles would possibly improve this section, whose structure should be revised. The authors should include a definition of bullying (considering here the description of the new forms of bullying and the different roles individuals can play in these violent interactions) and subjective well-being, and, then, explore the association between these two constructs (i.e., the negative impact of bullying on subjective well-being).

A citation at the end of this sentence ‘One of these situations (…) as schools have existed.’ is lacking. Please correct the orthographic errors in the words ‘externalisation’ and ‘internalisation’ (cf., Achenbach, 1966, 1991).

 

Objective and hypotheses

The goal of the study should be revised, as the expression ‘possible relationship between subjective psychological well-being and involvement in bullying from different roles or positions’ is not clear. To what type of relationship are you specifically referring to? Possibly, the term ‘relationship’ must be replaced by ‘association’. In addition, presenting predictions, instead of hypotheses, will possibly make this section clear (e.g., It is expected that adolescents who engage in bullying aggressive behavior (or Aggressors) will report lower levels of well-being’.

 

Method

This section requires reorganization, and I suggest the following structure: 1) participants, 2) measures, 3) procedure and 4) data analysis. Accordingly, the subsection ‘Study variables and tests used’ should be removed. Information regarding the statistical analysis performed and the instruments used should be included in the data analysis and measures’ subsections, respectively. The instruments must be described in a more clear way and following the same structure (e.g., dimension/s assessed, target-population, number of items and the Likert scale used to measure them, subscales and their respective scores, psychometric properties - i.e., reporting the results concerning internal consistency).

Along with the issues concerning the structure, the initial sentence of this section is not necessary.

In the sample description, I suggest you read other papers to have a model regarding the structure and writing style while reporting methodological issues. The sentences should be shorter and concise, and acronyms of the statistics, such as standard deviation, should be included. Please, consider the following example: ‘Participants were 669 adolescents (X girls and Y boys) aged between 12 and 19 years (M = X; SD = X), attending schools within the X district, Spain. Of these, 243 (36.3%) attended the 9th grade, 153 (22.9%) the 8th, 95 (14.2%) the 11th, 80 (12.0%) the 10th, 53 (7.9%) the 7th, and 41 (6.1%) the 12th.’

In the subsection of procedure, information on the approval of the study by the Ethics Committee where it was conducted is needed. In addition, the first sentence is not needed, as it is kind of redundant. Furthermore, the final sentence does not refer to the procedure and should be included in the subsection concerning data analysis.

The section on statistical analysis also requires a revision. Information on the results of the normality tests that led the authors to use parametric tests, instead of nonparametric ones, should be included.

 

Results

The writing style and tables formatting should be revised.

Also, information on the psychometric properties of the questionnaires and on the normality of the variables should be included in the Measures and Statistical Analysis subsections of the Method section, respectively.

The statistical results should be interpreted, instead of only described (e.g., Boys exhibit higher levels of well-being than girls). The confrontation with the hypotheses should not be included in this section, but only in the discussion. Furthermore, I suggest you reorganize the information in the tables, following this model: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures.

 

Discussion

The authors discuss the results in a careful way. Nevertheless, some ideas, such as ‘(…) this type of violence is also conditioned by sexist attitudes (…)’ could be further developed.

They also reflect on the study’s limitations and recommendations for upcoming research. However, and concerning the study’s limitations, the sentence ‘Furthermore (…) to be drawn’ could be clearer, if the authors specifically highlight the relevance of a longitudinal design to further explore the association between bullying and subjective well-being.

Regarding the implications for practice, it will possibly be interesting to reflect on the focus of the interventions. What are the dimensions that, in the authors’ opinion, should be explored to avoid adolescents to engage in bullying behaviors and to mitigate its negative effects on their’ well-being and mental health.

 

Conclusion

The authors clearly highlight the theoretical and practical implications of their work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

If the article is finally accepted, the authors must modify the references according to the journal's rules.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments and help to improve our manuscript. Thank you very much, too, for proposing our manuscript to be published in this journal.

Reviewer 2 Report

The changes introduced in the manuscript improved the quality of its structure and content. Nevertheless, some corrections are still needed so that the manuscript publication could be feasible. My major concerns are related to the Results section, namely to the tables formatting and writing style. I made a revision section by section to help you in this final revision. If these issues are addressed, I will recommend this paper for publication.

This revised version of the abstract is clearer than the first one, namely regarding the sample description, the conclusions of the study and their implications. However, I still think that the goal of the study must be clarified. As you performed correlations and a regression analysis based on one moment of observation, you could assume that your study aims to explore the association of engagement in bullying behaviors both as victim and aggressor with psychological well-being. In addition, interpret, instead of describing your statistical results, could also be more informative to the reader. Regarding the keywords, I still think that would be useful to only include the expression ‘subjective well-being’, which is a more common construct in the literature, to avoid redundancy.

The inclusion of subtitles in your theoretical framework significantly improved this section, regarding both structure and content. However, as previously stated, the goal of the study must be clarified.

The expression ‘externalization and internalization of problems’ requires revision (line 144). The terms usually used in the literature are ‘internalizing’ and ‘externalizing’ problems (cf. Achenbach, 1966, 1991).

In what concerns objectives and hypotheses, I think that, instead of referring to statistical relationships, you may present predictions. This would easier to understand from the reader perspective. The second and the third hypotheses should be revised accordingly.

The Method section was substantially improved. However, there are still some issues which should be addressed. First, the first sentence is not necessary. Second, the statistical acronyms should appear in italic. In addition, please not that it is only necessary to refer to ‘Internal consistency’, when reporting to the results of Cronbach’s alpha, as internal consistency is only one way to assess reliability.

In line 212, the word ‘tool’ must be replaced by ‘questionnaire’ or ‘instrument’, when describing Multimodal School Interaction Questionnaire (CMIE-III) (cf. line 212).

Some corrections are still required in this section, in line with my previous suggestions, which were not addressed by the authors. The writing style and tables formatting still need some revision. As previously stated, I suggest you format the tables according to the APA guidelines: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures

Furthermore, and in line with my first revision, the statistical results should be interpreted, instead of only being described. This is more informative to the reader than simply read the results of the table. The confrontation with the hypotheses should not be included in this section, but rather in the discussion.

This revised version of the discussion is clearer.

Finally, the authors clearly highlighted the theoretical and practical implications of their work.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

The changes added by the authors in the manuscript improved the quality of its structure and content.

Regarding the abstract, the revision of the goal of the study, along with the interpretation of the results which was included in this version of the manuscript, make the text clearer. I just suggest the authors to include only the interpretation of the results, instead of their description, to avoid repeating information.

In what concerns the theoretical framework, line 145, the preposition ‘of’ is not needed, as the expression usually used in the literature is ‘internalizing and externalizing problems’.

In the current study subsection, the hypotheses could be clearer, I suggest the authors to homogenize the formulation of the predictions, taking the fourth prediction as a model. You can also include these predictions in the text, instead of making a list and, in line with this, remove the numbers before each hypothesis.

The Method section was substantially improved with the latest revision by the authors. I only suggest they to consider some examples of interpreting Cronbach’s alpha according to APA style, to improve the way they report this statistical result.

In the Results section, the tables formatting still need to be carefully revised. As previously stated, I suggest you format the tables according to the APA guidelines: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures. Additionally, the description of the information of the table is not relevant, as the authors include the table to avoid this description. In this same vein, I recommend you to interpret your results, instead of describing them. For example, in lines 272-274, it is only relevant to report that aggressors exhibit lower levels of well-being, when compared to the victims, for example. The discussion of these results should be introduced only in the discussion.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf