Mindful-Based Stress Reduction and Bulling - Research Proposal Example

? Mindful based stress reduction and its effect on anxiety experienced with bullying victimization as well its effects on the bully Introduction. For decades, the world has undergone persistent transformation. Some of these transformations have been attributed to the trending developments in science and technology. Hereunder, among many areas encompassing science and technology that have impacted on human lives, information technology has stood out that, through it, humans can stop vices that have for years been the cause of mayhem in the society. Indeed, technology has changed the lives of people across the globe, as well as their thinking. Information technology has made the world shift towards a global village by fostering advanced forms of communication. The advancements in information technology have evoked issues that the world needs to tame and halt for the better of equality in the society. Prior research has identified and documented most of these issues. However, very little has been done concerning the reduction of stress due to bullying behavior. This paper proposes a research to investigate bullying with the view to highlight mindful based stress reduction and its effect on anxiety experienced with bullying victimization as well its effects on the bully. Literature Review. According to Boivin, Hymel, & Bukowski, (1995), bullying is a mentality and a constant urge to dominate. The act of bullying entails deliberately intimidating or prosecuting persons who are deemed weaker. This means survival is guaranteed for those who have the ability to molest, and intimidate those with less ability to resist such intimidation. Those who bully others are often referred refer to as the bullies. It is worth noting that Bullies have common characteristics that deliberately compel them to intimidate others (Olweus, Juvonen & Graham, 2001). Bullying has emerged to be the newest platform on which the youths are increasingly abusing each other. It has stretched beyond the known limits, and youth has even impressed other sophisticated tools such as the Internet and cell phone communications to bully others. Research has shown that the act of bullying is rampant in social place where people from diverse background come together for a common goal. In this regard, places that are prone to such malpractices include schools and jails. This happens because, it is common for people in these places to gather in smaller groups and compete for autonomy. Prior studies have cited that bullying has far reached implications on kids, so that the victims (kids) of bullying only feel safe when in their bedrooms (Olweus, Juvonen & Graham, 2001). According to these studies, it does not under all circumstances hold that bullying causes physical harm. However, bullying is mostly associated with causation of harmful emotional fallout which may cumulate to other gar reaching consequences. Certainly, stress is one of the implication behind such emotional fallout. It has been shown through research that that peer to peer bullying is the most rampant, but its implications are not so severe. In high school, for example, victims of bullying develop withdrawal attitude following bruised self esteem. They end up not feel worthy of mingling freely with the rest of the student fraternity. It is appalling that to the act of bullying impresses those who practice it. It has been found out that Bullies too experience extreme apprehensive attitudes. They feel agitated all the time and cannot settle to undertake a single task successfully to completion. With regard to stress as a negative effect of bullying, it refers to mental strain; this implies that the mind is engaged all through thinking about either how to escape situations or how to face the consequences of the actions carried out (Goldin & Gross, 2010). In such state, the body is in constant need of energy which coincidentally the body is not able to provide. Energy in the body is obtained from food, the stomach and the intestines will thus produce the digestive juices and acid. However, since the stomach is empty, the juices and the acid turn onto the walls of these digestive tracks. As a result, stressful individuals contract such lifestyle diseases as ulcers. These affect the performance of the students as they spend more time in hospitals and with the psychologists trying to revere their health conditions. This process is extremely costly besides being time consuming. It is, therefore, advisable that schools and public facilities curtail bullying. Victims of bullying are vulnerable individuals, which makes them the best targets for their oppressors. Vulnerable personality is developed through time and, therefore, takes time to reverse, by reversing this the individuals are taught life survival skills necessary for making them defend themselves. The defense in this context does not necessarily imply engaging in physical fights, but through reason and simply being bold. A bold individual does not get anxious in controversial situations; they stare their problems and work for solutions necessary for freedom. Such a person cannot be bullied, they could be small in body size, but the bold personality makes them less vulnerable. Bullies, on the other hand, are people possibly brought up in intimidating environments. Bullying is, therefore, a form of deviant behaviour that has a number of negative effects to the society. Despite the many effects of bullying, there is very little research that has identified ways of reducing stress as a result of bullying. This paper proposes a research to investigate bullying with the view to highlight mindful based stress reduction and its effect on anxiety experienced with bullying victimization as well its effects on the bully. Methodology. Population sample. The opportunity sample for this study will be made up of fifteen participants. Some participants will be obtained from a group of students who normally use the internet. Other participants could be the friends of the researcher. The participants will be selected using the fact that they need to individuals who have suffered from bullying especially cyber bullying. The participants of this research should be volunteers. Three groups consisting of five participants should be. The three groups will be given names according to the duration of internet use. Instrumentation. The apparatus that will be used for this study include a recorded CD together with the oral and written explanations about bullying, questionnaires, response booklets, and Rating Scales Data collection. All subjects will be given oral and written explanation on different types of bullying. The subjects will then be given response booklets. The researcher will give the participants questionnaires on bullying, and the participants would write their responses in the response booklet. Using a scale, the participants will be asked to describe their bullying experience. Another scale with position one representing minimum positive impacts of bullying and position ten representing increased positive impacts will be given to the participants. These subjects will be asked to put a mark on the scale in order to show out their bullying experience. The subjects would also be asked to give comments on how they managed their bullying experience. After completing the questionnaires, the response booklets having all responses will be collected for analysis. Expected results. The bullying experience group of participants will be measured using the Harvard Group Scale. Ways of reducing the bullying stress experience in each group of participants will be identified and recorded. Measuring of bullying stress experience will be done using a scoring range of 0 to 12. Different scores of the impacts of bullying of each specific group will be obtained. The mean and the standard deviation of the scores should be calculated. The results of the research will be gathered, compiled and recorded in the table shown below (Table 2). Table1: Table showing the results of the international field experience. Group 1 ( 1 to 10 years) Group two (11 to 20 years) Group three (21 and above years) Members Number of men and women Number of men and women Number of men and women Age range Mean age Standard Deviation Total Data analysis. The data collected will be analysed by use SPSS or excel solver program. Independent group design, two tailed theory, one way ANOVA test will be used to test the significant difference between groups. The mean, standard deviation, standard error, lower bound, minimum, maximum, and the component variance for all the scores of the entries of each group will be calculated and recorded in the table 2. The mean of the scores will also be calculated using SPSS or excel solver program (Bruce, 2001). All the values obtained after calculation will be recorded in a table. A test of the homogeneity for different variances will also be obtained and recorded in a table. The response of bullying stress for each group will be obtained and tabulated. A test for equality of the obtained means will equally be obtained and recorded in a table. A multiple comparison of the mean and the data collected will also be done, and results tabulated. After this, the homogeneous subsets of each group will be determined and the results tabulated in a table. After all these, a graph of the mean of the scores of bullying stress response, against the group of participants, will be plotted in e-views or excel (Vollestad, Sivertsen & Nielsen, 2011). In this case, the dependent variable for research will be the bullying stress response whereas the research independent variable will be the different group of participants. References Boivin, M., & Bukowski, W. M., Hymel, S. (1995). The role of social withdrawals, peer rejections, and victimization by peer in predicting loneliness and depression mood in childhood. Developmental and Psychopathological, 7, 765-785. Bruce, M. G. (2001). Developing a global educational perspective. J of Teacher Education, 42(1), 21-27. Goldin, P., & Gross, J. (2010). Effect of mindful-based stress reductions (MBSR) on emotional regulation in social anxiety disorders. Emotion, 10 (1), 83-91. Olweus, D., Juvonen, J & Graham, S. (2001). Peer Harassment: A Critical Analysis and Some Important Issues. Peer Harassment in School, 20(1), 3-20. Vollestad, J., Sivertsen, B., & Nielsen, G. (2011). Mindful-based stress reduction for a patient with anxiety disorder: evaluating in a randomized control trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 49 (4), 281-288. Read More