Graduation date: 2008
Bullying prevents its targets from enjoying a safe, stress-free living, learning, and working environment. For most children, bullying experiences will be merely unpleasant childhood memories. This remains the same in adult's working environment. During the past decade, the concept of workplace abuse has had an increasing resonance within western countries. However, studies of workplace abuse in the Taiwanese context are almost non-existent. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the issue of school bullying and workplace abuse among college students in a Taiwanese context. To this end, 594 questionnaires were delivered and 513 completed.
The results provided in-depth information on school bullying and workplace abuse and the relationships between school bullying and workplace were established in a Taiwanese context. Based on the data, 34% of participants were victims of school bullying and 17% of the respondents were victims of workplace abuse. Personality traits and environmental factors played important roles in the school bullying situations, while both groups of factors only played a minor part in workplace abuse.
Victims of school bullying scored highest in depression, followed by bully-victims, bullies, and non-involved individuals. Bullies were the healthiest group compared to the other three groups in the school bullying situation. Victims of workplace abuse also scored the highest on depression tendency, followed by bully-victims, non-involved individuals, and bullies. Non-involved individuals enjoyed the best health and well-being compared to those involved individuals. Depression scores indicate mild to moderate clinical depression tendency among this entire target population.
There was a significant relationship between roles in school bullying and role in workplace abuse: bully-victims and victims of school bullying were at higher risk of becoming victims of workplace abuse than were school bullies and non-involved participants. Of the results, half of school bully-victims were involved in workplace abuse, while 24% of victims in school bullying were also victims in workplace abuse, indicating that bully-victims and victims in school bullying have a high involvement in workplace abuse in their later life. College bullies may have been too young to demonstrate bullying in the Taiwanese workplace.