Bullying and its Relationship to the Big Five Personality Traits and Some School Variables among Intermediate Level Students in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This study aimed at identifying the prevalence of bullying behavior among the students of the intermediate schools in Al-Khobar, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study also sought to explore the relationship between bullying and the Big Five Personality Traits. The study used two measures: The Scale of Bullying, which was developed by the researchers and the Big Five Inventory, developed by John, Donahue, and Kentle, (1991). The study sample consisted of (300) students that were randomly selected from intermediate schools in Al-Khubar, Saudi Arabia. The obtained results indicated that bullying among students reached 26.3 % and that the most common type of bullying was cyber bullying. The results also showed statistically significant differences in verbal bullying, physical bullying, verbal bullying, and cyber bullying. The results further showed that there was a negative statistically significant correlation between verbal and physical bullying on the one hand, and between agreeableness and conscientiousness, on the other hand. Moreover, the results showed that there was a positive statistically significant correlation between physical bullying and agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness as well as between cyber bullying and agreeableness, and between the physical bullying and neuroticism. Finally, it was found that conscientiousness explained (2.5%) and openness explained (1.7%) of the variance in Bullying.