RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MINDFULNESS AND BULLYING BEHAVIOR AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY FROM PAKISTAN

Abstract

Objective: To find out the relationship between mindfulness and bullying behaviour
among school children in Pakistan.
Methodology: This cross sectional research was conducted in three private
sector schools of Multan from March to August 2015. Two hundred gender-
matched students, aged between 8 to 11 years were enrolled for the study.
The assessments included Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure and
Bullying-Behaviour Scale. Apart from the descriptive statistics, the relationship
between mindfulness and bullying behaviours was analyzed using Pearson
correlation. Gender differences was computed though independent t-test and
ANOVA was performed to find out the effect of birth order on mindfulness and
bullying behaviours.
Results: The mean age of the sample was 9.49 ±1.26 years. There were 41
(20.5%) single children, 53 (26.5) first, 76 (38%) middle and 30 (15%) last children.
Results showed that mindfulness and bullying behavior negatively correlated
with each other (r =-.625). Significant differences in mindfulness and
bullying behaviour among male and female children were found. Male students
experienced more bullying as compared to female students and they
also showed more mindfulness than female students (p<0.05). The difference
for mindfulness and bullying behaviour scores of four groups of children with
different birth orders (single, first, middle and last child) using ANOVA, showed
significant effect of birth order (p <0.000 & 0.000 for mindfullness and bullying
behaviour, respectively)
Conclusion: There is a negative correlation between mindfulness and bullying
behaviour and single children show high bullying behaviour.