"Drawing on experience : the use of children's drawings in reflecting their bully experiences

No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Wilson, Carole
Issue Date
2005
Degree
BA in Psychology
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights
Items in Esource are protected by copyright. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher/copyright holder.
Abstract
There were two principal aims of the current research. The first of these was to display the efficacy of utilising children's drawings in reflecting their bully experiences. The second aim was to highlight the use of qualitative comments as a method that further validates the use of drawings in reflecting bully experiences. Independent and dependent variables, per se, were not suitable for the nature of the research. However, the research incorporated two principal variables. The first of these were the various drawings composed by the children based on their internal conception of what constitutes 'bully behaviours'. The second variable was the various scores the drawings obtain on a checklist designed by the researcher reflecting current knowledge of the domains of bullying behaviours. The materials required consisted of a checklist designed by the researcher reflecting current knowledge regarding domains of bullying behaviors and a pen to mark off the various 'bully behaviors'. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS:Ver.11 TM) was employed to calculate the various statistics for the results. 223 primary school students (123 male, 100 female) participated in the experiment aged 8-12 years. The procedure involved requesting children to draw a picture of their perception of bullying and also to provide qualitative feedback of their perception of bullying. Significant results were obtained for six of the eighteen bullying domains referred to on the checklist. A thematic analysis was also conducted on the qualitative feedback provided by 148 (74 males, 74 females) of the 223 participants, which validated the drawings. Thus the methodology of utilising children's drawings in reflecting their bully experiences is a methodology that can be administered to those with language difficulties (e.g., Williams Syndrome), behaviour difficulties (e.g., EBD) and attention difficulties (ADHD), which other qualitative and quantitative methodologies have failed to account for.
Collections