2017 Volume 65 Issue 2 Pages 167-182
The present authors were unable to find any previously published research that focused on differences in the quality of help seeking and avoidance of help seeking for peer harassment. A newly developed instrument, the Seeking Help with Peer Harassment from Friends and Teachers Scale, which was based on 4 qualitatively different strategies (i.e., autonomous help seeking, dependent help seeking, avoidance of help seeking, and pretending not to be harassed), was used to investigate how middle school students used these strategies to address peer harassment. Factor analysis revealed that the scale was comprised of 3 factors: autonomous help seeking, dependent help seeking, and pretending not to be harassed. Cluster analysis of the scores was used to classify the students into 6 groups. An analysis of the features of those groups suggested the following 2 possibilities: (a) there are 2 types of students: those who do not seek help and those who pretend not to be victims of peer harassment and do not seek help, and (b) middle school students do not consistently use a particular help-seeking strategy, but rather use various strategies in parallel, depending on the helper.
