Cyber Harassment, Coping, and Psychological Maladjustment in College Students

Undergraduate students at a large southwestern state university completed an anonymous online survey, which included measures of cyber harassment victimization and perpetration, coping, and psychological maladjustment. For both women and men, experiences of cyber harassment victimization and perpetration were positively correlated with each other and with psychological maladjustment. As expected, avoidant coping was significantly positively correlated with both psychological maladjustment and both cyber harassment victimization and perpetration. Adaptive coping was not significantly correlated with any of the other variables. Path analyses with bootstrapped mediation tests indicated that the relationships between both cyber harassment victimization and perpetration and psychological maladjustment were significantly mediated by avoidant coping.