Social Workers’ Perceptions of the Prevalence of Cyberbullying Among Post-Primary Education Students in the Sultanate of Oman

The current study addressed one of the most important problems facing human societies, which is the phenomenon of cyberbullying, applied to the Sultanate of Oman. The study followed a mixed approach, represented by the documentary and qualitative approaches - the grounded theory method. The study community represented documents related to cyberbullying in terms of its nature, forms, parties, effects, and strategies to confront it. A sample of experts in basic education schools, numbering 8 experts, and semi-standardized interview questions were used as a tool to monitor their perceptions, while verifying the necessary values of objectivity and reliability. The results of the study revealed the prevalence of cyberbullying among post-primary education students, and that the forms of cyberbullying practiced by students are centered around five forms: harassment, exclusion, defamation, circulating rumors, and publishing embarrassing photos or videos. As for the factors that lead to the spread of cyberbullying among students, the participants linked it to four factors: age, educational level, parental upbringing, the breadth of friend networks, and economic and social conditions. Regarding strategies to confront cyberbullying, the participants’ responses centered around three strategies for participation: the formal confrontation strategy, the social confrontation response, and the cognitive confrontation strategy.