Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor A.A. Baranov¹
S.V. Rozhina^1
1Udmurt State University, Izhevsk

Keywords: adolescent physical culture, cyber-bullying, stress tolerance, coping strategies, prevention.

Background. It is school physical education lessons and sport sections that largely contribute to the adolescent physical culture formation process. There are many study reports that show the individual sporting and physical education progress being in direct positive correlation with the individual stress tolerance rates. C.D. Spielberger, for instance, highlights a few specific personality qualities of biggest effect on the individual competitive performance [4]. These qualities are shaped up and excelled by training and competitive systems and include, among other things, competitive emotional balancing and competitive self-control qualities, competitive motivations, stability or interference immunity etc.

 Mentioned among the key competitive stressors may be the following: high workloads, fear of defeat, fear of injury, mental pressure from the competitors etc. It should be noted that a variety of positive effects of sporting activities on the individual stress-tolerance qualities have been demonstrated by many researchers including D.V. Pukhnyak, A.N. Mingaleev, V.G. Abushkevich [3], E.L. Komarovskaya, V.V. Markelov [2] et al. These effects are explained by a variety of stressors necessarily associated with sports forcing the athletes to develop specific individual qualities and constructive ways to cope with the stressors. Effects of the stressors are particularly serious for the adolescent-age athletes. Adolescents are known to be highly dependent on the interpersonal relationship with the peers, and many of the age-specific stressors fall within this domain including the fear of losing the friendship, pressure from the dominant peers, unrequited love etc. Some of the age-specific stressors are related to the rapid changes in the individual appearance, including unhappiness with own physicality (height, weight, shape, skin problems etc.). Ranked high on the list of the adolescent stressors by many experts is adolescent cyber-bullying, the modern type of mental violence that implies, among other things, modern internet technologies. Effects of this stressor on the adolescent psyche are highly traumatic and, therefore, a high priority needs to be given to due cyber-bullying prevention actions, ways and tools in the attempts to help them. And it is the adolescent physical culture that is commonly acknowledged as one of the means to prevent or mitigate the negative effects of cyber-bullying on the victims.

Objective of the study was to provide theoretical and practical evidence of physical culture and sports being of positive effect on the individual stress tolerance and the adolescent cyber-bullying prevention.

Methods and structure of the study. Subject to verification by the study was the hypothesis that a good individual physical culture in the adolescent age is of positive effect on the individual stress tolerance due to the relevant mechanisms (dominated by the stress-coping ones) being formed to develop productive stress-coping strategies. The study found, for instance, that the stress-control problem-solving strategy is developed based on the relevant motivational and volitional personality qualities of the sporting adolescent; whilst the social support finding coping strategy is rapidly formed and improved based on the sport-specific interactions with the peers under the extreme competitive conditions of team sports. A due emphasis on these productive styles of the stress-control personal qualities is believed to be beneficial for the adolescent cyber-bullying control/ prevention initiatives.

The above hypothesis was tested by the following experiment under the study. We formed two groups of 25 people each from the 14-15 years-old adolescent pupils of a general education school. The Study Group was composed of the subjects showing good progress at Physical Education lessons and attending sport sections; and the Reference Group was composed of the subjects showing satisfactory progress at Physical Education lessons and non-attending sport sections. Both group subjects were tested for the individual stress-tolerance resource by the D. Amirkhan’s Coping Strategy Indicator Test; and the subjects’ vulnerability to cyber-bullying was tested by the authors’ questionnaire survey “Web Safety Method” (A.A. Baranov, S.V. Rozhina) [1].

Study results and discussion. Having processed the test/ survey data, we obtained the results presented in Table 1 hereunder.

Table 1. D. Amirkhan’s Coping Strategy Indicator Test rates of the subject adolescents

Note: Study Group was composed of the subjects showing good progress at Physical Education lessons and attending sport sections; and Reference Group made of the subjects showing satisfactory progress at Physical Education lessons and not attending sport sections.

The above data may be interpreted as indicative of the Study Group subjects showing more constructive stress-coping strategies than their non-sporting peers from the Reference Group.

The empirical difference meaning rate obtained by the Mann-Whitney test was found to equal U_emp =158.5 that is indicative of the difference being significant. The questionnaire survey “Web Safety Method” (by A.A. Baranov, S.V. Rozhina) of the subjects showed that the non-sporting subjects (from the Reference Group rated with satisfactory progress at school Physical Education lessons) reported 50% higher vulnerability to cyber-bullying than their sporting peers.

Conclusion. The study confirmed the assumption that a well-developed physical culture provides efficient means to prevent cyber-bullying via the adolescent’s stress tolerance resource being increased in the personality- and activity-specific domains. The sporting adolescents were found to demonstrate – versus their peers negligent to physical training and sports – more constructive stress-control strategies making them less vulnerable to cyber-bullying. This may be due to a variety of sport-specific psychological traits that increase their stress-tolerance including the better developed volitional self-control, confidence, emotional balancing abilities and the interpersonal relationship control abilities fostered by the sport-specific interactions with the peers under extreme competitive conditions of team sports.

References

1. Baranov A.A., Rozhina S.V. Koping-strategii podrostka v situatsii kiberbulinga [Teenager's coping strategies in cyberbulling situation]. Vestnik Udmurtskogo universiteta. Seriya: Filosofiya. Psikhologiya. Pedagogika, 2016, no. 2, pp. 37-46.
2. Komarovskaya E.L., Markelov V.V. Psikhologicheskie mekhanizmy stresspreodolevayushchego povedeniya studentov-sportsmenov [Psychological mechanisms of stress coping behaviour of student-athletes]. Vestnik sportivnoy nauki, 2012, no. 1, pp. 24-27.
3. Pukhnyak D.V., Patakhov P.P., Mingalev A.N. et al. Optimizatsiya podkhodov kolichestvennoy otsenki stressoustoychivosti parashutistov [Optimization of quantitative evaluation methods of stress tolerance of parachutists]. Mezhdunarodny zhurnal prikladnykh i fundamentalnykh issledovaniy [International Journal of Applied and Basic Research].  2010, no.11, pp. 68-69.
4. Khanin Y.L. Stress i trevoga v sporte: Mezhdunarodny sb. nauchnykh statey [Stress and anxiety in sport: International col. of research papers]. Moscow: Fizkultura i sport publ., 1983. – 88 p.

Corresponding author: aabaranov@mail.ru,

Abstract

The article presents theoretical and practical tests to verify a hypothesis on Physical Education being of positive effect on the individual stress tolerance that, in our opinion, is critical in its turn for prevention of adolescent cyber-bullying. We applied D. Amirkhan’ Coping Strategy Indicator Test to rate the individual stress tolerance including the productive (problem-solving and social-support-finding) and counterproductive (dodging) stress-control models. The adolescent subjects’ vulnerability to cyber-bullying was rated using the authors’ questionnaire survey “Web Safety Method” (A.A. Baranov, S.V. Rozhina). The adolescents’ physical development was rated based on the progress at Physical Education lessons and off-class sport sections. The study data and analyses demonstrated that a well-developed physical culture provides efficient means to prevent the cyber-bullying via the adolescent’s stress tolerance resource being increased in the personality- and activity-specific domains. The adolescents tested with highly developed physical culture were found to demonstrate – versus their peers negligent to physical training and sports – highly productive problem-solving and social-support-finding behavioural models, particularly in stressful situations.