Literature Review
To study the influence of diffusion of responsibility the presence or strength of the bystander effect on helping behaviour
The bystander effect refers to decrease in the helping behaviour when a bystander is present when compared to no presence of a bystander. It is a social psychological sensation observed where an individual do not tend to offer any help to a victimised person in presence of other individuals (Latané & Darley, 2015). Several social psychologists have investigated the “bystander effect” in helping behaviour (Abelson et al., 2014). Based on literature review many factors were found to influence the presence or strength of the bystander effect on helping behaviour such as willingness to help, influenced by the characteristics of the situation or the person in need (such as age, gender, ethnicity), cohesiveness, diffusion of responsibility, and ambiguity among others (Ferreira et al., 2016). According to Bennett & Banyard (2016) diffusion of responsibility is an important factor that has profound influence on the presence or strength of the bystander effect on helping behaviour. The research proposal aim to examine “diffusion of responsibility” and investigate the combined effect of this factor in college setting.
According to Bennett and Banyard, (2016) in college campuses sexual assault is extremely prevalent. Most assaults in college campuses occur in social setting and involve alcohol intoxication. These assaults occur when others are present. However, it was found that the relationship with the victim differently effected the perceptions of the bystanders. A positive perception was found when the bystander had relationship with the victim and the perceptions were mixed in case having relationship with the perpetrator. The findings also showed that bystanders perceived a situation to be of high risk which prevented helping behaviour. These findings may be used in this study where it can be identified if increase in number of bystanders led to perception of high risk situations.
Van Bommel et al. (2016) argued that alcohol intoxication influences the bystander effect in terms of response time. It helps a bystander to help and rescue at a faster rate even in presence of other bystanders. Therefore, bystander effect is not influenced by the diffusion of responsibility in this social setting. However, it may not be applicable in college setting due to prohibition of alcohol use and therefore diffusion of responsibility may be highly prevalent.
Veenstra et al., (2014) investigated that anti-bullying behaviour can be developed in children if the teachers take an active stand with efficacious approach. However, the study did not investigate the anti-bullying behaviour in children in respect to high or low severity of the situation. These results showed that children were dependent on the teachers considering as their responsibility to intervene the crisis. It explains the diffusion of responsibility however, it is not much useful for the present study which considers the college setting. This argument is supported by the study of Hoxmeier et al. (2016) which highlighted that in college setting students restrain from intervening owing to behavioural control. It showed that the students were less proactive in presence of other bystanders during sexual assault. In another study by Franklin et al., (2017) college students showed gender biasness in helping behaviour during sexual assualt. This biasness was dependent on the bystnders’ positive attitude, personality extroversion, efficacy to prevent violence and previous experience of the bystanders related to crime. This study too did not consider the bullying scenario and exclude diffusion of responsibility as a factor preventing the intervening behaviour.
Method
Overall, the literature review shows that several researchers have found different types of bystanders. Different case studies have been published in the past related to how bystanders have previously acted in the situations of bullying. Although these findings have different aspects, different reactions and types of bystander, these findings are somewhat consistent in research. There are gaps in the prior research, as it does not focus solely on college students. It was found from the literature that greater emphasis was laid on bystander effect during sexual assault than on bullying situations in college setting. There is a gap in literature in respect to how students relate themselves to specific type of bystander say proactive bystander.
The proposed study involves both quantitative and qualitative paradigm also called as mixed method design.
The research hypothesis is that in college setting students do not intervene in bullying situations owing to diffusion of responsibility. Therefore, it is hypothesised that there is a positive correlation between the bystander effect and diffusion of responsibility.
This approach involves two factors here one factor is an experimental manipulation of the bystander effect which in this case is the group size. The group size is an independent variable. The second factor is the “diffusion of responsibility” which is proposed to influence the presence or strength of the bystander effect on helping behavior. The second factor is the dependent variable. The hypothesis is tested in the proposed study using the “2×2” experimental research design (Becker et al., 2016).
In order to test the hypothesis an experiment will be conducted in ABC college of London, UK. The size of the participants will be 60. The group of the participants will consist of 30 males and 30 females. This sample size is greater than 30 and is justified for increasing the validity of the study according to Denscombe, (2014). For interview, 30 participants are selected.
Both probability and non-probability sampling method will be used in the study. The probability sampling is a randomised process of selection and eliminates the contamination by human interference. Probability sampling is employed for the mail survey (Palinkas et al., 2015). The non-probability sampling is employed for interview process to select respondents in biased manner to obtain insightful responses (Robinson, 2014).
The data collected in this study will be of both quantitative and qualitative nature. The mixed method is justified for this proposed study, as it is effective for gaining a detailed perspective on the problem being investigated (Creswell, 2013).
For data collection, two types of surveys will be conducted: personal interview and mail survey using questionnaire as instrument.
The interview method of survey offers greater flexibility and offers high response rate and hence this method of data collection is justified for brief surveys (Robinson, 2014). According to Mitchell & Jolley, (2012) the mail surveys eliminate the limitations due to interviewer bias. Mail survey are best to eliminate the embarrassment due to examination of the personal topics. Therefore, it is justified for this proposed study. Overall, the survey method is an excellent mode for examining the attitude of people and their opinions (Abelson et al., 2014). Although correlational research design is quantitative in nature the interview method is incorporated. It is justified because the aim of the proposed study is not only to examine but also to investigate the combined effect of factor “diffusion of responsibility” in college setting. The combined effect can best be obtained by direct interaction with the participants and identifying their perceptions (Silverman, 2016).
Participants
The personal interview process will comprise of 30 minutes for each participant and consist of open-ended questions. It is helpful method to gain broad perspective such as if the participants consider themselves as proactive bystander in situation of bullying and in what circumstances they do not feel as proactive (Mann, 2016). Further, the participants will be asked about experiences with increase in the number of bystanders.
The mail survey conducted will have two parts. In the first part of the questionnaire Likert scale will be used where refers 1 to strongly agree and 5 refers to strongly disagree (Joshi et al., 2015). This part is to test as to which type of bystander the student is most like. The second part of the survey will focus on two scenarios which will also include the Likert scale to test if the respondents will (1) strongly agree to (2) strongly disagree with the given scenario. It is meant to test if the students are a proactive bystander. In the first scenario, a small group will consist of 3 people. In the second scenario a bigger size of group will be considered of 9 people.
The data analysis will involve checking correlation, reliability and other statistical tests necessary to get all the information from the collected data. The SPSS tool is an efficient mode of calculating correlation. A Perfect correlation can be interpreted by the value of r obtained. If the value of r lies between +1.0 and -1.0 it indicates perfect correlation. In this study, the proposed hypothesis will be accepted in case of perfect correlation. If the value of r is 0 then it indicates no correlation which means there is no correlation between the presence or strength of the bystander effect and the number of bystanders (Becker et al., 2016). No correlation may also indicate no association between the strength of the bystander effect and the diffusion of responsibility. The qualitative data analysis will be performed by observational analysis, which includes coding of transcripts and analysing with the help of literature (Brinkmann, 2014)
It is expected that the student’s decision to help in bullying situation as a bystander will be effected by the increase in the size of the group. Depending on the situation and the responses given it is expected that the participants may have mixed feelings of bystanders.
Ethical issue are inevitable when participating in the research. Researchers are accountable for any ethical issues. For this research, four principles are considered to eliminate ethical issues. It includes Research Merit and Integrity, Beneficence, Justice, and Respect. It is the basis of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (Sarantakos, 2012).
Prior to conducting the research the concerned college will be requested to collect data by a written application stating the purpose of the study. Further, the guidelines of the Data Protection Act 1998 will be complied (Deterding et al., 2015).
During the interview process, the participants may feel embarrassed to answer personal questions therefore; the questions will be skilfully designed in manner that ensures dignity and respect of the respondents. The use of mail survey eliminates this issue. Since the participants need to give their personal details in both interview process and the mail survey, there may be ethical issues in regards to ensure confidentiality and privacy of the data collected. In order to eliminate this concern a written consent will be given to the participants that the data collected will be used for academic purpose and shall not be exploited for commercial purpose (Abelson et al., 2014). In order to ensure the confidence of the participants, no monetary benefits will be offered and the respondents will be assured that they will not be pressurised to answer the questions if they are unwilling. This approach will ensure building trust with the respondents by assuring of their autonomy to answer (St John et al., 2016).
Materials
Mail surveys add severe limitations due to the problem of response bias. Since, the proposed study uses both the mail survey and the interview the limitation may be decreased as higher response rate is achieved in the phone survey and this method of survey offers greater flexibility than the mail survey (Salaberry and Comajoan, 2013). During the formulation of questionnaire for mail survey, the chance of bias and response errors will be eliminated by first developing a sample questionnaire and testing on small sample size say 10 participants. It is called as pilot study (Vaishnavi & Kuechler, 2015). The mixed method is used as it will eliminate the limitations of both the qualitative and quantitative research paradigm which increases the strength of the study (Pickard, 2012). The correlation data may show the relationship exiting between the variables but may not give accurate data on cause and effect relationship. Therefore, one factor is experimentally manipulated which is the size of the group to notice its effect on the “diffusion of responsibility”. However, excluding other variables such as social relationship, personality of the bystanders and cognitive ability may add to limitation. Due to time constraint these are excluded. In order to overcome the limitations related to reliability and validity of the research the methodology, data collection and the instrument used is guided by academia and literature to give legitimacy (Creswell, 2013).
References
Abelson, R. P., Frey, K. P., & Gregg, A. P. (2014). Experiments with people: Revelations from social psychology. Psychology Press.
Becker, T. E., Atinc, G., Breaugh, J. A., Carlson, K. D., Edwards, J. R., & Spector, P. E. (2016). Statistical control in correlational studies: 10 essential recommendations for organizational researchers. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37(2), 157-167.
Bennett, S., & Banyard, V. L. (2016). Do friends really help friends? The effect of relational factors and perceived severity on bystander perception of sexual violence. Psychology of violence, 6(1), 64.
Brinkmann, S. (2014). Interview. In Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology (pp. 1008-1010). Springer New York.
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications.
Denscombe, M. (2014). The good research guide: for small-scale social research projects. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Deterding, S., Canossa, A., Harteveld, C., Cooper, S., Nacke, L. E., & Whitson, J. R. (2015, April). Gamifying Research: Strategies, Opportunities, Challenges, Ethics. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2421-2424). ACM.
Ferreira, P. C., Simão, A. V., Ferreira, A., Souza, S., & Francisco, S. (2016). Student bystander behavior and cultural issues in cyberbullying: When actions speak louder than words. Computers in Human Behavior, 60, 301-311.
Franklin, C. A., Brady, P. Q., & Jurek, A. L. (2017). Responding to gendered violence among college students: the impact of participant characteristics on direct bystander intervention behavior. Journal of school violence, 16(2), 189-206.
Hoxmeier, J. C., Flay, B. R., & Acock, A. C. (2016). Control, norms, and attitudes differences between students who do and do not intervene as bystanders to sexual assault. Journal of interpersonal violence, 0886260515625503.
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Pickard, A. (2012). Research methods in information. Facet publishing.
Robinson, O. C. (2014). Sampling in interview-based qualitative research: A theoretical and practical guide. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 11(1), 25-41.
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St John, F. A., Brockington, D., Bunnefeld, N., Duffy, R., Homewood, K., Jones, J. P., … & Razafimanahaka, J. H. (2016). Research ethics: assuring anonymity at the individual level may not be sufficient to protect research participants from harm. Biological Conservation, 196, 208-209.
Vaishnavi, V. K., & Kuechler, W. (2015). Design science research methods and patterns: innovating information and communication technology. CRC Press.
Van Bommel, M., van Prooijen, J. W., Elffers, H., & Van Lange, P. A. (2016). Booze, Bars, and Bystander Behavior: People Who Consumed Alcohol Help Faster in the Presence of Others. Frontiers in psychology, 7.
Veenstra, R., Lindenberg, S., Huitsing, G., Sainio, M., & Salmivalli, C. (2014). The role of teachers in bullying: The relation between antibullying attitudes, efficacy, and efforts to reduce bullying. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106(4), 1135.
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