Browsing by Subject "http://www.yso.fi/onto/yso/p26209"

Goals. Bullying is a fairly common phenomenon and is known to cause major psychological distress on its victims. The negative effects of bullying are often long lasting, which is why early interventions are important. Understanding the factors behind bullying can help us learn more about it and thus find better ways of intervening. One factor that is known to affect bullying is personality. The goal of this study is to examine the link between Big Five personality traits and becoming the victim of bullying. On basis of previous research, it was assumed that lower conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion and higher neuroticism would lead to a higher risk of being bullied. The role of openness was ambiguous. Also the effect of parental supervision, school performance and time spent with friends were examined. Methods. This study employs the data from the nationwide survey on youth crime and victimization conducted by the national research institute of legal policy in 2012. The sample frame of the survey was Finnish-speaking primary and secondary schools. A total of 8914 sixth and ninth grade students completed a self-report survey questionnaire in school. 14.9 % of the students reported being bullied at least once during the previous year. Multinomial regression analysis was used to explore the relationship between personality traits, parental supervision, time spent with friends, school performance and bullying. Interaction analyses between personality traits and the moderators were also conducted. Results and conclusions. The result of this study suggest that students who score lower on extroversion, conscientiousness, parental supervision and school performance and higher on openness and neuroticism are more likely than other students to be bullied. There was no statistically significant relation between bullying and openness or time spent with friends. The risk between bullying and extroversion was especially high when combined with lower parental supervision, school performance and a higher level of time spent with friends. The risk between bullying and neuroticism was higher when combined with lower school performance and a higher level of time spent with friends. Openness was a risk factor especially when combined with lower levels of parental supervision and school performance. The results show that personality traits as well as other, more social factors such as parental supervision, can have a significant impact on bullying. Parental supervision is something that, unlike personality traits, can be more easily altered, which is why giving parents more information about the effects of parental supervision on bullying is important. Although this study focused on the victim's traits, it is important to stress that the idea is not to blame the victim. The goal of this study was to get a better understanding of the factors that increase a child's risk for victimization and use this knowledge to design better interventions for bullying and perhaps peer victimization in general.

Various studies have established that juvenile delinqency is often characterized by group nature. Although co-offending is the most common criminal style during adolescence, solo offenders exists too. Previous studies have shown differences in terms of criminal style, including age and typical offenses. The aim of this study is to explore if there can be found differences regarding the personality structure. We expected to find a more criminal personality profile in solo offenders compared to co-offenders, since co-offending delinquency has been considered in the literature even as a normal phenomenon in adolescence. Furthermore, we expected youths with mixed criminal style to differ the most from other groups in terms of neuroticism, conscientiousness and agreeableness. The data is drawn from the national Finnish Youth Crime Survey 2012 (N = 4855). Personality was assessed with the shortened Big Five Inventory (BFI-S) and delinquency was measured by involvement in five different types of criminal behavior. Criminal style was assessed by asking the youths if they did the offense in question alone or in company of one or more offenders. Multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) and logistic regression were used to examine the personality profiles and differences between youths representing different criminal styles. Contrary to the hypothesis, solo offenders and co-offenders differed only regarding extraversion. However, when analyzing the results at the offense type level, the results showed preliminary differences concerning other traits. In line with previous studies, the most common offenses for co-offenders were crimes against property, while for solo offenders crime against persons was the most typical offense. As hypothesized, youths with mixed criminal style differed most strongly from the other groups in terms of personality traits. The findings of the study suggest, that to understand why some youths choose to act on their own in the matter of delinquency, we need to study other factors in addition to personality traits.

The aim of this study is to explore the experiences of a group of company agents who participated in a training organized by their company, from the perspective of activity theory. Activity theory aims to understand the interaction between the mind and activity, through expansive learning among other things. The subjects of the study are Vainio Oy (pseudonym) and the company agents who took part of the training. A significant amount of studies on organizational learning has been made in different contexts, including organizational management. Studies of internal training and usage of collected data within organizational learning are less frequent, though. Thus, the aim of this study is to increase information concerning the ways of development for organizational training from an activity theoretical perspective. The research is a qualitative study, and the methods used for gathering data were thematic interviews. There were eight company agents from all over Finland who participated in the interviews. All of the informants took part of the company's training. The data were analyzed by using content analysis. A phenomenological hermeneutic approach was applied during the research analysis. The study shows that the training was a success. Significance was given for teachers proficiency, given support and specific educational methods, for instance using online assignments. On the other hand the defined agenda and the company agents' expectations of the training did not meet. The company agents preferred a training with a more sales point of view. It is possible to develop the training from an activity theoretical perspective, either with the help of a process-innovation model or system innovation model. Expansive learning is only fulfilled when the activity system, i.e. the training program, is reformed so that the objectives of the training provider and the participants are integrated.