Browsing by Author "Paavola, Anne-Maria"

The purpose of this qualitative research is to find out whether experiences in school bullying has effects on the bullied persons in adulthood, more in detail concerning relationships, health, studying and working life. This research was conducted by using a narrative approach where the people participating in the study told in their own words about their experiences. The people that participated in the study were all women that had experienced school bullying in their childhood and/or in their teens and have been in working life at least few years. The objective of this study was to answer following research questions that were based on the relevant theories: In what way the school bullying has impacted in the relationships in adulthood? How the experiences in school bullying effect on the victim’s health? How the experiences in school bullying effect on studying and working life? The research material was collected by using narrative interviews. The structure for the interview was based on the research questions and were categorized into relationships, health, studying and working life. The interview structure worked as a frame for gathering the research material, but the most important outcomes of the interview were the stories that the interviewees told in their own words about their experiences. The material was analyzed by using theory guided content analysis where the material was categorized from the original expression to the main category. The results of the study show that school bullying has effect on the victim’s life as an adult. The study shows that school bullying has effect on the relationships, health, studying and working life in adulthood. The relevant findings concerning relationships are that everyone suffered from a lack of trust and a negative perception of themselves and that created chal-lenges in relationships. Concerning health, issues such as mental health problems and self-punishing due to low self-esteem and self-hate were discovered as consequences. The re-sults show that everyone participating in the study were goal-oriented and aimed into pro-fessions that are linked with their own survival of the bullying experiences and where they also get the chance to help others suffering from the same challenges that they have experi-enced.