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Unofficial hazing in secondary schools: Prevalence, activities, and attitudes
Author(s) -
Pečjak Sonja,
Pirc Tina
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/pits.22211
Subject(s) - psychology , harassment , feeling , exploratory research , social psychology , anthropology , sociology
The aim of our exploratory pilot study was to investigate the unofficial initiation rite of accepting novices in secondary school. We examined the prevalence of unofficial hazing, types and frequency of hazing activities and the attitudes toward hazing of students with different roles in hazing (targets, bystanders, and target‐bystanders) in a sample of 404 first‐year (secondary school) students. We found out that 79% of student‐novices were involved in unofficial hazing (43% of them involuntarily); that activities of subtle hazing prevail (in 72%), but there are activities of harassment and dangerous hazing present in 28%; and that targets and target‐bystanders have more positive feelings and attitudes toward hazing than bystanders do. Implications of the study findings are also discussed.