Cyberbullying Perpetration: A Meta-Analysis of Gender Differences

A total of 39 articles, which reported cyberbullying behaviors from both male and female respondents, were meta-analyzed to examine if gender difference existed in cyberbullying perpetration. From these 39 empirical studies, a total of 100 effect sizes were collected, each representing a reported gender difference in certain types of cyberbullying behaviors. Random-effects meta-regression models were used in data analysis. Despite some inconsistencies across the individual empirical studies, a statistically significant gender difference emerged, indicating that more males were involved in cyberbullying perpetration behaviors than females. Moderator analysis showed that the gender difference was not consistent across the levels of several study features (e.g., modality of cyberbullying, regions of samples). It was also revealed that some methodological issues (e.g., measurement of cyberbullying behaviors, self-report rather than behavioral data) remain obvious challenges for researchers in this area. Caution is warranted, because those studies that were rated as having poor study quality showed a larger than average effect size for gender difference in cyberbullying behaviors. Implications and future research directions are discussed.