Limitations and Implications for Interventions
The main limitation of this study is the crosssectional
nature of our data. It is theoretically sound
to hypothesize that class level variables, such as the
class moral climate, affect students’ behavior. However,
it may also be that frequent bullying behavior
increases class moral disengagement over time. A longitudinal
design is required to test this hypothesis directly.
Moreover, we tested our hypotheses on a sample
of elementary-school children, which restricts our
findings to a specific population. Accordingly, future
studies should expand this analysis to early and late
adolescence to see whether this pattern of association
is replicated among older students. We might expect
that the effect of class moral disengagement on bullying
could be even stronger as age ascends, because
the impact of the peer group on behavior increases in
the transition fromelementary school years tomiddle
school years [Pellegrini et al., 2010;Rubin et al., 2006].
Another limitation is that we were not able to include
an independent measure of aggression as a covariate
in our analysis. Therefore, we should be cautious in
interpreting the current findings, because we cannot
exclude that the positive relation between moral disengagement
(MD) and bullying behavior is explained
by a third variable, namely a higher level of overall aggression
in the classroom.Moreover,we are conscious
of the problematic nature of having only two items
for measuring the disregarding/distorting the consequences
mechanism.We adopted the scale developed
by Caprara et al. [1995] because, to date, it is the
only one specifically designed and validated for Italian
Limitations and Implications for Interventions
The main limitation of this study is the crosssectional
nature of our data. It is theoretically sound
to hypothesize that class level variables, such as the
class moral climate, affect students’ behavior. However,
it may also be that frequent bullying behavior
increases class moral disengagement over time. A longitudinal
design is required to test this hypothesis directly.
Moreover, we tested our hypotheses on a sample
of elementary-school children, which restricts our
findings to a specific population. Accordingly, future
studies should expand this analysis to early and late
adolescence to see whether this pattern of association
is replicated among older students. We might expect
that the effect of class moral disengagement on bullying
could be even stronger as age ascends, because
the impact of the peer group on behavior increases in
the transition fromelementary school years tomiddle
school years [Pellegrini et al., 2010;Rubin et al., 2006].
Another limitation is that we were not able to include
an independent measure of aggression as a covariate
in our analysis. Therefore, we should be cautious in
interpreting the current findings, because we cannot
exclude that the positive relation between moral disengagement
(MD) and bullying behavior is explained
by a third variable, namely a higher level of overall aggression
in the classroom.Moreover,we are conscious
of the problematic nature of having only two items
for measuring the disregarding/distorting the consequences
mechanism.We adopted the scale developed
by Caprara et al. [1995] because, to date, it is the
only one specifically designed and validated for Italian
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..