UC Santa Barbara has named Chun Chen of the Gevirtz School the 2018 James Hong Memorial Research Fellowship recipient. The fellowship was established to honor James’s life and to memorialize his lasting contributions to the UC Santa Barbara community. We are pleased that the fellowship will continue to support your research in at-risk youth and school violence with the goal of helping to prevent violence and promote safety, as requested by James’s family.
The most common form of violence at school, bullying has been linked to negative academic and social-emotional outcomes for its victims. However, most of the existing studies on school climate and bullying victimization have primarily based on students’ perception. Understanding parents’ perception of school climate and bullying victimization is crucial because these perceptions are associated with safety concerns with schools as well as their motivation and participation in school-based programs targeting bullying and school violence. Moreover, very limited studies have examined the cross-cultural differences of parents’ perception of school climate and their children’s bullying victimization.
Chun Chen’s study examined the cross-cultural differences of parents’ perception of school climate, bullying victimization and the association between school climate and bullying victimization based on the report from 999 parents from schools in China and 1,212 parents from schools in the U.S. The results proposed a cross-culturally valid School Climate and Bullying Victimization scales using Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Among the six school climate factors examined, only student-student relationship had the strongest association with three types of bullying victimization in U.S. samples. Moreover, the magnitude of the significant association between student-student relationship and bullying victimization factors did not differ across the U.S. and China. The findings provide important implications for schools and educators in developing culturally sensitive strategies to help prevent the bullying victimization risks of youths and families from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, such as immigrant and international students and families.
Chun Chen is a doctoral student in the UCSB Department of Counseling, Clinical, & School Psychology, with emphases in School Psychology and Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences. She was born in Shanghai, China. Chun graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.S. in Psychology, and later from Vanderbilt University with a M.Ed. in Clinical Psychological Assessment. Chun’s research and clinical interests include understanding the risk and protective factors related to the bullying and victimization experience of school members across different cultural and linguistic contexts. She is also passionate about raising the public awareness on the bullying victimization issues faced by Asian/Asian American and other minority youths. At UCSB, Chun works closely with her advisor Dr. Chunyan Yang on a line of research studies examining how school climate help alleviates the negative impact of bullying victimization on students’ engagement in schools using multi-informant and multilevel approach. She has also been actively involved in the development of a psychometrically sound multidimensional measure of teacher-targeted aggressive and violent behaviors perpetrated by students and the influence of school-wide disciplinary practices on the risks of teacher victimization.
Cheng-Yuan “James” Hong was a beloved member of the UC Santa Barbara community. A dedicated student, James entered UC Santa Barbara as a freshman in the fall of 2012 after attending Lynbrook High School in San Jose, CA. He was a Computer Engineering major in the College of Engineering. This fellowship was created to allow James’s spirit to live on through future Gauchos who exhibit his compassion, dedication and kindness.