The Effect of Marital Status on Mobbing Teachers Experience at School: A Meta-Analysis

The main purpose of this study is to determine the effect size of marital status differences related to views and perceptions of teachers who are exposed to mobbing behaviours at school. 21 studies were included into this meta-analysis based on inclusion/exclusion criteria, out of 42 master and doctoral theses in Higher Education Council Thesis Database, regarding mobbing behaviours towards teachers in Turkish schools. Studies’ samples consist of 6945 participants in total, 4854 married and 2091 single. Also, school type, education level, research area, researcher’s gender and study year were used as moderators, which is not normally included into individual studies. The findings of the study are as follows: An effect size (SMD), statistically significant but at trivial level, was found for fixed effect model (d=-0,087) and random effect model (d=- 0,075) favouring single teachers. As a result of moderator analyses, it was found that school type (p=0,78), education level (p=0,36), research area (p=0,32) and researcher’s gender (p=0,71) did not moderate the effect sizes. Meta-regression analysis indicated that effect sizes of the studies had a downtrend by years in terms of marital status difference, yet the result was not statistically significant (p=0,40). To conclude, it could be suggested not to use teacher marital status as an independent variable in studies on mobbing at school.