Bullying: Background

Orpinas + Horne (2006): 'double I R'. Imbalance of power, intentional, repeated over time.
1. Juvonen +} Graham (2004): power imbalance is most important; victim unable to prevent/stop the aversive behaviour.
2. Power = not only physical size/strength/access to resources
  1. Type of power being abused differs between types of bullying: resource-holding potential (physical), social attention-holding (verbal), affiliative relationships/sense of belonging (relational)
Prevalence
1. Hansen et al (2012): 5.3%-50% worldwide
  1. Monks et al (2008): variability due to definitions, including time period etc.
2. Tellus4survey (Chamberlain et al, 2010): 29% of UK pupils in year 6/8/10 surveyed had been bullied in previous year. Nearly half had been bullied at some point in their lifetime.
3. Childline (2014): 69% increase in racist bullying compared to previous year. 87% increase in cyberbullying between 2011-12 and 2012-13.
  1. Children said 24h nature of cyberbullying makes it particularly hard to escape from/cope with
4. Stonewall's "The School Report" (Guasp, 2012): survey of 1,145 LGB young people in 2006. 65% had experienced direct homophobic bullying. 35% of LG people did not feel safe or accepted at school. Only 25% reported that their school had said homophobic bullying was wrong.
5. Rigby and Smith (2011): international review of repeated measures studies published 1990-2009. Bullying generally decreasing, except for perhaps a minority of countries.
  1. Review findings for cyberbullying less conclusive than for traditional bullying - in 2009, they could only located two repeated measures designs to explore prevalence trends.
Effects
1. Having been bullied at school is associated with elevated risk of childhood/young adult psychiatric disorders (Copeland et al, 2013)
2. Having been part of a peer group characterised by bullying/victimisation is associated with negative effects (Gutman and Brown, 2008)
Identifying bullies
1. Pellegrini + Bartini (2000): low to moderate correlation between methods of identifying bullies
2. Boys more likely to be identified as bullies. Otherwise, identification depomds on assessment method used. (Copeland et al, 2013)
3. Self Reports
  1. Definition of bullying, rate frequency. E.g. Peer relations questionnaire - 6 item bully scale, 5 item victim scale.
  2. Generally anonymous, encouraging honesty
  3. Social desirability biases
4. Peer assessments
  1. Asking a class to individually identify classmates who meet the behavioural descriptions of bully/victim/etc.
  2. E.g. Participant role scales (Salmivolli, 1999), "Guess Who" (Nabozoka + Smith, 1993)
5. Teacher questionnaires
  1. Teacher often unaware of much bullying (e.g. in playground) so less reliable most of the time (Smith, 2004)
  2. Better for younger aged pupils because child reports are less reliable and children are more closely supervised
6. Observation
  1. Primarily (but rarely) used for very young children
    1. Older children spread out more during breaks
  2. Time consuming
  3. Relational bullying difficult to observe
  4. Presence of adult observer decreases incidence of physical/verbal bullying
7. Juvonen et al (2001): appropriate assessment depends on goal of study
  1. Self-report better predicted psychological adjustment problems
  2. Peer assessments better predicted low social acceptance

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Bullying: Background

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	Created by Maisie Rose Woodward almost 9 years ago