good title for research paper about bullying

124 Bullying Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on bullying, ✍️ bullying essay topics for college, 👍 good bullying research topics & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting bullying research titles, ❓ bullying research questions.

• School Bullying: Causes and Effects
• Bullying in Schools: Essay Example
• The Problem of Bullying in School
• Chronicles of Bullying: An Editorial Article
• Bullying at School and Impact on Mental Health
• Bullying in Schools: Anti-Bullying Programs
• School Bullying and Student’s Development
• Bullying: A Serious Social Problem Bullying is undesirable behavior that society must deter at all costs. In schools, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders should have working knowledge on managing the vice.
• Bullying Behavior and Its Negative Effects on Children Bullying behavior is a severe issue among school-age children. This essay addresses the negative effects of bullying on children and the ways of overcoming the problem.
• Negative Bullying Outcomes: A Persuasive Speech Bullying has adverse effects on both victims and perpetrators. Bullying should be prevented, or should it occur, reported, and taken care of as soon as possible.
• Prevention of Bullying in Schools School bullying is a relevant and critical global issue, and while it affects all children, some groups may experience various disparities and increased exposure to bullying.
• Bullying Effects on Health and Life Quality When children are subject to bullying by their peers, it affects their feelings and evokes negative emotions in the first place.
• Workplace Bullying and Its Implications on Organizations Discrimination is one of the major challenges that organizational leaders face within the workplace. Workplace bullying refers to any acts intended to intimidate a colleague.
• Teenagers’ Contemporary Issues: Bullying at School Bullying can be caused by differences between students, and the existing assessment and support options contribute to improving the situation.
• Online Bullying Takes Over the World In the context of a rapidly and highly digitized global environment, online bullying, otherwise known as cyberbullying, has become a prevalent issue.
• The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy on Victims of Bullying This paper will be able to ascertain that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a very effective therapy that defies the ugly trend of bullying in schools.
• Bullying and Sexual Harassment at Work Place According to Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention, workplace bullying occurs when an individual direct irrational actions repeatedly towards their fellow worker.
• Bullying Problem in School Bullying is caused by genetic predisposition, relations with peers, and as a reaction to the situation in school or at home.
• Why Bullying Is Wrong and Methods of Resolving Disputes Without Violence Such methods of conflict resolution as mediation, communication, and listening may eliminate the harmful impact of such behavior without violence.
• The Issue of Cyber-Bullying in Education Field Bullying has been recognized as a pervasive and a severe problem as well as a significant concern, mostly in the educational field.
• Bullying and Parenting Styles There are many positive and negative outcomes of parenting on children. This paper aims at investigating the connection between several types of parenting and bullying behaviors.
• Reducing Bullying in Schools by Involving Stakeholders Schools should raise awareness among educators, instructors, and community members about their roles and responsibilities in the battle against bullying.
• School Bullying and Problems in Adult Life Bullying is aggressive behavior that can be seen in different children, teenagers, and adults. In this paper, the causes of bullying and the effects of it will be presented and discussed.
• Bullying and Work-Related Stress in the Irish Workplace One of the best analyses of relationships between workplace stress and bullying has been done in the research study called “Bullying and Work-Related Stress in the Irish Workplace.”
• Bullying in the Modern Society: Review Bullying is one of the major concerns of modern society. Following the statistics, about 40% of all individuals have experienced being bullied at least once.
• The Consequences of High School Bullying This annotated bibliography includes summaries of four academic studies that explore the effects of bullying on high school students.
• Cyber-Bullying and Ways to Solve the Problem The primary goal of the given study is the investigation of cyber-bullying, which is nowadays one of the integral parts of social media and the Internet.
• Bullying in Poverty and Child Development Context The aim of the present paper is to investigate how Bullying, as a factor associated with poverty, affects child development.
• Bullying Among Adolescents Problem Studying the problem of bullying, its factors of influence, and the application of developmental theories are critical for finding ways to combat it effectively.
• Bullying of Learners with Disabilities The problem of bullying remains one of the predicaments learners with disabilities encounter in their learning environments.
• Anti Bullying Prevention Program The standards for anti-bullying program aims to prevent not only the behavior of bullying but also behavior representing the full spectrum of inter-student cruelty.
• Workplace Bullying and Its Impact on People’s Mental Health Workplace bullying turns out to be a serious theme for discussion because of a variety of reasons, and one of them is its impact on people’s mental health.
• Fear Appeal in the Stop Bullying Public Campaign In the video “Stop bullying,” the subject matter is presented shockingly. The 47-second clip shows a high school girl receiving an aggressive text message from her peers.
• Organization Conflicts and Bullying Workplace bullying is a serious problem with huge costs attached to it in terms of loss of working days. The topic requires academic attention to ascertain the factors that induce such behavior.
• The Social Problem of Bullying and the School System The present paper focuses on the connection between the social problem of bullying and the school system, describing each of these concepts.
• The Problem of Workplace Bullying: Literature Review The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the relevant literature on the topic of workplace bullying.
• Bullying and School Drop Out Rate Relationship Analysis Bullying is rife in schools where physical and verbal abuse occurs among pupils/students. There is “a close relationship between bullying, school involvement, and literacy”.
• Exploring Workplace Bullying in Nursing This paper critiques Etienne’s 2013 study of workplace bullying in nursing and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the research.
• Causes of Bullying in Nursing The relationship between medical staff is an important aspect that determines the quality of work in a particular institution and the healthcare system as a whole.
• School Bullying and Legal Responsibility The following paper will discuss and cover the rate of school bullies’ legally unregulated actions and the detriment that they constantly cause to other children who surround them.
• Cyber-Bullying and Cyber-Stalking as Crimes Cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking are relatively close in meaning, but there is a slight difference in the definition of these terms.
• Harsher Laws for Cyber Bullying The number of people using social networks is growing but they do not see the danger in remote communication and are subjected to cyberbullying.
• Bullying: A Guide for the Parents The first way for parents to assist the kid in coming up with bullies is to teach them a set of responses, which they can use in case someone is picking on them.
• The Meaning of Cyber Bullying The work reveals the meaning and purpose of cyberbullying, what signs characterize it and the solution to cyberbullying.
• High School Bullying: Psychological Aspects The study discusses the psychology behind bullying, the effects of bullying on all the involved parties, and emergent patterns.
• The Workplace Bullying Prevention Policy The problem of bullying creates a severe issue for the atmosphere of the workplace environment, the mental health of workers, and their performance.
• The Issue of High School Bullying Bullying cases among high school students have been on the rise in modern society. High school bullying is mainly caused by media exposure.
• Bullying at Pre-School and Preventive Measures This paper provides five tips for pre-school bullying prevention, the first of which is to give opportunities for children to show kindness and respect.
• Bullying and Methods of Solving This Problem The article is devoted to the causes of bullying which develops in almost any closed community among children and adolescents.
• Bullying During Orientations in the Universities In order to address the issue related to bullying during orientations, only the most empathetic senior students should be allowed to participate in orientations.
• The Relation Between the Teen Suicide and Bullying During the teenage years, bullying and harassment represent cases of social animosity that make suicide an option.
• Cyber Bullying Messages in Communication Networks Bullying can come in different forms, but it always causes injury or even worse. Bullying victims may carry the psychological wounds of their ordeal for the rest of their life.
• Problem Scenario: Workplace Bullying in Teaching When the word “bullying” is used in the context of education, one often presumes the situation in which one student systematically mistreats another.
• Bullying and Patient Safety in Clinical Settings Besides damaging the atmosphere in clinical settings and negatively affecting the personnel, bullying can lower the quality of healthcare services and harm patient safety.
• The Long-Term Consequences of Being Bullied or Bullying Others in Childhood This study attempts to discuss the main consequences on the mental and physical health of victims, bully-victims, and bullies themselves, and comment on the prevalent patterns.
• Bullying as Managerial Issue in Nursing Sector Bullying is a significant nursing issue due to the negative impact caused on the performance level among the employees.
• Problem of Bullying Overview and Analysis Bullying can have harmful impacts on everyone involved, including bullies, the bullied, and bystanders. It can be prevented through the use of selective preventive programs.
• Nurse Bullying: Unprofessional Conduct Bullying can be exhibited in the form of physical and verbal threats, social seclusion, aggressive behaviors, and suppression of applicable care information.
• Bullying: A Concern for Modern Communities and Educational Establishments Parents can educate their children to create safe environment for healthy development, both physical and mental, guaranteeing the absence of abusive behavior or victimization.
• Bullying and Its Impact on My Life In this essay, the author talks about the impact of bullying on his life and how he managed to cope with the problem.
• “Nurse Exposure to Physical and Nonphysical Violence, Bullying…” by Spector This paper is a critique of the article titled “Nurse Exposure to Physical and Nonphysical Violence, Bullying, and Sexual Harassment: A Quantitative Review”.
• Anti-bullying Practices in Criminal Prosecution Anti-bullying practices have proceeded past only encouraging an individual to avoid ill-treatment of their peers to the establishment of laws.
• Workplace Bullying: Dealing With the Office Bully The psychological stress caused by bullying can be so severe that in the worst case, it can lead to depression and quitting.
• Deterring Juvenile Crime. Bullying and Delinquency Delinquency can be defined as a crime committed by a minor; in the recent few years, cases of juvenile delinquency have been on the rise.
• The Dumfries and Galloway Council’s Policy Against Bullying This paper discusses the analysis of the bullying in general and its understanding in the works of Dumfries and Galloway Council.
• Workplace Bullying in the Nursing Areas The paper is aimed to tell about the importance of overcoming workplace bullying in the example of a nursing collective.
• Bullying Among Nursing Staff The bullying in health care is still present, and health practitioners’ mental health, motivation, and ability to uphold precision and self-composure are compromised.
• Nurse Bullying and Legal Interventions Nurse bullying has to be addressed by healthcare establishments and national agencies to ensure proper work culture and adequate environment for patient care.
• Horizontal Violence and Bullying in Nursing There is a direct correlation between horizontal violence and job satisfaction among nurses, which affects the efforts of individuals who choose this profession.
• Parenting Style and Bullying Among Children The investigation of parenting styles is highly essential to understand how they affect the bullying behavior of children to prevent it.
• Bullying and Laws in American Schools Researchers distinguish two major kinds of bullying that take place in the academic setting: direct and indirect.
• Addressing Bullying in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms The study mainly focuses on teachers’ lack of knowledge on how to deal with the issue of bullying in the classroom in an effective manner.
• School Bullying and Teacher Professional Development
• Bullying and Its Effect on Our American Society
• Physical, Emotional, and Social Bullying
• The Government Should Put Laws in Place To Prevent Bullying
• Childhood Bullying and Social Relationships
• Bullying and Its Effects on Individual’s Education
• The Emotional and Physical Aspects of Bullying
• Bullying and Its Effects on the Person Who Is Being Hurt
• Childhood Bullying and Its Effects on Children
• Cyber Bullying Affects People‘s Lives More Than One Might Think
• Managing Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace
• Bullying Affects the Social Learning Theory
• How Has Bullying Changed Our Modern World?
• Bullying and the Workplace and Affect Morale
• The Bible Belt and Its Beliefs on the Problem of Bullying
• Cyber-bullying Through Anonymous Social Media
• The Difference Between Bullying and Harassment
• Racial Bullying and Its Effects on the Middle of the Twenty
• Bullying Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Social Media Bullying and Cyberbullying
• Bullying Prevention and School Safety
• Physical and Verbal Bullying in Schools
• What Are Schools and Parents Doing for Bullying Prevention?
• What Are the Effects of Bullying in Public Schools?
• What Strategies Might You Employ to Encourage Pupils to Prevent Bullying?
• How to Talk to Your Children About Bullying?
• What Are the Six Types of Bullying Parents Should Know About?
• Which American State Has the Toughest Bullying Laws?
• Who Started and Invented Anti-Bullying Day?
• What Countries Have Anti-Bullying Laws?
• Which American State Is the Only One to Not Have an Anti-Bullying Law?
• What Is the Meaning of Anti-Bullying Law?
• What Is the Number One Determinant of Bullying Will Occur?
• When Was the First Anti-Bullying Law Passed?
• Is Bullying a Social Determinant of Health?
• What Should Be in an Anti-Bullying Policy?
• Why Is the Anti-Bullying Policy Important?
• Why Should We Be Aware of the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013?
• What Is the Meaning of Emotional Bullying?
• What Is the Punishment for Anti-Bullying Act?
• Is Bullying a Social Phenomena?
• Who Is the Father of Bullying Research?
• What Is a Good Slogan for Stop Bullying?
• Why Do the Bullying Programs not Work?
• Why Students Engage in Bullying?
• Why Are Workplace Bullying and Violence Important Issues for Organizations?
• Why Should Bullying Not Be Harsh?
• What Is the Most Important Strategy for Bullying Prevention?
• Why Do We Need to Conduct a Study About Bullying?
• Are Bullying Prevention Programs Effective?
• Who Should Universities Have the Ability to Punish Students for Cyber Bullying?
• Are Neoliberalist Behaviours Reflective of Bullying?

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These essay examples and topics on Bullying were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on December 27, 2023 .

80 Bullying Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Bullying Essay Guide: Topics, Selection, and Writing Tips

Bullying is a topic that has attracted significant attention over the years due to its widespread prevalence and detrimental effects on victims. Primarily observed among school children, bullying often stems from social differences, physical appearances, or an individual’s vulnerability. This article aims to guide you through the process of selecting the best bullying essay topic and offers a plethora of topics to inspire your writing.

How to Choose the Best Bullying Essay Topic?

1. Consider Your Audience: Choose a topic that resonates with your readers. Given the prevalence of bullying, many can relate, including perhaps your teachers.

2. Brainstorm and Collaborate: Discuss potential topics with peers to gauge their depth and relevance.

3. Hook Your Readers: Start with an engaging title and opening line to captivate your audience immediately.

4. Rely on Facts: Ensure you incorporate accurate statistics and facts to build a credible argument.

5. Proofread: Review your essay, refine it, and seek feedback. Ensure all aspects of your chosen topic are addressed. For comprehensive proofreading and topic selection, consider using professional services like writeondeadline.com .

Bullying Essay Topics

General topics:.

• Effects of bullying on victims’ wellbeing.
• Strategies to combat bullying in schools.
• The role of parents in addressing bullying.
• Personal experiences with bullying – as a bystander or victim.
• Legal implications and interventions against bullying.
• Motivations behind bullying behaviors.
• The societal view on bullying: Is it normalized?
• Differentiating between various forms of bullying.
• The impact of teachers’ interventions in bullying scenarios.
• Raising awareness about bullying in educational institutions.

Cyberbullying Topics:

• Factors leading to cyberbullying.
• Overcoming the trauma of online harassment.
• Investigative methods to trace cyberbullies.
• The psychology of individuals who cyber bully.
• Comparing the psychological impacts: Cyberbullying vs. traditional bullying.
• How social media platforms can be breeding grounds for cyberbullying.
• Prevention strategies against online harassment.

Anti-Bullying Topics:

• Effective measures to eradicate bullying.
• The repercussions of bullying on individuals.
• Role of parents and educators in supporting bullying victims.
• Social dynamics contributing to bullying.
• Governmental initiatives against bullying in schools.
• Techniques to confront and neutralize bullies.

General Bullying Topics:

• The psychological aftermath of being bullied.
• The global statistics on bullying: How does it vary?
• The role of school leadership in bullying interventions.
• Bullying and its connection to the rise in youth mental health issues.
• Can bullying be linked to familial structures and parenting styles?
• Bullying in adult workplaces: Is it an extension of school behavior?
• How pop culture and media representation influence bullying trends.
• The economic implications of bullying on society.
• Effects of bullying on academic achievements.
• The role of peer pressure in bullying incidents.

Cyberbullying Themes:

• Anonymity and its role in escalating cyberbullying.
• The dark side of social networking sites: A hub for bullies.
• Laws and regulations against cyberbullying worldwide.
• The role of tech companies in preventing online harassment.
• Digital footprints: How they contribute to cyberbullying.
• The evolution of cyberbullying: Past, present, and future.
• Parental monitoring: A solution to teen cyberbullying?
• The contrast between online and offline bullying personas.
• How educators can equip students against online threats.
• The long-term effects of cyberbullying on mental health.

Anti-Bullying Initiatives:

• School programs that effectively reduce bullying.
• The power of storytelling and personal narratives in bullying prevention.
• Community-driven initiatives against bullying.
• The role of celebrities and influencers in anti-bullying campaigns.
• Collaborative strategies between parents and schools to counteract bullying.
• Importance of counseling services in schools for bullied students.
• Anti-bullying laws and their effectiveness.
• The positive impact of peer-support groups.
• Role models and mentors: Their influence on reducing bullying.
• International anti-bullying initiatives and their success stories.

Bullying Research and Case Studies:

• Detailed analysis of high-profile bullying incidents.
• Cultural influences on bullying behaviors.
• Ethnographic studies on bullying patterns.
• The connection between substance abuse and bullying.
• How do marginalized groups (LGBTQ+, ethnic minorities) experience bullying differently?
• The link between childhood trauma and becoming a bully.
• Comparative studies: Bullying in urban vs. rural schools.
• Evaluating the success of helplines for bullied individuals.
• The role of the internet in both escalating and combating bullying.
• Assessing the impact of anti-bullying mobile apps and digital tools.

Societal and Psychological Perspectives:

• Bullying from a sociological viewpoint: What does it reveal about society?
• The psychological profile of a typical bully.
• Do societal standards and ideals indirectly promote bullying?
• How bullying affects the family dynamics of the victim.
• The cycle of bullying: Can a victim become a bully?

Argumentative Essay Ideas on Bullying:

• Defining a bully: Are they criminals?
• Examining bullying trends across different age groups.
• Gender dynamics in bullying: Do boys bully more than girls?
• Assessing the correlation between bullying and academic performance.
• The link between bullying and suicidal thoughts.

For those who might feel overwhelmed by the wide array of topics, our dedicated team at writeondeadline.com is here to assist. Whether you need help in choosing a topic, writing, or proofreading your essay, our experts are just a click away.

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Tackling Bullying from the Inside Out: Shifting Paradigms in Bullying Research and Interventions

James o’higgins norman.

UNESCO Chair on Tackling Bullying in Schools and Cyberspace, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland

Introduction

The decision to have a university Chair dedicated to tackling bullying and cyberbullying was achieved through a partnership between the Government of Ireland, Dublin City University and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Research by UNESCO shows that one-third of children globally experience bullying in schools (UNESCO 2019 ), so one of the reasons the Chair was established was to ensure that all of the important work being done around the globe to tackle bullying and cyberbullying is amalgamated in one place to create a critical mass of researchers so that we can work internationally to address these problems. In the past, bullying was a very local issue, but today it is understood as an issue that crosses boundaries between nations, time and space and that occurs online as well as offline.

UNESCO awards the status of a Chair to select universities around the world when they assess the university to have reached a high enough standard in research and teaching in a specific area that relates to the goals of the UN. In our case at DCU, it is sustainable development goal number four to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ ( United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 ). DCU’s Annual Impact Review 2018 /2019 outlines how the university is providing quality education for all through a range of research and teaching initiatives including the work at the National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre (DCU Impact Review 2018 ).

The aim of a UNESCO Chair is to promote international inter-university cooperation and networking, to enhance institutional capacities through knowledge sharing and collaborative work, in key priority areas related to UNESCO’s fields of competence, and to serve as think-tanks and bridge-builders between academia, civil society, local communities, research and policy-making to inform policy decisions, establishing new teaching initiatives, generating innovation through research and contributing to the enrichment of existing university programmes while promoting cultural diversity.

The specific work of DCU’s UNESCO Chair will be to lead a major systematic review of the international evidence in relation to the effects of bullying on how migrant children experience equality and wellbeing in schools, to explore the possibility for whole-school anti-bullying interventions and to support local-level delivery through partner institutions in different countries. The aim is also to consolidate materials and resources for delivery in terms of high-quality training courses. These aims will be achieved through a number of funded projects currently being delivered by the UNESCO Chair which is located at the National Anti-Bullying Research and Resource Centre in DCU. Chief among these projects is TRIBES , a project focused on migrant experiences of school bullying across the European continent. The project is funded by COST and involves 120 partners in over 40 countries, all of whom are working together to understand the increased vulnerability experienced by migrants and to prevent and intervene where bullying is concerned.

In this lecture, I will revisit our understanding of childhood and how our assumptions have influenced our approach to undertaking research and initiatives to tackle bullying in schools and cyberspace. I will explore how the dominant discourse in the field of bullying studies has for almost 50 years been based on traditional assumptions about childhood and has also perpetuated a particular type of research that tends to ignore the realities of childhood as experienced by children today. I will set out a newer view of childhood that has already established itself in other fields, and I will explain how we can apply this new sociology of childhood to our work on tackling bullying in schools and cyberspace.

Defining and Contextualising Bullying

While certain individuals are more likely to bully ( psychological dimension ), the structures in which they exist ( sociological dimension ) can also contribute towards an environment ( educational dimension ) where bullying is more acceptable. Furthermore, social media and other online spaces ( technological dimension ) are now extending the nature and scope of bullying beyond the built environment into cyberspace. Bullying has been defined for some time now as:

occurring when an individual is repeatedly exposed to intentional negative actions by another person(s), creating an imbalance in power between the perpetrator and victim. (Olweus 2007 )

This definition comes from the work of Dan Olweus who is generally recognised as a seminal figure in anti-bullying studies. The definition is not perfect and I will contest it somewhat later on, but for now, we can say that there are four things that characterise bullying behaviour and these are:

• Intentionality
• Repetitiveness
• Power imbalance
• Negative effects

We could spend some time exploring what each of these means, for example, to what extent can a once off event be said to be bullying? Where is the repetition in that? Some would say that as it is just a one-off event, then it is aggression and conflictual but not bullying. On the other hand, it can be argued that the threat of its being repeated in itself means that effect of repetition is present, and so an apparent once off event can be considered to be bullying.

The first case of bullying ever to be named as such involved a young soldier in the British Army who was reported in The Times newspaper in 1862 to have taken his own life because he had been subject to ‘systematic bullying’ and had been the object of constant ‘vexations and attack’. Interestingly the tone of the newspaper article was non-condemnatory with regard to those who had carried out these vexations concluding that bullying was a part of human nature frequently found in a ‘school or a camp, or a barracks, or a ship’s crew’ as cited in Koo ( 2007 ).

Similarly, cyberbullying is defined as:

wilful and repeated harm inflicted through computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. (Hinduja and Patchin 2015 :11)

The key differences here between bullying and cyberbullying relate to the fact that victims often cannot tell who is bullying them online, and this increases the power imbalance between the bully and the victim, and as such, this anonymity can cause much trauma to the victim. Another key difference is that the potential audience is much larger when the bullying takes place online, and this increases the scope of humiliation for the victim. Finally, the fact that the internet is everywhere in our lives is key, it is virtually impossible in many countries to avoid the internet. As such cyberbullying can be extremely pervasive —in other words, there is no getting away from it. The extensive lockdown as a result of COVID-19 means that young people have more time and opportunity to engage in cyberbullying.

So how big of a problem is bullying for our young people. Research from UNESCO in 2018 that relied on individual country reports found that one-third of children and young people are victimised in school. Clearly, if we consider the mental health effects and diseases that can result from being bullied, then bullying can be understood in some ways as a problem of pandemic proportions. If one-third of children globally were starving or contracted a disease, we would immediately close our airports and send in the army to tackle the problem—but yet we often accept that bullying is a fact of life and there is little that can be done about it. The number of victims, however, is not consistent across all countries. UNESCO’s report looked at the individual countries where data is available to see what the more local situations are like.

(UNESCO 2019 )

We see that the Middle Eastern countries have a very high prevalence rate of bullying, followed by the US and then Europe and Caribbean countries. It is interesting to drill down into some of those figures and look at Ireland as an example from Europe. In our own meta-analysis of all bullying and cyberbullying studies in Ireland, we found that 26% of primary school children and 12% of post-primary school children had been bullied offline, with 14% of primary and 10% of post-primary being bullied online (Foody et al. 2017 ).

Furthermore, in a more recent study, we found that 57% of 15–18-year-olds were asked to share a sexual image, 24% shared a sexual image and 13% had a sexual image shared without their consent (O’Higgins Norman et al. 2019 ). Reaction to the increased participation in sexting, that is, sending sexual content online, among young people naturally raises concern about young people and their safety online and how best to support them. Colleagues in the USA at the Cyberbullying Research Centre are now beginning to suggest that we should educate young people how to sext safely (Patchin and Hinduja 2020 ). This view is based on data that shows that a large number of students in our schools are sending sexts and so it is argued that it would be be better and more responsible to teach them how to do it safely, and in doing so, minimise the risks to their safety and privacy. This is somewhat controversial. In Ireland many schools take a traditionalist approach to sexual matters where children are concerned and sex education in schools has been found to be poor, focused narrowly on biology and avoiding sensitive topics (Keating et al. 2018 ).

If we return to the Behind the Numbers  ( 2019 ) report from UNESCO, we find that similar to the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa unclear have very high reported prevalence rates of bullying, while South America and Central America report the lowest rates. As a sociologist, I have to ask what are the societal and cultural factors that lead to such high prevalence rates in some countries and lower rates in other countries. If we look to the work of Emile Durkheim on suicide and society, we can see that he was able to link suicide rates in different countries to societal norms (Pickering et al. 2000 ), and there is a similar task to be undertaken for those interested in why prevalence rates vary from one country to another.

If we turn our attention to Asia, we find that the rate of bullying reported there is higher than in Europe but not as high as in the Middle East and African countries. Looking specifically at Japan and relying on data from the Government, we find that the number of cases that were reported in 2018 increased by 28%, with 478 of these cases being investigated and found to be serious. Again this marks an increase from previous years. Of these 55 cases were deemed to be life threatening (Government of Japan 2018 ). In order to understand the situation with school bullying in Japan, I turn to the work of Japanese colleagues who help us to get behind the numbers for Japan (MEXT 2018 ).

In Japan conformity is traditionally valued over individual identity, and this can cause problems for people who do not easily fit in or who identify with a minority outlook. An old Japanese saying, the nail that sticks up gets hammered down , is suggested as one way of explaining, at least partially, how children who seem to be different might be treated in schools in Japan (Naito and Gielen 2005 ) Of course, this is not a problem unique to Japan. There are aspects of this in homogeneous Western societies and certainly in Ireland where until recently we had a very homogeneous society. The Western philosopher René Girard advances the notion of ‘scapegoats’ and how people who are perceived to be different to the norm can be pushed out or excluded from society (Girard 1989 ). Another societal and cultural explanation for why students in schools in Japan may not report bullying to parents or teachers is that culturally it is not acceptable to burden others with one’s own problems. Finally, it is reported that bullying in Japan can be more extreme physically and as such cause school boys and girls to consider suicide as a means of escape from physical pain (Naito and Gielen 2005 ).

Clearly, the cost of bullying to the individual in terms of mental health and life opportunities can be significant, resulting in low self-esteem, depression, social isolation and even suicidal ideation. Furthermore, the cost can be economic too. Recent research in Sweden found that, if it is not tackled, the cost to the State of 1 year of bullying in schools can be up to two billion euro over the following 30 years (Nilsson Lundmark et al. 2016 ).

The current geopolitical context is more challenging than ever before to promote inclusion and address discrimination as a form of bullying in schools and cyberspace. In 2017, bullying rates among middle school students in the USA were 18% higher in localities where voters had favoured Donald Trump than in those that had supported Hillary Clinton (Huang and Cornell 2019 ). Similarly, student reports of peers being teased or put down because of their race or ethnicity were 9% higher in localities favouring the Republican candidate. Research by UNESCO found that appearance and race were the top reasons for bullying in school (2019). Children and young people are rarely bullied because they are perceived to be the same as everyone else. They are often bullied because they stand out in their environment for being different from their peers and the normative life that dominates in a society. In fact, there is now a body of research that shows that racism harms children’s health even from before they are born (Trent et al. 2019 ). This points to the need for schools to promote inclusion and diversity. Research shows that where young people are provided with an opportunity to reflect on difference as a positive aspect of life, levels of bullying and other forms of discrimination decrease (O'Higgins Norman 2008 ).

Bullying Research

Over the last 50 years, there have been many major studies into school bullying. These have been mostly quantitative in nature with little attention paid to the experience or understanding of bullying and cyberbullying by children and young people (Smith and Berkkun 2020 ). If we look at the first studies of note by Dan Olweus in Norway in the 1970s, these resulted in his now famous Olweus Bullying Questionnaire (Olweus 2007 ). These early studies by Olweus were so ground-breaking and significant that most of the international studies that followed just repeated the same type of empirical data collection and analysis. While this was useful, the nature of bullying was not addressed in a deep enough way. Certainly, the recent data from UNESCO shows that school bullying is still a major global problem globally affecting children in schools in most countries (2019).

In order to move our efforts to tackle bullying in school and cyberspace forward we need to return to three basic questions and try to answer them.

What assumptions have we been making about childhood?

How best to undertake research on childhood?

What do we do about it now?

In terms of the assumptions we have been making about children in our research, we can trace these assumptions in the West back to the seventeenth century and the very influential writings of John Locke (1632–1704). Locke argued that all knowledge comes from experience and perception of the world around us. According to him, humans are born as a tabula rasa , a blank slate, and as such, they have no built in content or internal processes, just an open space waiting for the world to fill it in. As such he emphasises nurture over nature and saw children as lacking any ability to make sense of the world around them (Winkler  1996 ). These ideas were taken up by others such as Jean-Jacque Rousseau (1721–1778) who argued that children were born innocent and pure but with the capacity to be formed by experience (Rousseau 1991 ). But even before this, from a theological perspective, John Calvin (1509–1564) understood children to be born with the ‘seed of sin’ in them and therefor needing to be guided and stewarded away from evil towards good (Reeves 2018 ). All of this led to a situation where children were understood to be incomplete and uninteresting. Children should be seen and not heard is an often quoted Victorian phrase, and, in many ways, it sums up the reasons why social scientists have often neglected to enquire from children themselves as to what they know, understand and experience. Returning to Japan, we find that the influence of Shintoism resulted in similar assumptions about childhood. Traditional beliefs about childhood in Japan assumed that a child was a gift from the gods, and as such the child was understood in society to be born pure in nature. In fact, a child was traditionally believed to exist in the realm of the gods until the age of 7 years (Nigosian 1994 ). This view is not unlike Western Christian beliefs where it was also believed that the age of reason was 7 years and that this age marked was the point when a child would know right from wrong (Shapiro and Perry 1976 ). The implications of these traditional beliefs for society and child rearing were significant. It was believed that adults needed to protect children from evil influences so that the children could develop their own innate good nature. In this context, mothers, mainly, were responsible for raising their children to become respectable adults. They were also responsible for raising the first boy to excel as the successor in patriarchal family systems.

Because of these assumptions about childhood both in the West and in the East, researchers have tended to focus on questions regarding the socialisation of children, i.e. to what extent have children acquired the requisite knowledge and skills to become competent members of society. The socialisation perspective defines children as ‘incomplete’ or ‘in process’ rather than as full members of society. We have only had an interest in measuring and observing children from the outside in terms of their future capacity as adults. Until recently, generally speaking, children’s voices have not been recognised as important either in research or in education and wider society. Children, as is said in German, lacked Mündigkeit which means maturity or, more literally, the capacity of speaking for themselves. It is the case that others tend to speak for them, and these tend to be mothers and/or female teachers who will often carry and transfer an unconscious bias developed in their socialisation into normative cultures. In research on school children, teachers (mostly female) assess children’s personalities, abilities and promise. These unconscious biases have been found to influence how teachers relate to and represent the children in their classrooms, particularly in terms of gender and social class (Renehan 2006 ; Skelton et al. 2009 ; Schmude and Jackisch 2019 ), reinforcing normative lifestyles with little attention to the voice of children.

I mentioned earlier the seminal works conducted by Dan Olweus and how his early work has influenced so much of the research on bullying that has followed over the past 40 years. It could be said that a singular model of research has been applied to most subsequent studies on bullying. Use of Olweus’ definition and related self-report questionnaire on bullying has been extensive in international research. This approach, however, has been critiqued on the basis that it does not account for nuances in different cultural meanings and terminology associated with the concept of bullying. For example, Smith et al. ( 2002 ) point to the fact that in Japan, the term ‘ ijime ’ is used as a bullying equivalent, but the term implies less of a focus on physical violence and greater emphasis on social manipulation. So given just these different cultural meanings and terminology, it is difficult to apply a single research instrument in every context with every child as if they were all the same. Furthermore, the criticism by Lee ( 2004 ) of the approach recommended by Olweus ( 1993 ) argues that such an approach could possibly be regarded as value-laden and reflects the power of the researcher to define bullying, and this leads to the exclusion of related behaviours. Olweus’ Bullying Questionnaire and other frequently used research instruments such as the Moods and Feelings Questionnaire often carry gendered assumptions about what is considered good behaviour for males and females. This can set up boys and girls to be considered only in terms of narrow binary conceptions of gender, ignoring sexuality and other individual and social traits. Essentially in this type of research, children are subjects rather than collaborators in that research is done on them rather than with them. This has implications for those who are being asked to create policies and procedures that include definitions of bullying. Maybe some of our policies and programmes in the West have not been as successful as they could have been because they are based on data from studies where the local culture and experience of the child were not considered as much as it should have been. This was a lesson learned in Japan where initial efforts to tackle bullying were purely adaptations of programmes from the West. In recent years, however, greater attention has been given to the specific experience and culture of school children in Japan resulting in some new successful child-centred initiatives (Toda 2019 ). The core challenge here for policymakers and schools is how to develop a workable definition that sufficiently covers various types of aggressive behaviour and shapes effective school-based programmes to tackle bullying and cyberbullying.

Recent Influence of the New Sociology of Childhood

A new sociology of childhood approach rejects a transmission model of development and education (Durkheim 1975 ) where children are understood to merely internalise the values and normative behaviours of society. More recent research and theories show that children are not just passive recipients but active agents in their socialisation process. It is now argued that children are both constructed by structure and also active agents, acting in and upon structure. They do not simply internalise the world, but strive to make sense of the world and to participate in it. By active participation in social interactions, children and teenagers incorporate and co-construct many social constructions of various aspects of their social life. It is argued then that we need to investigate how they make sense of social situations in order better to understand their actions and interaction patterns.

According to the new sociology of childhood, children are social actors in their world. We talk about the idea of interpretive reproduction as the means by which children make sense of their world and their experiences. The term interpretive captures innovative and creative aspect of children’s participation in society. Children produce and participate in their own unique peer cultures by creatively appropriating information from the adult world to address their own peer concerns. The term reproductive captures the idea that children do not simply internalise society and culture but also actively contribute to cultural production and change. For example, children are known to play with gender rather than simply accepting adult definitions, they establish within their own peer group cultures and systems that make sense to them (Corsaro 2012 ).

Both the socialisation and the developmental psychology perspectives have tended to prompt scholars to write about children as if all children were the same regardless of social location or context. The ‘new’ sociological perspective stresses ‘a plurality of childhoods’ not only within the same society but also across the settings in which children conduct their everyday lives. Using a social constructionist view, scholars focus on how particular cultural representations of children affect children’s relationships, rights and responsibilities. Scholars in the ‘new’ sociology advocate recognising that children in different social locations have different childhoods and that their experience of childhood changes from one context to another. Children are not all the same in every situation and context.

Scholars argue that no matter how benign parents, teachers and other adults may be, relationships between adults and children are characterised by differential power resources. Hence, based on the situation, dependence in relationships with adults may capture the experience of children better than socialisation, which characterises children as deficient relative to adults rather than disadvantaged or oppressed by them. The crucial distinction that makes children children is that they are not adults ; as individuals and as a social group, they lack adulthood. This lack can be defined variously as deficiency, disadvantage and/or oppression. The components may vary according to individual and societal standpoint, but intergenerational relationships between children and adults are established in such a way that children are always inferior to adults and find it harder to have their rights vindicated (Mayall 1994 ; Quennerstedt and Quennerstedt 2014 ).

This view of childhood as oppression is countered in the United Nations  Convention on the Rights of the Child ( 1989 ). The four foundational principals of the Convention are key to understanding how to undertake research with children and to plan initiatives to improve their lives such as in an anti-bullying programmes. The four general principles (United Nations 1989 ) are:

• That all the rights guaranteed by the Convention must be available to all children without discrimination of any kind (Article 2)
• That the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children (Article 3)
• That every child has the right to life, survival and development (Article 6)
• That the child’s views must be considered and taken into account in all matters affecting him or her (Article 12)

So, if we start our anti-bullying research and initiatives to tackle bullying with a new sociology of childhood perspective as represented in the UN Convention, we find ourselves starting our work with children with their rights. We now begin to plan our research and anti-bullying programmes differently.

• Involving children and young people as respondents, co-researchers and commissioner of research.
• Avoid privileging adults and instead interact directly with children.
• Think carefully about suitable ways to gather data from children.
• Use qualitative, participatory and ethnographic approaches as they seem most appropriate.
• Making children visible through the way statistics are collected and reported.

In some studies, we have asked the children to explain to us why bullying happens, and the answers they give us are very interesting and important from the point of view of planning anti-bullying programmes.

They tell us that being perceived by their peers as different, odd or deviant in some way can lead to being bullied at school. This ties in with the image mentioned previously of the ‘nail that stands out’ and the need for conformity. According to stigma and labelling theories, when a social group labels a person as deviant, then he or she is understood to have violated important taken for granted social norms of the peer culture. Once the label is applied, the person can be justifiably victimised. Stigma theory (Goffman 1963 ) and labelling theory (Phelan and Link 1999 ) explain that it is almost impossible for individuals to improve their situation once they have had a stigmatised label assigned to them (Thornberg 2015 ). This highlights the importance of diversity education programmes to prevent these exclusionary situations occurring in schools (O'Higgins Norman 2008 ; Thornberg 2010 ).

Children also tell us that those who bully often do it because they want to increase their social positioning (Thornberg 2019 ), that is, to be more powerful than other children in the classroom and that bullying others serves to enable this. Schools are hierarchical in nature with children at the bottom of the pyramid. They often want to appear cool and are driven to obtain a higher social position in the school than other students, seeking to enhance, maintain or show off their power, status and popularity. Being seen to be cool and to have lots of friends can be a way to improve social position in school.

Finally, in our studies, we find children also explain that bullies have psychosocial problems and as such their acting out represents some deeper emotional problem. It is interesting that children can show such understanding and appreciation for mental health and emotional problems. This points us to the need to develop classroom programmes that allow children to grow and express their emotions while at the same time providing counselling and support for children at a school and community level (Thornberg 2019 ).

In terms of interventions to tackle bullying and cyberbullying, international research has reported that if a school is to tackle these issues with any success, a whole school and community approach is often recommended (Smith 2014 ). This is described in different ways by different authors (Smith 2014 ), but the characteristics that are constant can be described as follows (O’Higgins Norman & Sullivan 2017 ):

What has been missing from many of these whole school approaches is a recognition of the importance of the voice and agency of the child. Anti-bullying initiatives will be more successful if they are commissioned, designed and evaluated with children. I realise that this is challenging for us as researchers and educators who have honed our skills and expertise over many years. However, if our work is to really make a difference, we need to extend the scope of our expertise to include partnership with children and young people who are ultimately the experts in what is like to be a child today (Kellett 2010 ). While other fields of study have made considerable progress in adopting this approach (Lundy et al. 2019 , I think many of us who work in the field of bullying studies have come to it later than in other fields. This is due to a number of factors not least an over reliance on quantitative research methods and the related dominance of particular branches of sociology and psychology in driving research and initiatives in our field.

Furthermore, now that we are coming around to the realisation that research and responses to bullying and cyberbullying must include at least an acknowledgment of the importance of the voice and agency of children, O’Brien and Dadswell ( 2020 ) warn that it is not enough to merely acknowledge that children and young people have a right to be heard and to actively participate in research and initiatives to tackle bullying and cyberbullying, but they must be provided with opportunities that are not ‘one off’ or ‘add on’ activities; instead they should be embedded within the system to accommodate their participation as partners in research and responses to tackle bullying and cyberbullying. This is a point taken up by Lundy ( 2018 ) although she acknowledges that a tokenistic approach to collective child participation might be a useful and necessary step on a journey towards more meaningful engagement with children. Either way some researchers in the field of bullying are now beginning to lead research and to develop initiatives that attempt to include a greater acknowledgement of the voice and agency of the child (Thornberg 2010 ; O’Brien 2019 ; White et al. 2019 ).

Not only will this approach be more effective, but it will also respect the rights of the child and go towards fulfilling our obligations and objectives under Article 12(1) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). However, as I have already suggested, such an approach to research and the development of related initiatives to tackle bullying in schools and online brings with it many challenges to the established order within the field of bullying studies. One such challenge is in the area of research ethics. Traditionally, adults have decided what is best for children, including what protects them from harm. Ethical standards are of course necessary to ensure that children and young people are not taken advantage of during the research process and that the researcher does not put his/her needs ahead of the needs of the child. However, when it comes to working ethically with children as respondents, co-researchers and commissioner of research, we must be careful not to allow traditional views of childhood to get in the way of allowing children their right to express themselves and to be heard by society on how they are affected by bullying and cyberbullying. Children and young people have a right to be heard and to be involved in anything that affects them; as such our assumptions and ethical frameworks must change to ensure that these rights are fulfilled. I suggest that university ethics committees need to involve children and young people in producing standards for ethical research and in evaluating research proposals that involve children and young people as respondents, co-researchers and/or commissioner of research.

In this lecture, I have explored traditional assumptions about childhood and the impact of these assumptions on research about childhood and specifically about bullying. I have argued that over almost 50 years, these assumptions led to a dominant discourse in bullying research and related initiatives that was characterised by a particular view of childhood. This view of childhood tended to focus on questions about the extent to which children had acquired the requisite knowledge and skills to become competent adult members of society. This socialisation perspective assumes that children are ‘incomplete’ adults rather than full members of society in their own right. Consequently, researchers have only had an interest in measuring and observing children in terms of their future capacity as adults. Until relatively recently, generally speaking, children’s voices have not been recognised as important either in research or in education and wider society. However, when we consider the perspective of children’s rights and apply a new sociology of childhood approach, our work with children moves beyond traditional assumptions and begins to be underpinned by a view of childhood that recognises that children have agency, are diverse and develop meaningful relationships, ultimately creating their own view of the world around them. Consequently, this changes our approach to research and the development of responses to bullying in school and online. It is clear that our work with children has to fundamentally change to recognise the experience of childhood as something that is valid and contains within it a set of rights that are fundamental to their general wellbeing and specifically to the future success of tackling bullying in schools and cyberspace.

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 14 December 2021

Bullying at school and mental health problems among adolescents: a repeated cross-sectional study

• Håkan Källmén 1 &
• Mats Hallgren   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0599-2403 2  

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health volume  15 , Article number:  74 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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To examine recent trends in bullying and mental health problems among adolescents and the association between them.

A questionnaire measuring mental health problems, bullying at school, socio-economic status, and the school environment was distributed to all secondary school students aged 15 (school-year 9) and 18 (school-year 11) in Stockholm during 2014, 2018, and 2020 (n = 32,722). Associations between bullying and mental health problems were assessed using logistic regression analyses adjusting for relevant demographic, socio-economic, and school-related factors.

The prevalence of bullying remained stable and was highest among girls in year 9; range = 4.9% to 16.9%. Mental health problems increased; range = + 1.2% (year 9 boys) to + 4.6% (year 11 girls) and were consistently higher among girls (17.2% in year 11, 2020). In adjusted models, having been bullied was detrimentally associated with mental health (OR = 2.57 [2.24–2.96]). Reports of mental health problems were four times higher among boys who had been bullied compared to those not bullied. The corresponding figure for girls was 2.4 times higher.

Conclusions

Exposure to bullying at school was associated with higher odds of mental health problems. Boys appear to be more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of bullying than girls.

Introduction

Bullying involves repeated hurtful actions between peers where an imbalance of power exists [ 1 ]. Arseneault et al. [ 2 ] conducted a review of the mental health consequences of bullying for children and adolescents and found that bullying is associated with severe symptoms of mental health problems, including self-harm and suicidality. Bullying was shown to have detrimental effects that persist into late adolescence and contribute independently to mental health problems. Updated reviews have presented evidence indicating that bullying is causative of mental illness in many adolescents [ 3 , 4 ].

There are indications that mental health problems are increasing among adolescents in some Nordic countries. Hagquist et al. [ 5 ] examined trends in mental health among Scandinavian adolescents (n = 116, 531) aged 11–15 years between 1993 and 2014. Mental health problems were operationalized as difficulty concentrating, sleep disorders, headache, stomach pain, feeling tense, sad and/or dizzy. The study revealed increasing rates of adolescent mental health problems in all four counties (Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark), with Sweden experiencing the sharpest increase among older adolescents, particularly girls. Worsening adolescent mental health has also been reported in the United Kingdom. A study of 28,100 school-aged adolescents in England found that two out of five young people scored above thresholds for emotional problems, conduct problems or hyperactivity [ 6 ]. Female gender, deprivation, high needs status (educational/social), ethnic background, and older age were all associated with higher odds of experiencing mental health difficulties.

Bullying is shown to increase the risk of poor mental health and may partly explain these detrimental changes. Le et al. [ 7 ] reported an inverse association between bullying and mental health among 11–16-year-olds in Vietnam. They also found that poor mental health can make some children and adolescents more vulnerable to bullying at school. Bayer et al. [ 8 ] examined links between bullying at school and mental health among 8–9-year-old children in Australia. Those who experienced bullying more than once a week had poorer mental health than children who experienced bullying less frequently. Friendships moderated this association, such that children with more friends experienced fewer mental health problems (protective effect). Hysing et al. [ 9 ] investigated the association between experiences of bullying (as a victim or perpetrator) and mental health, sleep disorders, and school performance among 16–19 year olds from Norway (n = 10,200). Participants were categorized as victims, bullies, or bully-victims (that is, victims who also bullied others). All three categories were associated with worse mental health, school performance, and sleeping difficulties. Those who had been bullied also reported more emotional problems, while those who bullied others reported more conduct disorders [ 9 ].

As most adolescents spend a considerable amount of time at school, the school environment has been a major focus of mental health research [ 10 , 11 ]. In a recent review, Saminathen et al. [ 12 ] concluded that school is a potential protective factor against mental health problems, as it provides a socially supportive context and prepares students for higher education and employment. However, it may also be the primary setting for protracted bullying and stress [ 13 ]. Another factor associated with adolescent mental health is parental socio-economic status (SES) [ 14 ]. A systematic review indicated that lower parental SES is associated with poorer adolescent mental health [ 15 ]. However, no previous studies have examined whether SES modifies or attenuates the association between bullying and mental health. Similarly, it remains unclear whether school related factors, such as school grades and the school environment, influence the relationship between bullying and mental health. This information could help to identify those adolescents most at risk of harm from bullying.

To address these issues, we investigated the prevalence of bullying at school and mental health problems among Swedish adolescents aged 15–18 years between 2014 and 2020 using a population-based school survey. We also examined associations between bullying at school and mental health problems adjusting for relevant demographic, socioeconomic, and school-related factors. We hypothesized that: (1) bullying and adolescent mental health problems have increased over time; (2) There is an association between bullying victimization and mental health, so that mental health problems are more prevalent among those who have been victims of bullying; and (3) that school-related factors would attenuate the association between bullying and mental health.

Participants

The Stockholm school survey is completed every other year by students in lower secondary school (year 9—compulsory) and upper secondary school (year 11). The survey is mandatory for public schools, but voluntary for private schools. The purpose of the survey is to help inform decision making by local authorities that will ultimately improve students’ wellbeing. The questions relate to life circumstances, including SES, schoolwork, bullying, drug use, health, and crime. Non-completers are those who were absent from school when the survey was completed (< 5%). Response rates vary from year to year but are typically around 75%. For the current study data were available for 2014, 2018 and 2020. In 2014; 5235 boys and 5761 girls responded, in 2018; 5017 boys and 5211 girls responded, and in 2020; 5633 boys and 5865 girls responded (total n = 32,722). Data for the exposure variable, bullied at school, were missing for 4159 students, leaving 28,563 participants in the crude model. The fully adjusted model (described below) included 15,985 participants. The mean age in grade 9 was 15.3 years (SD = 0.51) and in grade 11, 17.3 years (SD = 0.61). As the data are completely anonymous, the study was exempt from ethical approval according to an earlier decision from the Ethical Review Board in Stockholm (2010-241 31-5). Details of the survey are available via a website [ 16 ], and are described in a previous paper [ 17 ].

Students completed the questionnaire during a school lesson, placed it in a sealed envelope and handed it to their teacher. Student were permitted the entire lesson (about 40 min) to complete the questionnaire and were informed that participation was voluntary (and that they were free to cancel their participation at any time without consequences). Students were also informed that the Origo Group was responsible for collection of the data on behalf of the City of Stockholm.

Study outcome

Mental health problems were assessed by using a modified version of the Psychosomatic Problem Scale [ 18 ] shown to be appropriate for children and adolescents and invariant across gender and years. The scale was later modified [ 19 ]. In the modified version, items about difficulty concentrating and feeling giddy were deleted and an item about ‘life being great to live’ was added. Seven different symptoms or problems, such as headaches, depression, feeling fear, stomach problems, difficulty sleeping, believing it’s great to live (coded negatively as seldom or rarely) and poor appetite were used. Students who responded (on a 5-point scale) that any of these problems typically occurs ‘at least once a week’ were considered as having indicators of a mental health problem. Cronbach alpha was 0.69 across the whole sample. Adding these problem areas, a total index was created from 0 to 7 mental health symptoms. Those who scored between 0 and 4 points on the total symptoms index were considered to have a low indication of mental health problems (coded as 0); those who scored between 5 and 7 symptoms were considered as likely having mental health problems (coded as 1).

Primary exposure

Experiences of bullying were measured by the following two questions: Have you felt bullied or harassed during the past school year? Have you been involved in bullying or harassing other students during this school year? Alternatives for the first question were: yes or no with several options describing how the bullying had taken place (if yes). Alternatives indicating emotional bullying were feelings of being mocked, ridiculed, socially excluded, or teased. Alternatives indicating physical bullying were being beaten, kicked, forced to do something against their will, robbed, or locked away somewhere. The response alternatives for the second question gave an estimation of how often the respondent had participated in bullying others (from once to several times a week). Combining the answers to these two questions, five different categories of bullying were identified: (1) never been bullied and never bully others; (2) victims of emotional (verbal) bullying who have never bullied others; (3) victims of physical bullying who have never bullied others; (4) victims of bullying who have also bullied others; and (5) perpetrators of bullying, but not victims. As the number of positive cases in the last three categories was low (range = 3–15 cases) bully categories 2–4 were combined into one primary exposure variable: ‘bullied at school’.

Assessment year was operationalized as the year when data was collected: 2014, 2018, and 2020. Age was operationalized as school grade 9 (15–16 years) or 11 (17–18 years). Gender was self-reported (boy or girl). The school situation To assess experiences of the school situation, students responded to 18 statements about well-being in school, participation in important school matters, perceptions of their teachers, and teaching quality. Responses were given on a four-point Likert scale ranging from ‘do not agree at all’ to ‘fully agree’. To reduce the 18-items down to their essential factors, we performed a principal axis factor analysis. Results showed that the 18 statements formed five factors which, according to the Kaiser criterion (eigen values > 1) explained 56% of the covariance in the student’s experience of the school situation. The five factors identified were: (1) Participation in school; (2) Interesting and meaningful work; (3) Feeling well at school; (4) Structured school lessons; and (5) Praise for achievements. For each factor, an index was created that was dichotomised (poor versus good circumstance) using the median-split and dummy coded with ‘good circumstance’ as reference. A description of the items included in each factor is available as Additional file 1 . Socio-economic status (SES) was assessed with three questions about the education level of the student’s mother and father (dichotomized as university degree versus not), and the amount of spending money the student typically received for entertainment each month (> SEK 1000 [approximately $120] versus less). Higher parental education and more spending money were used as reference categories. School grades in Swedish, English, and mathematics were measured separately on a 7-point scale and dichotomized as high (grades A, B, and C) versus low (grades D, E, and F). High school grades were used as the reference category.

Statistical analyses

The prevalence of mental health problems and bullying at school are presented using descriptive statistics, stratified by survey year (2014, 2018, 2020), gender, and school year (9 versus 11). As noted, we reduced the 18-item questionnaire assessing school function down to five essential factors by conducting a principal axis factor analysis (see Additional file 1 ). We then calculated the association between bullying at school (defined above) and mental health problems using multivariable logistic regression. Results are presented as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (Cis). To assess the contribution of SES and school-related factors to this association, three models are presented: Crude, Model 1 adjusted for demographic factors: age, gender, and assessment year; Model 2 adjusted for Model 1 plus SES (parental education and student spending money), and Model 3 adjusted for Model 2 plus school-related factors (school grades and the five factors identified in the principal factor analysis). These covariates were entered into the regression models in three blocks, where the final model represents the fully adjusted analyses. In all models, the category ‘not bullied at school’ was used as the reference. Pseudo R-square was calculated to estimate what proportion of the variance in mental health problems was explained by each model. Unlike the R-square statistic derived from linear regression, the Pseudo R-square statistic derived from logistic regression gives an indicator of the explained variance, as opposed to an exact estimate, and is considered informative in identifying the relative contribution of each model to the outcome [ 20 ]. All analyses were performed using SPSS v. 26.0.

Prevalence of bullying at school and mental health problems

Estimates of the prevalence of bullying at school and mental health problems across the 12 strata of data (3 years × 2 school grades × 2 genders) are shown in Table 1 . The prevalence of bullying at school increased minimally (< 1%) between 2014 and 2020, except among girls in grade 11 (2.5% increase). Mental health problems increased between 2014 and 2020 (range = 1.2% [boys in year 11] to 4.6% [girls in year 11]); were three to four times more prevalent among girls (range = 11.6% to 17.2%) compared to boys (range = 2.6% to 4.9%); and were more prevalent among older adolescents compared to younger adolescents (range = 1% to 3.1% higher). Pooling all data, reports of mental health problems were four times more prevalent among boys who had been victims of bullying compared to those who reported no experiences with bullying. The corresponding figure for girls was two and a half times as prevalent.

Associations between bullying at school and mental health problems

Table 2 shows the association between bullying at school and mental health problems after adjustment for relevant covariates. Demographic factors, including female gender (OR = 3.87; CI 3.48–4.29), older age (OR = 1.38, CI 1.26–1.50), and more recent assessment year (OR = 1.18, CI 1.13–1.25) were associated with higher odds of mental health problems. In Model 2, none of the included SES variables (parental education and student spending money) were associated with mental health problems. In Model 3 (fully adjusted), the following school-related factors were associated with higher odds of mental health problems: lower grades in Swedish (OR = 1.42, CI 1.22–1.67); uninteresting or meaningless schoolwork (OR = 2.44, CI 2.13–2.78); feeling unwell at school (OR = 1.64, CI 1.34–1.85); unstructured school lessons (OR = 1.31, CI = 1.16–1.47); and no praise for achievements (OR = 1.19, CI 1.06–1.34). After adjustment for all covariates, being bullied at school remained associated with higher odds of mental health problems (OR = 2.57; CI 2.24–2.96). Demographic and school-related factors explained 12% and 6% of the variance in mental health problems, respectively (Pseudo R-Square). The inclusion of socioeconomic factors did not alter the variance explained.

Our findings indicate that mental health problems increased among Swedish adolescents between 2014 and 2020, while the prevalence of bullying at school remained stable (< 1% increase), except among girls in year 11, where the prevalence increased by 2.5%. As previously reported [ 5 , 6 ], mental health problems were more common among girls and older adolescents. These findings align with previous studies showing that adolescents who are bullied at school are more likely to experience mental health problems compared to those who are not bullied [ 3 , 4 , 9 ]. This detrimental relationship was observed after adjustment for school-related factors shown to be associated with adolescent mental health [ 10 ].

A novel finding was that boys who had been bullied at school reported a four-times higher prevalence of mental health problems compared to non-bullied boys. The corresponding figure for girls was 2.5 times higher for those who were bullied compared to non-bullied girls, which could indicate that boys are more vulnerable to the deleterious effects of bullying than girls. Alternatively, it may indicate that boys are (on average) bullied more frequently or more intensely than girls, leading to worse mental health. Social support could also play a role; adolescent girls often have stronger social networks than boys and could be more inclined to voice concerns about bullying to significant others, who in turn may offer supports which are protective [ 21 ]. Related studies partly confirm this speculative explanation. An Estonian study involving 2048 children and adolescents aged 10–16 years found that, compared to girls, boys who had been bullied were more likely to report severe distress, measured by poor mental health and feelings of hopelessness [ 22 ].

Other studies suggest that heritable traits, such as the tendency to internalize problems and having low self-esteem are associated with being a bully-victim [ 23 ]. Genetics are understood to explain a large proportion of bullying-related behaviors among adolescents. A study from the Netherlands involving 8215 primary school children found that genetics explained approximately 65% of the risk of being a bully-victim [ 24 ]. This proportion was similar for boys and girls. Higher than average body mass index (BMI) is another recognized risk factor [ 25 ]. A recent Australian trial involving 13 schools and 1087 students (mean age = 13 years) targeted adolescents with high-risk personality traits (hopelessness, anxiety sensitivity, impulsivity, sensation seeking) to reduce bullying at school; both as victims and perpetrators [ 26 ]. There was no significant intervention effect for bullying victimization or perpetration in the total sample. In a secondary analysis, compared to the control schools, intervention school students showed greater reductions in victimization, suicidal ideation, and emotional symptoms. These findings potentially support targeting high-risk personality traits in bullying prevention [ 26 ].

The relative stability of bullying at school between 2014 and 2020 suggests that other factors may better explain the increase in mental health problems seen here. Many factors could be contributing to these changes, including the increasingly competitive labour market, higher demands for education, and the rapid expansion of social media [ 19 , 27 , 28 ]. A recent Swedish study involving 29,199 students aged between 11 and 16 years found that the effects of school stress on psychosomatic symptoms have become stronger over time (1993–2017) and have increased more among girls than among boys [ 10 ]. Research is needed examining possible gender differences in perceived school stress and how these differences moderate associations between bullying and mental health.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths of the current study include the large participant sample from diverse schools; public and private, theoretical and practical orientations. The survey included items measuring diverse aspects of the school environment; factors previously linked to adolescent mental health but rarely included as covariates in studies of bullying and mental health. Some limitations are also acknowledged. These data are cross-sectional which means that the direction of the associations cannot be determined. Moreover, all the variables measured were self-reported. Previous studies indicate that students tend to under-report bullying and mental health problems [ 29 ]; thus, our results may underestimate the prevalence of these behaviors.

In conclusion, consistent with our stated hypotheses, we observed an increase in self-reported mental health problems among Swedish adolescents, and a detrimental association between bullying at school and mental health problems. Although bullying at school does not appear to be the primary explanation for these changes, bullying was detrimentally associated with mental health after adjustment for relevant demographic, socio-economic, and school-related factors, confirming our third hypothesis. The finding that boys are potentially more vulnerable than girls to the deleterious effects of bullying should be replicated in future studies, and the mechanisms investigated. Future studies should examine the longitudinal association between bullying and mental health, including which factors mediate/moderate this relationship. Epigenetic studies are also required to better understand the complex interaction between environmental and biological risk factors for adolescent mental health [ 24 ].

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Acknowledgements

Authors are grateful to the Department for Social Affairs, Stockholm, for permission to use data from the Stockholm School Survey.

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Håkan Källmén

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HK conceived the study and analyzed the data (with input from MH). HK and MH interpreted the data and jointly wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Principal factor analysis description.

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Källmén, H., Hallgren, M. Bullying at school and mental health problems among adolescents: a repeated cross-sectional study. Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health 15 , 74 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-021-00425-y

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• Bullying Children and School Personnel Challenges
• School Uniforms Should Stop Bullying With Anti Bullying
• Bullying Prevention and School Safety
• School Bullying and the Need for Policy Change
• Physical and Verbal Bullying at School
• Preventing School Bullying Through a Supervisory System
• School Students Bullying and Harassment
• Bullying and Emotional Abuse Among School Children
• School Bullying and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms: The Role of Parental Bonding
• Effects of Bullying and Victimization in Schools and the Victims
• Dealing With a Bullying Target and How We Should Behave Around Them
• Bullying and Problems of the Younger Generation
• Bullying Is Not Just Anger and Meanness
• Bullying and Lack of Contact With Peers
• How Can Parents Prevent Bullying at School?
• What Is the Nature and Consequences of School Bullying?
• Does Bullying Affect High School-Aged Students?
• What Is the School’s Involvement in Cyberbullying?
• Are School-Based Anti Bullying Programs Decreasing the Rate of Victimization?
• What Is the Relationship Between Bullying and Mass Shootings in Schools?
• What Is the Relationship Between School Violence and Psychological Bullying?
• How School Bullying Affects Bullies and Victims?
• What Is the Connection Between the LGBT Community and School Bullying?
• What Are the Causes and Effects of Bullying in School?
• Can High School Dress Codes Stop Bullying?
• How the Bystander Intervention and the Drowning Child Analogy Can Be Used in the School Bullying Cases?
• Does Maternal Spanking Lead To Bullying Behavior at School?
• Should There Be School Intervention Programs for Bullying Prevention?
• What Is the Relationship Between School Bullying and Robbery and How It Affects People’s Lives?
• What Are the Problems of Bullying and Victims in High School?
• How Has Bullying Affected the Entire Student Population or the School Climate?
• School Bullying: What Should Parents Do?
• What Is Known About Bullying Between Schoolchildren?
• What Is School Bullying From the Point of View of a Teacher?

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Qualitative Methods in School Bullying and Cyberbullying Research: An Introduction to the Special Issue

• Published: 12 August 2022
• Volume 4 , pages 175–179, ( 2022 )

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Introduction

School bullying research has a long history, stretching all the way back to a questionnaire study undertaken in the USA in the late 1800s (Burk, 1897 ). However, systematic school bullying research began in earnest in Scandinavia in the early 1970s with the work of Heinemann ( 1972 ) and Olweus ( 1978 ). Highlighting the extent to which research on bullying has grown exponentially since then, Smith et al. ( 2021 ) found that there were only 83 articles with the term “bully” in the title or abstract published in the Web of Science database prior to 1989. The numbers of articles found in the following decades were 458 (1990–1999), 1,996 (2000–2009), and 9,333 (2010–2019). Considering cyberbullying more specifically, Smith and Berkkun ( 2017 , cited in Smith et al., 2021 ) conducted a search of Web of Science with the terms “cyber* and bully*; cyber and victim*; electronic bullying; Internet bullying; and online harassment” until the year 2015 and found that while there were no articles published prior to 2000, 538 articles were published between 2000 and 2015, with the number of articles increasing every year (p. 49).

Numerous authors have pointed out that research into school bullying and cyberbullying has predominantly been conducted using quantitative methods, with much less use of qualitative or mixed methods (Hong & Espelage, 2012 ; Hutson, 2018 ; Maran & Begotti, 2021 ; Smith et al., 2021 ). In their recent analysis of articles published between 1976 and 2019 (in WoS, with the search terms “bully*; victim*; cyberbullying; electronic bullying; internet bullying; and online harassment”), Smith et al. ( 2021 , pp. 50–51) found that of the empirical articles selected, more than three-quarters (76.3%) were based on quantitative data, 15.4% were based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, and less than one-tenth (8.4%) were based on qualitative data alone. What is more, they found that the proportion of articles based on qualitative or mixed methods has been decreasing over the past 15 years (Smith et al., 2021 ). While the search criteria excluded certain types of qualitative studies (e.g., those published in books, doctoral theses, and non-English languages), this nonetheless highlights the extent to which qualitative research findings risk being overlooked in the vast sea of quantitative research.

School bullying and cyberbullying are complex phenomena, and a range of methodological approaches is thus needed to understand their complexity (Pellegrini & Bartini, 2000 ; Thornberg, 2011 ). Indeed, over-relying on quantitative methods limits understanding of the contexts and experiences of bullying (Hong & Espelage, 2012 ; Patton et al., 2017 ). Qualitative methods are particularly useful for better understanding the social contexts, processes, interactions, experiences, motivations, and perspectives of those involved (Hutson, 2018 ; Patton et al., 2017 ; Thornberg, 2011 ; Torrance, 2000 ).

Smith et al. ( 2021 ) suggest that the “continued emphasis on quantitative studies may be due to increasingly sophisticated methods such as structural equation modeling … network analysis … time trend analyses … latent profile analyses … and multi-polygenic score approaches” (p. 56). However, the authors make no mention of the range or sophistication of methods used in qualitative studies. Although there are still proportionately few qualitative studies of school bullying and cyberbullying in relation to quantitative studies, and this gap appears to be increasing, qualitative studies have utilized a range of qualitative data collection methods. These methods have included but are not limited to ethnographic fieldwork and participant observations (e.g., Eriksen & Lyng, 2018 ; Gumpel et al., 2014 ; Horton, 2019 ), digital ethnography (e.g., Rachoene & Oyedemi, 2015 ; Sylwander, 2019 ), meta-ethnography (e.g., Dennehy et al., 2020 ; Moretti & Herkovits, 2021 ), focus group interviews (e.g., Odenbring, 2022 ; Oliver & Candappa, 2007 ; Ybarra et al., 2019 ), semi-structured group and individual interviews (e.g., Forsberg & Thornberg, 2016 ; Lyng, 2018 ; Mishna et al., 2005 ; Varjas et al., 2013 ), vignettes (e.g., Jennifer & Cowie, 2012 ; Khanolainen & Semenova, 2020 ; Strindberg et al., 2020 ), memory work (e.g., Johnson et al., 2014 ; Malaby, 2009 ), literature studies (e.g., Lopez-Ropero, 2012 ; Wiseman et al., 2019 ), photo elicitation (e.g., Ganbaatar et al., 2021 ; Newman et al., 2006 ; Walton & Niblett, 2013 ), photostory method (e.g., Skrzypiec et al., 2015 ), and other visual works produced by children and young people (e.g., Bosacki et al., 2006 ; Gillies-Rezo & Bosacki, 2003 ).

This body of research has also included a variety of qualitative data analysis methods, such as grounded theory (e.g., Allen, 2015 ; Bjereld, 2018 ; Thornberg, 2018 ), thematic analysis (e.g., Cunningham et al., 2016 ; Forsberg & Horton, 2022 ), content analysis (e.g., Temko, 2019 ; Wiseman & Jones, 2018 ), conversation analysis (e.g., Evaldsson & Svahn, 2012 ; Tholander, 2019 ), narrative analysis (e.g., Haines-Saah et al., 2018 ), interpretative phenomenological analysis (e.g., Hutchinson, 2012 ; Tholander et al., 2020 ), various forms of discourse analysis (e.g., Ellwood & Davies, 2010 ; Hepburn, 1997 ; Ringrose & Renold, 2010 ), including discursive psychological analysis (e.g., Clarke et al., 2004 ), and critical discourse analysis (e.g., Barrett & Bound, 2015 ; Bethune & Gonick, 2017 ; Horton, 2021 ), as well as theoretically informed analyses from an array of research traditions (e.g., Davies, 2011 ; Jacobson, 2010 ; Søndergaard, 2012 ; Walton, 2005 ).

In light of the growing volume and variety of qualitative studies during the past two decades, we invited researchers to discuss and explore methodological issues related to their qualitative school bullying and cyberbullying research. The articles included in this special issue of the International Journal of Bullying Prevention discuss different qualitative methods, reflect on strengths and limitations — possibilities and challenges, and suggest implications for future qualitative and mixed-methods research.

Included Articles

Qualitative studies — focusing on social, relational, contextual, processual, structural, and/or societal factors and mechanisms — have formed the basis for several contributions during the last two decades that have sought to expand approaches to understanding and theorizing the causes of cyber/bullying. Some have also argued the need for expanding the commonly used definition of bullying, based on Olweus ( 1993 ) (e.g., Allen, 2015 ; Ellwood & Davies, 2010 Goldsmid & Howie, 2014 ; Ringrose & Rawlings,  2015 ; Søndergaard, 2012 ; Walton, 2011 ). In the first article of the special issue, Using qualitative methods to measure and understand key features of adolescent bullying: A call to action , Natalie Spadafora, Anthony Volk, and Andrew Dane instead discuss the usefulness of qualitative methods for improving measures and bettering our understanding of three specific key definitional features of bullying. Focusing on the definition put forward by Volk et al. ( 2014 ), they discuss the definitional features of power imbalance , goal directedness (replacing “intent to harm” in order not to assume conscious awareness, and to include a wide spectrum of goals that are intentionally and strategically pursued by bullies), and harmful impact (replacing “negative actions” in order to focus on the consequences for the victim, as well as circumventing difficult issues related to “repetition” in the traditional definition).

Acknowledging that these three features are challenging to capture using quantitative methods, Spadafora, Volk, and Dane point to existing qualitative studies that shed light on the features of power imbalance, goal directedness and harmful impact in bullying interactions — and put forward suggestions for future qualitative studies. More specifically, the authors argue that qualitative methods, such as focus groups, can be used to investigate the complexity of power relations at not only individual, but also social levels. They also highlight how qualitative methods, such as diaries and autoethnography, may help researchers gain a better understanding of the motives behind bullying behavior; from the perspectives of those engaging in it. Finally, the authors demonstrate how qualitative methods, such as ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews, can provide important insights into the harmful impact of bullying and how, for example, perceived harmfulness may be connected to perceived intention.

In the second article, Understanding bullying and cyberbullying through an ecological systems framework: The value of qualitative interviewing in a mixed methods approach , Faye Mishna, Arija Birze, and Andrea Greenblatt discuss the ways in which utilizing qualitative interviewing in mixed method approaches can facilitate greater understanding of bullying and cyberbullying. Based on a longitudinal and multi-perspective mixed methods study of cyberbullying, the authors demonstrate not only how qualitative interviewing can augment quantitative findings by examining process, context and meaning for those involved, but also how qualitative interviewing can lead to new insights and new areas of research. They also show how qualitative interviewing can help to capture nuances and complexity by allowing young people to express their perspectives and elaborate on their answers to questions. In line with this, the authors also raise the importance of qualitative interviewing for providing young people with space for self-reflection and learning.

In the third article, Q methodology as an innovative addition to bullying researchers’ methodological repertoire , Adrian Lundberg and Lisa Hellström focus on Q methodology as an inherently mixed methods approach, producing quantitative data from subjective viewpoints, and thus supplementing more mainstream quantitative and qualitative approaches. The authors outline and exemplify Q methodology as a research technique, focusing on the central feature of Q sorting. The authors further discuss the contribution of Q methodology to bullying research, highlighting the potential of Q methodology to address challenges related to gaining the perspectives of hard-to-reach populations who may either be unwilling or unable to share their personal experiences of bullying. As the authors point out, the use of card sorting activities allows participants to put forward their subjective perspectives, in less-intrusive settings for data collection and without disclosing their own personal experiences. The authors also illustrate how the flexibility of Q sorting can facilitate the participation of participants with limited verbal literacy and/or cognitive function through the use of images, objects or symbols. In the final part of the paper, Lundberg and Hellström discuss implications for practice and suggest future directions for using Q methodology in bullying and cyberbullying research, particularly with hard-to-reach populations.

In the fourth article, The importance of being attentive to social processes in school bullying research: Adopting a constructivist grounded theory approach , Camilla Forsberg discusses the use of constructivist grounded theory (CGT) in her research, focusing on social structures, norms, and processes. Forsberg first outlines CGT as a theory-methods package that is well suited to meet the call for more qualitative research on participants’ experiences and the social processes involved in school bullying. Forsberg emphasizes three key focal aspects of CGT, namely focus on participants’ main concerns; focus on meaning, actions, and processes; and focus on symbolic interactionism. She then provides examples and reflections from her own ethnographic and interview-based research, from different stages of the research process. In the last part of the article, Forsberg argues that prioritizing the perspectives of participants is an ethical stance, but one which comes with a number of ethical challenges, and points to ways in which CGT is helpful in dealing with these challenges.

In the fifth article, A qualitative meta-study of youth voice and co-participatory research practices: Informing cyber/bullying research methodologies , Deborah Green, Carmel Taddeo, Deborah Price, Foteini Pasenidou, and Barbara Spears discuss how qualitative meta-studies can be used to inform research methodologies for studying school bullying and cyberbullying. Drawing on the findings of five previous qualitative studies, and with a transdisciplinary and transformative approach, the authors illustrate and exemplify how previous qualitative research can be analyzed to gain a better understanding of the studies’ collective strengths and thus consider the findings and methods beyond the original settings where the research was conducted. In doing so, the authors highlight the progression of youth voice and co-participatory research practices, the centrality of children and young people to the research process and the enabling effect of technology — and discuss challenges related to ethical issues, resource and time demands, the role of gatekeepers, and common limitations of qualitative studies on youth voice and co-participatory research practices.

Taken together, the five articles illustrate the diversity of qualitative methods used to study school bullying and cyberbullying and highlight the need for further qualitative research. We hope that readers will find the collection of articles engaging and that the special issue not only gives impetus to increased qualitative focus on the complex phenomena of school bullying and cyberbullying but also to further discussions on both methodological and analytical approaches.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the authors for sharing their work; Angela Mazzone, James O’Higgins Norman, and Sameer Hinduja for their editorial assistance; and Dorte Marie Søndergaard on the editorial board for suggesting a special issue on qualitative research in the journal.

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Horton, P., Lyng, S.T. Qualitative Methods in School Bullying and Cyberbullying Research: An Introduction to the Special Issue. Int Journal of Bullying Prevention 4 , 175–179 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00139-5

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Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice (2016)

Chapter: 1 introduction, 1 introduction.

Bullying, long tolerated by many as a rite of passage into adulthood, is now recognized as a major and preventable public health problem, one that can have long-lasting consequences ( McDougall and Vaillancourt, 2015 ; Wolke and Lereya, 2015 ). Those consequences—for those who are bullied, for the perpetrators of bullying, and for witnesses who are present during a bullying event—include poor school performance, anxiety, depression, and future delinquent and aggressive behavior. Federal, state, and local governments have responded by adopting laws and implementing programs to prevent bullying and deal with its consequences. However, many of these responses have been undertaken with little attention to what is known about bullying and its effects. Even the definition of bullying varies among both researchers and lawmakers, though it generally includes physical and verbal behavior, behavior leading to social isolation, and behavior that uses digital communications technology (cyberbullying). This report adopts the term “bullying behavior,” which is frequently used in the research field, to cover all of these behaviors.

Bullying behavior is evident as early as preschool, although it peaks during the middle school years ( Currie et al., 2012 ; Vaillancourt et al., 2010 ). It can occur in diverse social settings, including classrooms, school gyms and cafeterias, on school buses, and online. Bullying behavior affects not only the children and youth who are bullied, who bully, and who are both bullied and bully others but also bystanders to bullying incidents. Given the myriad situations in which bullying can occur and the many people who may be involved, identifying effective prevention programs and policies is challenging, and it is unlikely that any one approach will be ap-

propriate in all situations. Commonly used bullying prevention approaches include policies regarding acceptable behavior in schools and behavioral interventions to promote positive cultural norms.

STUDY CHARGE

Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, a group of federal agencies and private foundations asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to undertake a study of what is known and what needs to be known to further the field of preventing bullying behavior. The Committee on the Biological and Psychosocial Effects of Peer Victimization:

Lessons for Bullying Prevention was created to carry out this task under the Academies’ Board on Children, Youth, and Families and the Committee on Law and Justice. The study received financial support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Highmark Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Semi J. and Ruth W. Begun Foundation, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The full statement of task for the committee is presented in Box 1-1 .

Although the committee acknowledges the importance of this topic as it pertains to all children in the United States and in U.S. territories, this report focuses on the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Also, while the committee acknowledges that bullying behavior occurs in the school

environment for youth in foster care, in juvenile justice facilities, and in other residential treatment facilities, this report does not address bullying behavior in those environments because it is beyond the study charge.

CONTEXT FOR THE STUDY

This section of the report highlights relevant work in the field and, later in the chapter under “The Committee’s Approach,” presents the conceptual framework and corresponding definitions of terms that the committee has adopted.

Historical Context

Bullying behavior was first characterized in the scientific literature as part of the childhood experience more than 100 years ago in “Teasing and Bullying,” published in the Pedagogical Seminary ( Burk, 1897 ). The author described bullying behavior, attempted to delineate causes and cures for the tormenting of others, and called for additional research ( Koo, 2007 ). Nearly a century later, Dan Olweus, a Swedish research professor of psychology in Norway, conducted an intensive study on bullying ( Olweus, 1978 ). The efforts of Olweus brought awareness to the issue and motivated other professionals to conduct their own research, thereby expanding and contributing to knowledge of bullying behavior. Since Olweus’s early work, research on bullying has steadily increased (see Farrington and Ttofi, 2009 ; Hymel and Swearer, 2015 ).

Over the past few decades, venues where bullying behavior occurs have expanded with the advent of the Internet, chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication. These modes of communication have provided a new communal avenue for bullying. While the media reports linking bullying to suicide suggest a causal relationship, the available research suggests that there are often multiple factors that contribute to a youth’s suicide-related ideology and behavior. Several studies, however, have demonstrated an association between bullying involvement and suicide-related ideology and behavior (see, e.g., Holt et al., 2015 ; Kim and Leventhal, 2008 ; Sourander, 2010 ; van Geel et al., 2014 ).

In 2013, the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requested that the Institute of Medicine 1 and the National Research Council convene an ad hoc planning committee to plan and conduct a 2-day public workshop to highlight relevant information and knowledge that could inform a multidisciplinary

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1 Prior to 2015, the National Academy of Medicine was known as the Institute of Medicine.

road map on next steps for the field of bullying prevention. Content areas that were explored during the April 2014 workshop included the identification of conceptual models and interventions that have proven effective in decreasing bullying and the antecedents to bullying while increasing protective factors that mitigate the negative health impact of bullying. The discussions highlighted the need for a better understanding of the effectiveness of program interventions in realistic settings; the importance of understanding what works for whom and under what circumstances, as well as the influence of different mediators (i.e., what accounts for associations between variables) and moderators (i.e., what affects the direction or strength of associations between variables) in bullying prevention efforts; and the need for coordination among agencies to prevent and respond to bullying. The workshop summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014c ) informs this committee’s work.

Federal Efforts to Address Bullying and Related Topics

Currently, there is no comprehensive federal statute that explicitly prohibits bullying among children and adolescents, including cyberbullying. However, in the wake of the growing concerns surrounding the implications of bullying, several federal initiatives do address bullying among children and adolescents, and although some of them do not primarily focus on bullying, they permit some funds to be used for bullying prevention purposes.

The earliest federal initiative was in 1999, when three agencies collaborated to establish the Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative in response to a series of deadly school shootings in the late 1990s. The program is administered by the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice to prevent youth violence and promote the healthy development of youth. It is jointly funded by the Department of Education and by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The program has provided grantees with both the opportunity to benefit from collaboration and the tools to sustain it through deliberate planning, more cost-effective service delivery, and a broader funding base ( Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2015 ).

The next major effort was in 2010, when the Department of Education awarded $38.8 million in grants under the Safe and Supportive Schools (S3) Program to 11 states to support statewide measurement of conditions for learning and targeted programmatic interventions to improve conditions for learning, in order to help schools improve safety and reduce substance use. The S3 Program was administered by the Safe and Supportive Schools Group, which also administered the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act State and Local Grants Program, authorized by the

1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 2 It was one of several programs related to developing and maintaining safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools. In addition to the S3 grants program, the group administered a number of interagency agreements with a focus on (but not limited to) bullying, school recovery research, data collection, and drug and violence prevention activities ( U.S. Department of Education, 2015 ).

A collaborative effort among the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Interior, and Justice; the Federal Trade Commission; and the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders created the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention (FPBP) Steering Committee. Led by the U.S. Department of Education, the FPBP works to coordinate policy, research, and communications on bullying topics. The FPBP Website provides extensive resources on bullying behavior, including information on what bullying is, its risk factors, its warning signs, and its effects. 3 The FPBP Steering Committee also plans to provide details on how to get help for those who have been bullied. It also was involved in creating the “Be More than a Bystander” Public Service Announcement campaign with the Ad Council to engage students in bullying prevention. To improve school climate and reduce rates of bullying nationwide, FPBP has sponsored four bullying prevention summits attended by education practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and federal officials.

In 2014, the National Institute of Justice—the scientific research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice—launched the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative with a congressional appropriation of $75 million. The funds are to be used for rigorous research to produce practical knowledge that can improve the safety of schools and students, including bullying prevention. The initiative is carried out through partnerships among researchers, educators, and other stakeholders, including law enforcement, behavioral and mental health professionals, courts, and other justice system professionals ( National Institute of Justice, 2015 ).

In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act was signed by President Obama, reauthorizing the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is committed to providing equal opportunities for all students. Although bullying is neither defined nor prohibited in this act, it is explicitly mentioned in regard to applicability of safe school funding, which it had not been in previous iterations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The above are examples of federal initiatives aimed at promoting the

2 The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act was included as Title IV, Part A, of the 1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. See http://www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/gun_violence/sect08-i.html [October 2015].

3 For details, see http://www.stopbullying.gov/ [October 2015].

healthy development of youth, improving the safety of schools and students, and reducing rates of bullying behavior. There are several other federal initiatives that address student bullying directly or allow funds to be used for bullying prevention activities.

Definitional Context

The terms “bullying,” “harassment,” and “peer victimization” have been used in the scientific literature to refer to behavior that is aggressive, is carried out repeatedly and over time, and occurs in an interpersonal relationship where a power imbalance exists ( Eisenberg and Aalsma, 2005 ). Although some of these terms have been used interchangeably in the literature, peer victimization is targeted aggressive behavior of one child against another that causes physical, emotional, social, or psychological harm. While conflict and bullying among siblings are important in their own right ( Tanrikulu and Campbell, 2015 ), this area falls outside of the scope of the committee’s charge. Sibling conflict and aggression falls under the broader concept of interpersonal aggression, which includes dating violence, sexual assault, and sibling violence, in addition to bullying as defined for this report. Olweus (1993) noted that bullying, unlike other forms of peer victimization where the children involved are equally matched, involves a power imbalance between the perpetrator and the target, where the target has difficulty defending him or herself and feels helpless against the aggressor. This power imbalance is typically considered a defining feature of bullying, which distinguishes this particular form of aggression from other forms, and is typically repeated in multiple bullying incidents involving the same individuals over time ( Olweus, 1993 ).

Bullying and violence are subcategories of aggressive behavior that overlap ( Olweus, 1996 ). There are situations in which violence is used in the context of bullying. However, not all forms of bullying (e.g., rumor spreading) involve violent behavior. The committee also acknowledges that perspective about intentions can matter and that in many situations, there may be at least two plausible perceptions involved in the bullying behavior.

A number of factors may influence one’s perception of the term “bullying” ( Smith and Monks, 2008 ). Children and adolescents’ understanding of the term “bullying” may be subject to cultural interpretations or translations of the term ( Hopkins et al., 2013 ). Studies have also shown that influences on children’s understanding of bullying include the child’s experiences as he or she matures and whether the child witnesses the bullying behavior of others ( Hellström et al., 2015 ; Monks and Smith, 2006 ; Smith and Monks, 2008 ).

In 2010, the FPBP Steering Committee convened its first summit, which brought together more than 150 nonprofit and corporate leaders,

researchers, practitioners, parents, and youths to identify challenges in bullying prevention. Discussions at the summit revealed inconsistencies in the definition of bullying behavior and the need to create a uniform definition of bullying. Subsequently, a review of the 2011 CDC publication of assessment tools used to measure bullying among youth ( Hamburger et al., 2011 ) revealed inconsistent definitions of bullying and diverse measurement strategies. Those inconsistencies and diverse measurements make it difficult to compare the prevalence of bullying across studies ( Vivolo et al., 2011 ) and complicate the task of distinguishing bullying from other types of aggression between youths. A uniform definition can support the consistent tracking of bullying behavior over time, facilitate the comparison of bullying prevalence rates and associated risk and protective factors across different data collection systems, and enable the collection of comparable information on the performance of bullying intervention and prevention programs across contexts ( Gladden et al., 2014 ). The CDC and U.S. Department of Education collaborated on the creation of the following uniform definition of bullying (quoted in Gladden et al., 2014, p. 7 ):

Bullying is any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated. Bullying may inflict harm or distress on the targeted youth including physical, psychological, social, or educational harm.

This report noted that the definition includes school-age individuals ages 5-18 and explicitly excludes sibling violence and violence that occurs in the context of a dating or intimate relationship ( Gladden et al., 2014 ). This definition also highlighted that there are direct and indirect modes of bullying, as well as different types of bullying. Direct bullying involves “aggressive behavior(s) that occur in the presence of the targeted youth”; indirect bullying includes “aggressive behavior(s) that are not directly communicated to the targeted youth” ( Gladden et al., 2014, p. 7 ). The direct forms of violence (e.g., sibling violence, teen dating violence, intimate partner violence) can include aggression that is physical, sexual, or psychological, but the context and uniquely dynamic nature of the relationship between the target and the perpetrator in which these acts occur is different from that of peer bullying. Examples of direct bullying include pushing, hitting, verbal taunting, or direct written communication. A common form of indirect bullying is spreading rumors. Four different types of bullying are commonly identified—physical, verbal, relational, and damage to property. Some observational studies have shown that the different forms of bullying that youths commonly experience may overlap ( Bradshaw et al., 2015 ;

Godleski et al., 2015 ). The four types of bullying are defined as follows ( Gladden et al., 2014 ):

• Physical bullying involves the use of physical force (e.g., shoving, hitting, spitting, pushing, and tripping).
• Verbal bullying involves oral or written communication that causes harm (e.g., taunting, name calling, offensive notes or hand gestures, verbal threats).
• Relational bullying is behavior “designed to harm the reputation and relationships of the targeted youth (e.g., social isolation, rumor spreading, posting derogatory comments or pictures online).”
• Damage to property is “theft, alteration, or damaging of the target youth’s property by the perpetrator to cause harm.”

In recent years, a new form of aggression or bullying has emerged, labeled “cyberbullying,” in which the aggression occurs through modern technological devices, specifically mobile phones or the Internet ( Slonje and Smith, 2008 ). Cyberbullying may take the form of mean or nasty messages or comments, rumor spreading through posts or creation of groups, and exclusion by groups of peers online.

While the CDC definition identifies bullying that occurs using technology as electronic bullying and views that as a context or location where bullying occurs, one of the major challenges in the field is how to conceptualize and define cyberbullying ( Tokunaga, 2010 ). The extent to which the CDC definition can be applied to cyberbullying is unclear, particularly with respect to several key concepts within the CDC definition. First, whether determination of an interaction as “wanted” or “unwanted” or whether communication was intended to be harmful can be challenging to assess in the absence of important in-person socioemotional cues (e.g., vocal tone, facial expressions). Second, assessing “repetition” is challenging in that a single harmful act on the Internet has the potential to be shared or viewed multiple times ( Sticca and Perren, 2013 ). Third, cyberbullying can involve a less powerful peer using technological tools to bully a peer who is perceived to have more power. In this manner, technology may provide the tools that create a power imbalance, in contrast to traditional bullying, which typically involves an existing power imbalance.

A study that used focus groups with college students to discuss whether the CDC definition applied to cyberbullying found that students were wary of applying the definition due to their perception that cyberbullying often involves less emphasis on aggression, intention, and repetition than other forms of bullying ( Kota et al., 2014 ). Many researchers have responded to this lack of conceptual and definitional clarity by creating their own measures to assess cyberbullying. It is noteworthy that very few of these

definitions and measures include the components of traditional bullying—i.e., repetition, power imbalance, and intent ( Berne et al., 2013 ). A more recent study argues that the term “cyberbullying” should be reserved for incidents that involve key aspects of bullying such as repetition and differential power ( Ybarra et al., 2014 ).

Although the formulation of a uniform definition of bullying appears to be a step in the right direction for the field of bullying prevention, there are some limitations of the CDC definition. For example, some researchers find the focus on school-age youth as well as the repeated nature of bullying to be rather limiting; similarly the exclusion of bullying in the context of sibling relationships or dating relationships may preclude full appreciation of the range of aggressive behaviors that may co-occur with or constitute bullying behavior. As noted above, other researchers have raised concerns about whether cyberbullying should be considered a particular form or mode under the broader heading of bullying as suggested in the CDC definition, or whether a separate defintion is needed. Furthermore, the measurement of bullying prevalence using such a definiton of bullying is rather complex and does not lend itself well to large-scale survey research. The CDC definition was intended to inform public health surveillance efforts, rather than to serve as a definition for policy. However, increased alignment between bullying definitions used by policy makers and researchers would greatly advance the field. Much of the extant research on bullying has not applied a consistent definition or one that aligns with the CDC definition. As a result of these and other challenges to the CDC definition, thus far there has been inconsistent adoption of this particular definition by researchers, practitioners, or policy makers; however, as the definition was created in 2014, less than 2 years is not a sufficient amount of time to assess whether it has been successfully adopted or will be in the future.

THE COMMITTEE’S APPROACH

This report builds on the April 2014 workshop, summarized in Building Capacity to Reduce Bullying: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014c ). The committee’s work was accomplished over an 18-month period that began in October 2014, after the workshop was held and the formal summary of it had been released. The study committee members represented expertise in communication technology, criminology, developmental and clinical psychology, education, mental health, neurobiological development, pediatrics, public health, school administration, school district policy, and state law and policy. (See Appendix E for biographical sketches of the committee members and staff.) The committee met three times in person and conducted other meetings by teleconferences and electronic communication.

Information Gathering

The committee conducted an extensive review of the literature pertaining to peer victimization and bullying. In some instances, the committee drew upon the broader literature on aggression and violence. The review began with an English-language literature search of online databases, including ERIC, Google Scholar, Lexis Law Reviews Database, Medline, PubMed, Scopus, PsycInfo, and Web of Science, and was expanded as literature and resources from other countries were identified by committee members and project staff as relevant. The committee drew upon the early childhood literature since there is substantial evidence indicating that bullying involvement happens as early as preschool (see Vlachou et al., 2011 ). The committee also drew on the literature on late adolescence and looked at related areas of research such as maltreatment for insights into this emerging field.

The committee used a variety of sources to supplement its review of the literature. The committee held two public information-gathering sessions, one with the study sponsors and the second with experts on the neurobiology of bullying; bullying as a group phenomenon and the role of bystanders; the role of media in bullying prevention; and the intersection of social science, the law, and bullying and peer victimization. See Appendix A for the agendas for these two sessions. To explore different facets of bullying and give perspectives from the field, a subgroup of the committee and study staff also conducted a site visit to a northeastern city, where they convened four stakeholder groups comprised, respectively, of local practitioners, school personnel, private foundation representatives, and young adults. The site visit provided the committee with an opportunity for place-based learning about bullying prevention programs and best practices. Each focus group was transcribed and summarized thematically in accordance with this report’s chapter considerations. Themes related to the chapters are displayed throughout the report in boxes titled “Perspectives from the Field”; these boxes reflect responses synthesized from all four focus groups. See Appendix B for the site visit’s agenda and for summaries of the focus groups.

The committee also benefited from earlier reports by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine through its Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education and the Institute of Medicine, most notably:

• Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders: Frontiers for Preventive Intervention Research ( Institute of Medicine, 1994 )
• Community Programs to Promote Youth Development ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2002 )
• Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2003 )
• Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 )
• The Science of Adolescent Risk-Taking: Workshop Report ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2011 )
• Communications and Technology for Violence Prevention: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2012 )
• Building Capacity to Reduce Bullying: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014c )
• The Evidence for Violence Prevention across the Lifespan and Around the World: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014a )
• Strategies for Scaling Effective Family-Focused Preventive Interventions to Promote Children’s Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Health: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014b )
• Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015 )

Although these past reports and workshop summaries address various forms of violence and victimization, this report is the first consensus study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the state of the science on the biological and psychosocial consequences of bullying and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease bullying behavior and its consequences.

Terminology

Given the variable use of the terms “bullying” and “peer victimization” in both the research-based and practice-based literature, the committee chose to use the current CDC definition quoted above ( Gladden et al., 2014, p. 7 ). While the committee determined that this was the best definition to use, it acknowledges that this definition is not necessarily the most user-friendly definition for students and has the potential to cause problems for students reporting bullying. Not only does this definition provide detail on the common elements of bullying behavior but it also was developed with input from a panel of researchers and practitioners. The committee also followed the CDC in focusing primarily on individuals between the ages of 5 and 18. The committee recognizes that children’s development occurs on a continuum, and so while it relied primarily on the CDC defini-

tion, its work and this report acknowledge the importance of addressing bullying in both early childhood and emerging adulthood. For purposes of this report, the committee used the terms “early childhood” to refer to ages 1-4, “middle childhood” for ages 5 to 10, “early adolescence” for ages 11-14, “middle adolescence” for ages 15-17, and “late adolescence” for ages 18-21. This terminology and the associated age ranges are consistent with the Bright Futures and American Academy of Pediatrics definition of the stages of development. 4

A given instance of bullying behavior involves at least two unequal roles: one or more individuals who perpetrate the behavior (the perpetrator in this instance) and at least one individual who is bullied (the target in this instance). To avoid labeling and potentially further stigmatizing individuals with the terms “bully” and “victim,” which are sometimes viewed as traits of persons rather than role descriptions in a particular instance of behavior, the committee decided to use “individual who is bullied” to refer to the target of a bullying instance or pattern and “individual who bullies” to refer to the perpetrator of a bullying instance or pattern. Thus, “individual who is bullied and bullies others” can refer to one who is either perpetrating a bullying behavior or a target of bullying behavior, depending on the incident. This terminology is consistent with the approach used by the FPBP (see above). Also, bullying is a dynamic social interaction ( Espelage and Swearer, 2003 ) where individuals can play different roles in bullying interactions based on both individual and contextual factors.

The committee used “cyberbullying” to refer to bullying that takes place using technology or digital electronic means. “Digital electronic forms of contact” comprise a broad category that may include e-mail, blogs, social networking Websites, online games, chat rooms, forums, instant messaging, Skype, text messaging, and mobile phone pictures. The committee uses the term “traditional bullying” to refer to bullying behavior that is not cyberbullying (to aid in comparisons), recognizing that the term has been used at times in slightly different senses in the literature.

Where accurate reporting of study findings requires use of the above terms but with senses different from those specified here, the committee has noted the sense in which the source used the term. Similarly, accurate reporting has at times required use of terms such as “victimization” or “victim” that the committee has chosen to avoid in its own statements.

4 For details on these stages of adolescence, see https://brightfutures.aap.org/Bright%20Futures%20Documents/3-Promoting_Child_Development.pdf [October 2015].

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

This report is organized into seven chapters. After this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 provides a broad overview of the scope of the problem.

Chapter 3 focuses on the conceptual frameworks for the study and the developmental trajectory of the child who is bullied, the child who bullies, and the child who is bullied and also bullies. It explores processes that can explain heterogeneity in bullying outcomes by focusing on contextual processes that moderate the effect of individual characteristics on bullying behavior.

Chapter 4 discusses the cyclical nature of bullying and the consequences of bullying behavior. It summarizes what is known about the psychosocial, physical health, neurobiological, academic-performance, and population-level consequences of bullying.

Chapter 5 provides an overview of the landscape in bullying prevention programming. This chapter describes in detail the context for preventive interventions and the specific actions that various stakeholders can take to achieve a coordinated response to bullying behavior. The chapter uses the Institute of Medicine’s multi-tiered framework ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ) to present the different levels of approaches to preventing bullying behavior.

Chapter 6 reviews what is known about federal, state, and local laws and policies and their impact on bullying.

After a critical review of the relevant research and practice-based literatures, Chapter 7 discusses the committee conclusions and recommendations and provides a path forward for bullying prevention.

The report includes a number of appendixes. Appendix A includes meeting agendas of the committee’s public information-gathering meetings. Appendix B includes the agenda and summaries of the site visit. Appendix C includes summaries of bullying prevalence data from the national surveys discussed in Chapter 2 . Appendix D provides a list of selected federal resources on bullying for parents and teachers. Appendix E provides biographical sketches of the committee members and project staff.

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Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2015). Safe Schools/Healthy Students. 2015. Available: http://www.samhsa.gov/safe-schools-healthy-students/about [November 2015].

Tanrikulu, I., and Campbell, M. (2015). Correlates of traditional bullying and cyberbullying perpetration among Australian students. Children and Youth Services Review , 55 , 138-146.

Tokunaga, R.S. (2010). Following you home from school: A critical review and synthesis of research on cyberbullying victimization. Computers in Human Behavior, 26 (3), 277-287.

U.S. Department of Education. (2015). Safe and Supportive Schools . Available: http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-awards-388-million-safe-and-supportive-school-grants [October 2015].

Vaillancourt, T., Trinh, V., McDougall, P., Duku, E., Cunningham, L., Cunningham, C., Hymel, S., and Short, K. (2010). Optimizing population screening of bullying in school-aged children. Journal of School Violence, 9 (3), 233-250.

van Geel, M., Vedder, P., and Tanilon, J. (2014). Relationship between peer victimization, cyberbullying, and suicide in children and adolescents: A meta-analysis. Journal of the American Medical Association. Pediatrics, 168 (5), 435-442.

Vivolo, A.M., Holt, M.K., and Massetti, G.M. (2011). Individual and contextual factors for bullying and peer victimization: Implications for prevention. Journal of School Violence, 10 (2), 201-212.

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Bullying has long been tolerated as a rite of passage among children and adolescents. There is an implication that individuals who are bullied must have "asked for" this type of treatment, or deserved it. Sometimes, even the child who is bullied begins to internalize this idea. For many years, there has been a general acceptance and collective shrug when it comes to a child or adolescent with greater social capital or power pushing around a child perceived as subordinate. But bullying is not developmentally appropriate; it should not be considered a normal part of the typical social grouping that occurs throughout a child's life.

Although bullying behavior endures through generations, the milieu is changing. Historically, bulling has occurred at school, the physical setting in which most of childhood is centered and the primary source for peer group formation. In recent years, however, the physical setting is not the only place bullying is occurring. Technology allows for an entirely new type of digital electronic aggression, cyberbullying, which takes place through chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication.

Composition of peer groups, shifting demographics, changing societal norms, and modern technology are contextual factors that must be considered to understand and effectively react to bullying in the United States. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts and each of these contexts interacts with individual characteristics of youth in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and bullying perpetration or victimization. Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, this report evaluates the state of the science on biological and psychosocial consequences of peer victimization and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease peer victimization behavior and consequences.

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165 Bullying Research Topics: Qualitative & Quantitative

Have you ever witnessed someone face unwanted aggressive behavior from classmates? According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 1 in 5 students says they have experienced bullying at least once in their lifetime. These shocking statistics prove that bullying is a burning topic that deserves detailed research.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

In this article, you will find as many as 165 bullying research paper topics created by our custom-writing experts especially for students. We will also provide actionable writing tips. Check them out!

• 🔝 Top 12 Research Topics
• ❓Top 12 Research Questions

⚠️ Types of Bullying

• 💡 Qualitative Research Topics
• 📊 Quantitative Research Ideas
• 🖥️ Cyberbullying Topics
• 🕵️ Bullying Crime and Law Topics

🚀 Bullying Research Paper Outline

🔗 references, 🔝 top 12 bullying research topics.

• Long-term effects of bullying.
• Bullying as a cause of addiction.
• Workplace harassment prevention.
• Bullying and domestic violence.
• The impact of bullying on society.
• Victimization: how to break the silence.
• Anti-bullying laws and their importance.
• Bullying is the crime of the 21 st century.
• Emotional and physical forms of bullying.
• Are bullying awareness programs efficient?
• Cyberbullying: consequences and solutions.
• The impact of social media on bullying rates.

❓ Top 12 Bullying Research Questions

•  How does aggression affect individual education?
• Is there a correlation between bullying and suicide?
• What is the bystander effect in workplace bullying?
• How does harassment impact job satisfaction and retention?
• How does cyberbullying affect school-aged children?
• Are there any victim selection patterns in school bullies?
• Why do people accept and condone workplace bullying?
• Is there a correlation between bullying and school dropout rates?
• How does maltreatment interfere with children’s emotional development?
• In what ways does interpersonal aggression influence adolescents’ academic performance?
• What is the connection between school bullying and relationship problems in adulthood?
• Should we prosecute cyberbullying and cyberstalking as criminal offenses?

There are several types of bullying, each with their own methods and characteristics:

💡 Qualitative Bullying Topics for Research Papers

• Common characteristics of school bullies.
• The peer victimization selection patterns. 
• How did COVID-19 impact workplace bullying?
• Anti-bullying measures in schools and their effects.
• Analyze the causes of bullying and harassment at work.
• Parental feeling and perceptions of bullying incidence.
• Explain the impact of harassment acts on the perpetrators.
• The psychological effect of the bystander effect on empathy levels.
• Domestic abuse and interparental violence’s impact on bullying.
• Look into the effect of protective factors in victimization experiences.
• The strength of parental relationships and bullying perpetration.
• What are the long-term behavioral effects of school bullying on children?
• Bullying response patterns from parents of victims and perpetrators.
• The impact of bullying on children with developmental disabilities.
• Explain the emotional effects of workplace bullying.
• Personal ways of coping with bullying among adolescents.
• Study the alleviating effect of community on harassment.
• The emotional and mental state of workplace bullies.
• Discuss the impact of ineffective organizational practices on bullying incidence.
• Review the victims’ views on interventional approaches to workplace bullying.
• What are the factors in group bullying participation?
• Provide an overview of key features of adolescent bullying of students with disabilities.
• Organizational factors impacting the solutions to bullying.
• Research the factors of investigating the cases of nurse bullying.
• What is the role of friendship bonds in bullying experiences?
• Provide an insight into the primary causes of bullying.
• The physical health impacts of bullying on adolescents.
• The experiences of teenagers with bullying and suicidal ideation.
• Explore the features of social isolation as a form of bullying.
• Challenges in finding support for aggression experienced by teenagers.
• Study the impact of cyberbullying on the physical health of children.
• Power, control, and purpose as factors in bullying.
• What is the impact of teacher-initiated bullying reduction strategies?

Bullying is a serious issue that has gotten a lot of academic attention. In particular, the need for qualitative research on this topic has significantly grown. Qualitative approaches use methods to identify and evaluate crucial aspects of adolescent bullying and find solutions to decrease this problem. Feel free to use any of our qualitative bullying research topics to kickstart the writing process.

📊 Quantitative Bullying Research Paper Topics

• Bullying of LGBTQ+ adolescents.
• Gender differences in harassment behavior. 
• Depression as a long-term effect of victimization.
• Long-term effects of bullying in adulthood.
• Quantitative research on bullying and mental health.
• Analyze the effects of bullying on victim’s physical health.
• Aggression and substance use: a structural equation modeling study.
• Study the correlation between parental involvement and the frequency of bullying.
• Frequency of victimization depending on ethnicity.
• Conduct quantitative analysis of bullying according to school types.
• Bullying and academic achievement : a longitudinal study.
• Research the prevalence of anxiety among victims of interpersonal aggression.
• Provide a quantitative examination of bullying by country.
• Compare the prevalence of intimidation in urban vs. rural schools.
• Frequency of bullying incidents in relation to school size.
• Quantitative association between intimidation and self-esteem.
• Write a regression analysis of victimization phenomenon.
• Impact of bullying on academic performance of teenagers.
• Bullying prevention programs: a quantitative evaluation.
• Analyze the impact of harassment on anxiety symptoms.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of popular anti-bullying PSAs.
• Write a quantitative study of the median age of cyberbullying victims.
• School strategies for preventing intimidation between students.
• Study the correlation between racial differences in aggression experiences.
• Evaluate the efficiency of legislation to reduce bullying.
• How interpersonal aggression affects peer relationships.
• Harassment in third-world countries’ schools.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of family interventions in addressing bullying.
• Assess the productivity of school-based anti-bullying support programs.
• Aggression and social media use : a quantitative assessment.
• Degree of dependence on bullying and academic outcomes.
• Effects of abuse on body mass index in adolescence.
• Study the frequency of victimization among students with disabilities.
• Review of the association between harassment and physical health.
• Provide a quantitative examination of bullying and peer support.
• What is the impact of intimidation on social adaptation?
• Assess the efficiency of strategies to cope with bullying.
• Provide a quantitative investigation of bullying and school attendance.
• Effects of interpersonal aggression on sleep quality: a longitudinal study.

Quantitative research analyzes the issue based on statistics, percentages, and ratios. This type of research often defines bullying in the context of social behaviors and relationships. Choose any idea from our list of quantitative bullying research topics and study the issue using numerical data. 

🖥️ Bullying Research Topics: Cyberbullying

• Cyberbullying in the form of ghosting.
• Why are online abusers challenging to identify?
• Factors that help identify online abuse.
• Who are the main targets of online harassment?
• Laws and regulations that prevent and penalize cyberbullying .
• Present the reasons behind increasing cases of cyberbullying in modern society.
• Study the facts about cyberbullying issues in the LGBTQ+ community.
• Is age a determinant when it comes to the problem of cyberbullying?
• The effects of cyberbullying and violent behavior on victims.
• Are the ethics of cyberbullying the same as with regular bullying?
• Teenage cyberbullying is a cause of mental disorders.
• Study social media as one of the most common places for online harassment.
• Research computer games as a place of online abuse.
• Explore the reasons why the public is becoming more concerned about cyberbullying of children.
• What is the frequency of cyberbullying vs. traditional bullying?
• Boys and girls: who are more prominent victims of digital harassment?
• Cyberbullying is a manifestation of internal frustration.
• How does anti-social behavior result in online victimization?
• What are the consequences for individuals who cause cyberbullying?
• Explore the connection between juvenile delinquency and cyberbullying.
• Initiatives that can be taken to reduce the occurrence of digital harassment2.
• What is cyberbullying among university students connected to?
• The difference between offline and online bullying.
• How does cyberbullying affect the social lives of the victims?
• Study cyberbullying as one of the reasons behind high school absenteeism.
• Evaluate the organizations that provide support to victims of cyberbullying.
• Discuss cyberstalking as a distinct kind of cyberbullying.
• Education on cyberbullying as one of the measures to prevent it.
• Is there online etiquette to prevent digital harassment?
• Can blocking the cyberbully protect the victim?
• Are nonconsensual sexual messages considered cyberbullying?
• The role of educators in the issue of online abuse.
• Should parents be involved in the resolution of cyberbullying issues?
• Is peer pressure the reason behind digital abuse?
• Anonymity as a facilitator of cyberbullying.
• Ridiculing with insults as a subtype of cyberbullying.
• Case study: celebrities who were affected by online harassment.
• Research the psychology of aggressors who initiate and support cyberbullying.
• Suggest the actions of a parent whose child was subjected to online abuse.

According to statistics, 15% of kids between 12 and 18 who reported being bullied at school said they were harassed online or via text messages. Writing essays on cyberbullying may assist in raising awareness and drawing people’s attention to this issue.

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

🕵️ Bullying Research Titles: Crime and Law

• The impact of abuse on troubled adolescents.
• Bullying as a form of relational aggression.
• The social concepts of harassment and its types.
• The “Mean Stinks” program and girl-to-girl bullying.
• Rank American states by their anti-bullying laws.
• Suggest intervention techniques for preventing bullying in elementary and middle schools.
• How can we prevent sexual harassment and aggression in the workplace?
• Consider ways to resolve conflicts and stop bullying within an organization.
• How can we address aggression among children in school settings?
• The Dumfries and Galloway Council’s anti-bullying policy.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy to help victims of harassment.
• What is the role of parenting styles in bullying?
• Explore the prevalence of bullying in modern society.
• How can we use anti-bullying measures to deter juvenile crime and delinquency?
• Ways to deal with workplace bullying and the “office bully.”
• Anti-bullying practices in the criminal justice system.
• Research the negative impact of workplace bullying on mental health.
• The persistence of bullying in modern communities : an editorial.
• Nurse bullying as unprofessional conduct.
• Why should we recognize harassment as a serious social problem?
• The physical, emotional, and social aspects of intimidation.
• Do we need government regulations to prevent bullying?
• How does bullying affect the social learning theory?
• Study the changing landscape of aggression in the modern world.
• Research cyberbullying through anonymity on social media.
• Is abuse a social determinant of health?
• Evaluate factors that increase the likelihood of interpersonal aggression.
• Bullying as a form of social and criminal deviance.
• Suggest ways of balancing free speech and anti-bullying laws.
• Study the link between bullying and substance abuse.

Bullying incidents are typically not crimes. Nonetheless, some forms of bullying are prohibited by law and must be reported to the authorities. This includes bullying that involves physical harm or assault, theft, long-term harassment, intimidation, etc. If this interests you, choose any of our bullying topics connected to crime and law and write a paper about it!

Have you been assigned to write an essay about bullying? If you need help with this task, you’re in luck: check out our practical guide with practical tips and examples! 

Bullying Research Paper Introduction

Let’s start from the very beginning. A strong introduction must include the following components: 

• A hook. The opening sentence of an introduction paragraph should contain something attention-grabbing. It can be a piece of statistics, a shocking fact, a quotation, or a powerful statement related to your topic.

The internet has transformed the landscape of human interaction, giving rise to a realm where words can wound or even kill.

You can also check out our free attention grabber generator to help you develop catchy hooks!

• A brief overview . An introduction should provide background information on the paper’s significance within a specific field. 

Teenagers spend more and more time navigating a complex virtual world online via social media sites like Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. According to recent studies, these hours of increasing online usage may be linked to cyberbullying behaviors.

• An explanation of your position . The introduction needs to transition smoothly from background information to the specific argument of the paper. 
• A thesis statement . Finish your introductory paragraph with a short summary of the paper’s main ideas. Read on to learn how to write it!

Bullying Thesis Statement: How to Write

A thesis statement is a sentence that summarizes the arguments in your essay. Follow these steps to create a compelling and informative thesis statement: 

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• Examine the primary sources.
• Choose the most compelling arguments.
• Formulate your own position based on the information you’ve found.
• Turn it into a short persuasive statement.

Most of the time, cyberbullying goes unreported, but it is still an extremely destructive and, in some cases, fatal phenomenon.

To make the writing process easier, try using our free thesis generator .

Main Body & Topic Sentences for Bullying Research Paper

The main body of your text should contain topic sentences, compelling evidence, and a description of your research and findings. To write a good body paragraph, follow our tips:

📌 Give plenty of detail on the points raised in your introduction.

📌 Gather all the facts you’ve learned from different sources during your investigation.

📌 Create a logical structure for your argument.

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

When adolescents connect with their peers in person, they adopt social norms that differ significantly from those used in online communication. Social media tends to make them more aggressive due to their anonymity and ability to avoid retaliation. Furthermore, because they cannot see the actual consequences of their activities, cyberbullies may feel less remorse or empathy when engaging in bullying behaviors.

Bullying Conclusion Paragraph: Writing Tips

To create an effective research paper conclusion , you will need to rewrite your thesis and summarize your main arguments. But that’s not all of it: it is also necessary to leave a lasting impression on the reader. Here’s how you can do it:

🎯 Finish by connecting the last paragraph to the first.

🎯 Conclude with a statement that is made up of one-syllable words.

🎯 End with a sentence that summarizes your main points.

Cyberbullying is a grave problem that can happen to anyone but is especially widespread among young people. For this reason, schools and parents must be aware of this issue and take appropriate action to avoid negative consequences. But we must also remember that the power to combat cyberbullying lies in our empathy, vigilance, and kindness towards each other.

We hope that our list bullying topics for research papers will be helpful to you! If you haven’t found a suitable topic here, you can also try our free research question generator to help you develop a writing idea. Feel free to comment below or share this article with your friends!

Further reading:

• Research Paper Format Tips for Ultimate Writing Success
• A List of 181 Hot Cyber Security Topics for Research [2023]
• How to Write a Cause & Effect Essay: Examples, Outline, & Tips
• 500 Sociology Questions and Topics [Examples & Tips]
• A List of 580 Interesting Research Topics
• How to Write an Outline: Alphanumeric, Decimal, & Other Formats
• Bullying: Psychology Today
• A Guide to Understanding and Preventing School Bullying: University of Southern California
• Bullying: A Big Problem with Big Consequences: University of Minnesota
• What Are the Best Ways to Prevent Bullying in Schools?: University of California, Berkeley
• Bullying: What Educators Can Do About It: Pennsylvania State University
• Fast Fact: Preventing Bullying: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (.gov)
• Workplace Bullying: University of Mary Washington
• What You Need to Know about School Violence and Bullying: UNESCO
• Bullying: How to Spot It and How to Stop It: University of Utah
• Guide to Preventing Cyberbullying: Ohio University
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91 Bullying Research Topics & Essay Examples

📝 bullying research papers examples, 🏆 best bullying essay titles, 🎓 simple research topics about bullying, ❓ bullying research questions.

• Family Violence: Adult-Child Sexual Abuse Psychology essay sample: This paper explores the risk and protection factors for child abuse in the light of Macro-system, microsystem, mesosystems; and programs that target the prevention of child abuse.
• Bullying and Suicide Relationship: Data Analysis Psychology essay sample: Bullying is one of the main reasons why teenagers commit suicide. Parents should watch over their children in order to identify and help them fight the effects of bullying.
• The Problem of Bullying in Colleges Psychology essay sample: This research study shows that college-going students are just as likely to be victims or perpetrators or even belong to the victim-perpetrator group of bullying.
• Anti-bullying Program for the School Psychology essay sample: Bullying is a serious problem that must be dealt with immediately. Usually, children develop the idea that bullying is acceptable in pre-school.
• Stuttering Among Schoolchildren: Teaching Interventions Psychology essay sample: Communication speech impairments affect children, adolescents. People with stuttering experience bullying and difficulties in forming relationships from a very young age.
• Bullying Children: The Analysis of Various Examples Psychology essay sample: This discussion provides a detailed analysis of various examples of bullying and some of the evidence-based strategies to prevent the malpractice.
• Bullying and Suicide: Outcomes and Implications Psychology essay sample: Bullying may occur in any society or time. Bulling is part of a wide-ranging pattern of antisocial behavior, with long-term consequences for society.
• Bullying as a Group Process in Childhood Psychology essay sample: The primary purpose of the article is to explore bullying as a network relation founded on the exact nominations for bullying.
• Middle Childhood Through the Prism of Psychological Disorders Psychology essay sample: The paper states that various disorders such as ADHD and ASD in middle childhood can affect an individual's ability to reach success and overcome obstacles.
• Suicide is a Crucial Health Risk among Adolescents Psychology essay sample: Nowadays, suicide is the second most prevalent cause of death among adolescents in the US and worldwide, accounting for about 800,000 lives globally.
• Deviant Behavior: Workplace Bullying Psychology essay sample: This paper aims to explore workplace bullying in terms of conflict and labeling theories to better understand its causes and nature.
• Aggression in Psychology Psychology essay sample: This emotion is difficult to define, and psychologists, judges, and lawyers have been trying to determine what actions should and should not be considered aggressive for a long time.
• Bullying in Adolescents and Social Work Interventions Psychology essay sample: Bullying provokes a number of negative emotions and situations when students need additional help and treatment.
• Moral Development Theory and Bullying Issues Psychology essay sample: The impact of bullying is not easy to predict. Moral development is used to identify the principles and moral values according to which adolescents should treat each other.
• Parenting Styles in Different Cultures Psychology essay sample: To understand the specificities of parents’ behavior that influence their children, it is vital to consider them in the context of selected countries and regions.
• Depression Management in Adolescent Psychology essay sample: Adolescents are men and women in their transitional age from childhood to youth. Their age bracket is from ten to twenty-two.
• Cell Phones and Mental Health Psychology essay sample: Limited use of smartphones, current human companions, makes life easier and enjoyable, while excessive screen time may bring severe mental health consequences.
• Developmental Psychology and a Movie Character Psychology essay sample: This work aims to assess adolescents' psychology by applying relevant concepts and considering some issues with specific examples.
• Bullying Behavior in Children Psychology essay sample: The paper states that contributing factors to bullying behavior are family violence and media content that encourages victimization.
• Cyberbullying in Social Psychology Psychology essay sample: The study aims to determine the prevalence and effects of cyberbullying among teenagers and young adults, as well as explore the most suitable coping strategies.
• Interpersonal Conflicts at Workplace: Types and Resolution Strategies Psychology essay sample: This paper aims to discuss the types of interpersonal conflicts and recommended strategies for effective conflict resolution.
• Narrative Therapy: Patient Case Psychology essay sample: The narrative approach would be the most useful for the described case conceptualization, as it allows the person to separate the context and see these stories as situational.
• Bullying: Collaborating with Parents to Increase Proactive Bystander Message Psychology essay sample: Bullying could potentially lead to anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. These symptoms could be typical also to the bystanders.
• Childhood Trauma: Causes, Effects, and Preventive Measures Psychology essay sample: It is salient to understand the causative factors and the effects of childhood trauma while also highlighting applicable preventive measures.
• The Best Solution to Predict Depression Because of Bullying Psychology essay sample: This paper examines interventions to prove that the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is the most effective solution for predicting depression provoked by bullying.
• The Long-Term Effects of Bullying: Understanding the Impact on Mental Health
• Ways to Stop Bullying at School: Addressing Children’s Needs School bullying is among some of the most problematic issues that are extraordinarily difficult to tackle in the school environment.
• Bullying in the Digital Age: Problem Statement
• Empowering Students to Speak Up: Strategies for Reporting Bullying Incidents
• Bullying in the Workplace: Recognizing and Addressing Adult Bullying
• The Role of Bystanders in Bullying Situations: How to Be an Active Ally
• Bullying and Self-Esteem: Rebuilding Confidence After Being Bullied
• Exploring the Link Between Bullying and Substance Abuse in Adolescents
• Debunking Myths About Bullying: Separating Fact from Fiction
• Bullying Prevention Programs That Work: Case Studies and Success Stories
• Understanding the Psychology of a Bully: What Drives the Behavior?
• Bullying and Academic Performance: Impact
• The Legal Ramifications of Bullying: Navigating Anti-Bullying Legislation
• Parental Involvement in Bullying Prevention
• Bullying in the LGBTQ+ Community: Addressing Unique Challenges and Solutions
• Healing from Bullying Trauma: Coping Strategies and Resources for Recovery
• Understanding the Impact of Workplace Bullying on Mental Health
• From Victim to Victor: Inspirational Stories of Overcoming Bullying
• Spotting the Signs of Workplace Bullying: What to Look Out For
• Cyberbullying and LGBTQ+ Youth: Navigating the Unique Challenges and Solutions
• Addressing Friend Bullying: Tips for Parents and Caregivers
• Nurse Bullying Study: Ethical Perspectives The research question is: how does the medical community address the psychological effects of nurse bullying in the workplace in the context of ethical obstacles?
• How to Address Workplace Bullying: A Step-by-Step Guide for Employees
• Exploring the Legal Aspects of Workplace Bullying: Know Your Rights
• Bullying on Social Media Platforms Combination of increased use of social media platforms in modern society and prevailing negative climate of web space results in bullying on social media platforms.
• The Impact of Cyberbullying on Mental Health: Understanding the Long-Term Effects
• The Role of HR in Preventing and Addressing Workplace Bullying
• Empathy in the Digital Age: Fostering Compassion to Combat Cyberbullying
• Real Stories: Overcoming Workplace Bullying and Restoring Confidence
• Understanding the Impact of Friend Bullying on Mental Health
• The Long-Term Effects of Workplace Bullying on Employee Productivity
• The Impact of Bullying on Mental Health: Understanding the Long-Term Effects
• The Long-Term Effects of Friend Bullying on Self-Esteem
• How to Combat Bullying: An Action Plan
• Confronting the Bully: Tips for Standing Up to Workplace Aggression
• Building a Culture of Respect: Preventing Workplace Bullying Through Leadership
• Spotlight on Cyberbullying Laws: A State-by-State Comparison
• The Impact of Workplace Violence on Nurses: Nurse Bullying Statistics Wondering about the impact of workplace violence on nurses? Read this essay to learn about economic and psychological effects of workplace bullying.
• Breaking the Silence: Encouraging Open Communication About Workplace Bullying
• Healing from Workplace Bullying: Strategies for Moving Forward and Thriving in Your Career
• Exploring the Role of Social Media in Friend Bullying
• The Importance of Open Communication in Combating Friend Bullying
• Understanding the Dynamics of Family Bullying: What It Looks Like and Why It Happens
• The Long-Term Effects of Sibling Bullying on Mental Health
• When Bullying Goes Unnoticed: Signs That a Child Is Being Bullied by a Family Member
• Bullying and Cyberbullying in Healthcare Nurse bullying is a systemic challenge that begins before the commencement of nursing school and lasts throughout the career of a care practitioner.
• How Social Media Exacerbates the Problem of Bullying?
• How Bullying Affects Student Achievement?
• How to Support Your Child if He Is Bullied?
• What Drives Psychology of Cyberbullies?
• How to Address and Prevent Cyberbullying in the Workplace?
• How to Recognize and Address Parental Bullying Within the Family?
• How to Protect Yourself from Bullying Within Your Own Family?
• How Teaching Kids to Address Bullying Within the Family?
• What The Impact of Social Bullying on Mental Health?
• What Is Mean Debunking Myths About Social Bullying?
• What The Legal Implications of Social Bullying?
• What The Role of Educators in Combating Social Bullying?
• How Social Bullying Differs from Other Forms of Harassment and Abuse?
• How Understand Navigating the Complexities of Cyberbullying Laws?
• Is It Possible to Avoid Bullying?
• How to Recognize if Your Child is Being Bullied?
• What Drives Perpetrators to Target Others on Online Bullying?
• How Witnesses Can Help Combat Online Bullying?
• How Verbal Abuse in Relationships Can Leave a Lasting Impact?
• How Community Efforts to Combat Online Bullying?

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78 Cyber Bullying Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best cyber bullying topic ideas & essay examples, 💡 interesting topics to write about cyber bullying, 👍 good essay topics on cyber bullying, ❓ questions about cyberbullying research.

• Cyber Bullying Issue Therefore, the goal of this paper is to analyse who the victims of cyber bullying are and the influence it has on them.
• Is Cyber Bullying Against Teenagers More Detrimental Than Face-To-Face Bullying? Social networking has also contributed greatly to the issue of cyber bullying especially in making it more harmful as compared to face-to-face bullying.
• Cyber Bullying Prevention in Learning Institutions: Systematic Approach To start with, the students are provided with ways of reporting their concern to the educational institution, and when the staff members of the institution receive the report, they evaluate the information together with the […]
• The Effects of Cyber-Bullying and Cyber-Stalking on the Society In particular, one should focus on such issues as the disrespect for a person’s autonomy, the growing intensity of domestic violence and deteriorating mental health in the country.
• Cyber Bullying as a Virtual Menace The use of information and communication technologies to support a deliberate and most of the time repeated hostile behavior by an individual or groups of people with the sole intention of harming others, one is […]
• Cyber Bullying Reduction Program Table of Activities Activity Significance Assembling parents/guardians, students and teachers to announce and explain the program in the institution To enlighten parents/guardians, students and teachers about the rules and regulation enacted due to the threat […]
• Discouraging and Eliminating Cyber Bullying Resources Role of the resource/input Statement forms To facilitate information transfer to the staff Counseling Personnel To arm students against the problem Bullying report system To create efficient internet enhance report system Regulation implementation documents […]
• Cyber Bullying and Its Forms The difference between the conventional way of bullying and cyber bullying is that in conventional bullying, there is contact between the bully and the victim.
• Ethics in Technology: Cyber Crimes Furthermore, the defendant altered the data, which compromised the integrity of the information to the detriment of the organizations involved. In this litigation, Aleksey Vladimirovich Ivanov was the defendant while the American government was the […]
• Ethical Case: Facebook Gossip or Cyberbullying? The best option to Paige is to apologize publicly and withdraw her comments. The final stage is to act and reflect the outcome of the choice made.
• Freedom Of Speech In The Era Of Cyber Bullying
• The Negative Impacts of Technology on Social Skills: Anxiety, Awkward Conversations, Cyber Bullying, and Lack of Awareness
• Different Consequences of Cyber Bullying in School
• The Study Of Cyber Bullying Victimization On Children Who Are Addicted To The Internet
• The Causes and Harmful Effects of Cyber Bullying
• Why Do Cyber Bullying Laws Need to Be Enforced
• Unsecured Privacy Settings, Cyber Bullying, And Facebook Crime
• Bullying Carried too Far: Cyber Bullying and Violent Bullying
• Cyber Bullying: Misuse of Information and Communications Technology
• Cyber Bullying and Why Parents Need to Monitor Their Children’s Activity
• The Detrimental Effects of Cyber Bullying
• Cyber Bullying, Its Forms, Impact, and Relationship to Juvenile Delinquency
• How Cyber Bullying Affects Our Lives Negatively
• The Effects Of Cyber Bullying On Substance Use And Mental Health
• Cyberbullying : Causes And Dangers Of Cyber Bullying
• The Effects Of Cyber Bullying On The Mental Health Of Middle School Aged Youth
• Is Cyber Bullying Morally Justifiable
• Cyber Bullying And Its Effect On Our Youth
• An Analysis of Cyber Bullying in Today’s World
• Cyber Bullying And Its Effect On The Lives Of The American
• Bullying And The Potential Motives Behind Cyber Bullying
• Cyber Bullying And Its Various Forms
• Bullying In The Digital Age: Electronic Or Cyber Bullying
• Information Technology – Role of Social Networking Cites in Cyber Bullying
• Cyber Bullying : A Consistent Problem For Young People
• Cause And Effect Of Cyber Bullying
• Cyber Bullying, Creating a Culture of Respect
• Cyber Bullying And Its Effect On Adolescents
• Prevention And Intervention Of Cyber Bullying
• Investigating Cyber Bullying Using Social Media
• Cyber Bullying Affects People ‘s Lives More Than One Might Think
• The Cyber Crime and the Cyber Bullying
• The Cause of Cyber Bullying and the Effect of the Mental Development of Teenagers
• Cyber Bullying: An Uncontrollable Epidemic
• The Psychological Impact of Cyber Bullying
• The Eternal Effects Of Cyber Bullying
• Cyber Bullying : Bullying Through Technology
• Why Does Online Anonymity Increase Cyberbullying Among Teenagers?
• Are Laws Effective Strategy Address Issue Cyberbullying?
• Are Schools Doing Enough About Cyberbullying?
• What Are the Causes of Cyberbullying?
• What Is the Prevention of Cyberbullying?
• Is Cyberbullying Related to a Lack of Empathy and Social-Emotional Problems?
• How Often Do Celebrities Suffer From Cyberbullying?
• What Are the Characteristics of Cyberbullying Among Students?
• How Does Social Integration of Children Help to Combat Cyberbullying?
• What Is the Correlation Between Suicide Rates and Cyberbullying?
• How Does Cyberbullying Affect Society?
• What Is the Correlation Between Depression, Bullying and Cyberbullying?
• Are There Gender Differences in Cyberbullying?
• What Is the Criminal Penalty for Cyberbullying?
• What International Associations Prevent Cyberbullying?
• What Is the Role of Affective and Cognitive Empathy in Cyberbullying?
• What Are the Solutions to Cyberbullying?
• Can Cyberbullying Be Called Cyber Crime?
• What Is the Role of Teachers in Preventing Cyberbullying?
• Can Internet Privacy Be Enough to Prevent Cyberbullying?
• How Does Cyberbullying Affect Children?
• How Many American Teenagers Are Cyberbullied?
• How Does Cyberbullying Affect Mental Health?
• How Is Cyberbullying Different From Physical Bullying?
• Is Cyberbullying an Example of Psychological Abuse?
• Can School Policies Reduce Cyberbullying?
• How Does Cyberbullying Affect Teenagers’ Self-Esteem?
• What Are the Consequences of Cyberbullying?
• Has the Proliferation of Social Media Led to an Increase in Cyberbullying?
• Is Cyberbullying Less Criminal Than Traditional Bullying?
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Bullying Research Paper

This sample bullying research paper features: 4600 words (approx. 15 pages), an outline, and a bibliography with 28 sources. Browse other research paper examples for more inspiration. If you need a thorough research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

Introduction

Bullying defined.

• National Variation
• The Importance of Age

Stability of Bullying Roles

• Gender Differences

The Bully-Victim

The peer group, parenting and home environment, sibling relationships, school factors, internalizing problems, academic performance, delinquency and criminality, impact beyond victims.

• Interventions

Future Directions and Conclusion

• Bibliography

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• Bullying Prevention Research Paper
• Bullying and Crime Research Paper
• Bullying in School Research Paper

Bullying has received worldwide attention in the last 30 years as a form of aggressive behavior that can have a significant negative impact on the physical, emotional, and academic development of victims. The first major contribution to the academic study of bullying was made by Dan Olweus, who wrote the first scholarly book in English to deal with bullying. The book was written in response to the suicide of three bullied boys in Norway and reported a high prevalence of school bullying (20 % of Norwegian children reported having some involvement) as well as discussed the success of the world’s first bullying prevention program (Olweus 1993). Olweus’ work opened the way for an explosion of research on bullying, which expanded from an initial interest in schools to include broader contexts such as the workplace, prisons, and sibling relationships. While much of this work is of interest, showing that bullying has the potential to affect a significant proportion of the population, this review focuses on school bullying, as this is the area that has attracted the most research interest to date.

The international literature is repleted with definitions of school bullying, most of which seem to accept that bullying is any type of negative action intended to cause distress or harm that is repeated and targeted against individuals who cannot defend themselves. When research on bullying started in the 1980s, bullying was perceived to comprise only episodes of physical or verbal aggression where the victim was physically attacked or called names. In recent years, the definition of bullying has broadened to include other forms of aggression that are relational in nature and aim to damage the victim’s peer relationships and their social status such as spreading of malicious gossip and social exclusion. Fighting between people of approximately equal strength, a one-time attack, or a good-natured teasing and play fighting are not counted as bullying.

The advent and widespread use of electronic means of communication such as mobile phones and the Internet has made it easier to bully anonymously, through the use of pseudonyms and temporary accounts, at any time and in any place involving a wide audience. This development has meant that the definition of bullying has had to be expanded to account for what the literature refers to as “cyber-bullying” or “electronic bullying.” A nationally representative survey of 7,508 adolescents in the United States in 2005 found that 8.3 % had bullied others and 9.8 % had been bullied electronically at least once in the last 2 months (Wang et al. 2009). In the same year in England and Wales, a survey of pupils aged 11–16 found that 22 % had been cyber-bullied at least once or twice in the last couple months (Smith et al. 2008). The most common form of cyber-bullying internationally is sending threatening and/or nasty text messages.

Bullying Prevalence and Continuity

National variation in bullying.

There are large variations across countries in the prevalence of bullying perpetration and victimization. In an international survey of health-related symptoms among school-aged children, the percentage of students who reported being frequently bullied during the current term ranged from a low of 5 % to 10 % in some countries to a high of 40 % in others (Due et al. 2005). The prevalence of bullies in primary school ranges, in most countries, between 7 % and 12 % and remains at those levels in secondary school (around 10 %). It is unclear whether these differences in prevalence reflect genuinely different levels of engagement in bullying among countries or, at least partly, result from different meanings of the term “bullying” in different countries and differences in methodologies and samples used.

An example of why valid comparisons between countries are not possible is Portugal where the bullying rate is high compared to other countries. Berger (2007) in her analysis found that one detail of educational policy in Portugal may account, among other things, for this higher rate of bullying. In Portuguese schools, children are asked to repeat sixth grade unless they pass a rigorous test. This practice results in at least 10 % of all sixth graders (more often boys) to be held back 2 years or more, and these older, bigger children are almost twice as likely to bully compared to the class average. This suggests that the difference in prevalence rates between countries may be, at least partly, accounted for by external factors including national differences in school policies and environments but also differences in the methodologies used (self-reports vs. peer and/or teacher reports), students’ differing levels of cognitive ability, cultural differences in reporting, and different meanings of the term “bullying” in different countries.

The Importance of Age in Bullying

Despite variations in prevalence, it is a universal finding that bullying victimization is more frequent among younger children and steadily declines with age. A range of explanations have been put forward to explain these age differences (Smith et al. 1999a, b). Compared to older children, younger children are less likely to have developed the appropriate skills and coping strategies to deal effectively with bullies and avert further victimization. Younger children are also less likely to refrain from bullying others due to socialization pressure. Finally, there is evidence that younger students adopt a more inclusive definition of bullying when responding to prevalence surveys, and this may, at least partly, account for the higher reported frequency of bullying victimization in primary school. For example, younger pupils might find it more difficult to distinguish between bullying and fighting, broadening the use of the term bullying to include aggressive behaviors that involve no imbalance of power. Within the general trend of decreasing bullying victimization over time, researchers have observed an abrupt increase in bullying during the transition from primary to secondary school which may reflect some students’ attempts to establish dominance hierarchies in the new school environment. Relational forms of bullying take precedence over physical modes of attack as children grow older and their social skills improve.

There is some controversy in the literature as to the stability of bullying victimization in primary school. Some studies have reported that bullying victimization is relatively stable over a period of up to 4 years in primary school and often continues in secondary school. Other studies have found that only a relatively small proportion of children (around 4–5 %) are victimized repeatedly over time in primary school.

In secondary school, the stability of both bully and victim roles is considerably higher than in primary school according to teacher, peer, and self-reports. It is estimated that two out of three male bullies remain in their role over a 1-year period. Despite the moderate to high stability of the victim and bully roles in secondary school, prevalence rates are lower than in primary school. This suggests that a small number of victims are targeted consistently and systematically in secondary school.

Stability in bullying victimization has been explained in two ways. Firstly, it has been observed that victims select social environments that reinforce the risk of victimization, for example, they are more likely to have friends who are less accepted by the peer group and often victimized themselves. Secondly, victims often lack the social skills to break through in new environments, and this increases the risk that they are labeled as victims and locked in that role over a long period of time. It is important, therefore, to acknowledge that although for some children bullying victimization will be situational, for others it will develop into a trait.

Gender Differences in Bullying

The view that males are more likely to bully and be bullied than females has been dismissed in recent years following a better understanding about the different forms aggressive behavior such as bullying can take. Although males are more likely to engage in physical forms of bullying such as pushing and hitting, females are, according to some studies, more adept at employing relational forms of aggression (e.g., social exclusion, spreading of nasty rumors) against their victims especially during adolescence. No consistent gender differences have been identified in the use of verbal bullying (e.g., calling names, nasty teasing). This suggests that overall gender differences are not as pronounced as originally thought and that bullying is not a male problem.

Characteristics of Children and Adolescents Involved in Bullying

There is some controversy in the literature about the profile of bullies. Initially, studies described children who bullied others as insecure, anxious individuals who have low self-esteem, are unpopular among their classmates, and use aggressive strategies to resolve conflicts. This stereotype was later disputed by research that suggested bullies are socially competent and have superior theory of mind skills (i.e., awareness of others’ mental functions and states) and good levels of social intelligence, knowing how to attain goals without damaging their reputation. Linked to this, there is also debate concerning whether bullies lack empathic skills. Some research suggests that bullies understand the emotions of others but do not share them. The inconsistencies across studies may be, at least partly, due to different definitions of bully status and different methodologies employed. Studies which have distinguished between “pure” bullies and bully/victims have revealed that “pure” bullies have few conduct problems, perform well at school, are popular among their classmates, and do not suffer from physical and psychosomatic health problems.

There is more consensus on the profile of “pure” victims. Research has identified that “pure” victims exhibit elevated levels of depression and anxiety, low self-esteem, and poor social skills. Hawker and Boulton’s (2000) meta-analysis found that peer victimization is more strongly concurrently associated with depression than with anxiety, loneliness, or self-esteem. Another meta-analysis by Card (2003) found that the strongest correlates of the victimization experience are low self-concept, low physical strength, low school enjoyment, poor social skills, and high internalizing and externalizing problems. It was unclear from these reviews of cross-sectional studies, however, whether internalizing problems lead to victimization or vice versa.

The recent body of longitudinal research on bullying and peer victimization more widely suggests that the relationship between internalizing problems such as depression, anxiety and loneliness, and victimization is more likely to be reciprocal, that is, internalizing problems contribute to victimization and vice versa. A metaanalysis of 18 longitudinal studies examining associations between peer victimization and internalizing problems in children and adolescents concluded that internalizing problems both precede and follow peer victimization experiences (Reijntjes et al. 2011). It is worth noting, however, that the path from psychological maladjustment to victimization has not been replicated in all studies. For instance, Bond et al. (2001) found no support for the hypothesis that emotional maladjustment invites victimization.

Recent work suggests that bullying might arise out of early cognitive deficits, including language problems, imperfect causal understanding, and poor inhibitory control that lead to decreased competence with peers, which over time develops into bullying. Research does not support the assertion that physical appearance (e.g., wearing glasses) is a risk factor for being bullied at school. The only physical characteristic that has been associated with an increased risk of victimization is low physical size and strength. There is less evidence on how equality characteristics influence victimization. There is no consistently robust evidence to suggest that ethnic minority children are more at risk of being bullied at school. Sexual orientation has rarely been investigated in longitudinal studies as a possible risk factor of bullying victimization, but there is some, mainly qualitative, evidence of sexual minorities being targeted in secondary schools. There is stronger evidence that children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to victimization in mainstream settings, although it might be other characteristics of disabled children that make them more vulnerable to victimization such as lack of friends rather than the disability per se.

Olweus (1993) was the first researcher to identify a small proportion of victims of bullying that he called “provocative victims” or “bully-victims,” who bully other children as well as being bullied by them. Research has identified that bully-victims are the most troubled group among children and adolescents involved in bullying incidents. This group displays the highest levels of internalizing problems, including depression, anxiety, low selfesteem, and loneliness. At the same time, they score high on externalizing problems such as aggression, impulsivity, hyperactivity, and conduct problems. Other research has shown that bully-victims display higher levels of neuroticism and psychoticism than either bullies or victims. Bully-victims use aggressive strategies to cope with stressors at school that increase the risk of further victimization and rejection from peers.

Besides the traditional roles of bully, victim, and bully-victim, research has identified that all students take on a role when bullying episodes emerge. Salmivalli et al. (1996) distinguished between six different roles children can take in bullying situations: the bully (leader), the reinforcer (encourages and provides audience), the assistant (follower/helper, e.g., holds the child down), the defender (helps the victim and/or tells bullies to stop), the outsider (stays away from bullying situations), and the victim. Subsequent research established that the three roles of bully, reinforcer, and assistant are closely correlated with each other and, therefore, cannot usefully discriminate between children. In kindergarten, the three most commonly held roles are those of the bully, the victim, and the defender. Fewer students are defenders by middle school, and the majority becomes witnesses or bystanders when bullying takes place. Such passive behavior, although not directly encouraging of bullying, provides a permissive context for bullies that allows them to continue harassing their victims.

Environmental Influences on Bullying

There is clear evidence that parenting styles are related to bullying behavior. Studies indicate that bullies are more likely to have parents who are authoritarian and punitive, disagree more often, and are less supportive. The parents of bullies are more likely to have been bullies themselves when they were young. Victims, on the other hand, are more likely to have been reared in an overprotective family environment. Bully-victims tend to come from family backgrounds that are exposed to abuse and violence and favor the use of harsh, punitive, and restrictive discipline practices. This group reports little positive warmth in their families and more difficulties in communicating with parents.

Family characteristics are related to bullying victimization in different ways for boys and girls. Boys are more prone to victimization when the father is highly critical or absent in his relationship with his son, thus failing to provide a satisfactory role model. Victimization in boys is also associated with maternal overprotectiveness which may hinder boys’ search for autonomy and independence, whereas victimization in girls is more strongly related to maternal hostility which may lead to anxiety and decreased sense of connectedness in relationships.

Very little research has examined longitudinal associations between early home environment and subsequent bullying behavior. The few studies that exist suggest a link between low emotional support and subsequent bullying behavior at school. Parents who are disagreeable, hostile, cold, or rejecting tend to have children who are at risk of becoming aggressive in the future. In a small longitudinal study, Schwartz et al. (1997) found that bully-victims at 10 years were significantly more likely than the other groups to have had experiences with harsh, disorganized, and potentially abusive home environments 5 years earlier. Mother-child interactions at 5 years were characterized by hostile, restrictive, or overly punitive parenting. They were significantly exposed to higher levels of marital conflicts and more likely to come from marginally lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Bullies were found to be exposed to adult aggression and conflicts, but not victimization by adults, and were from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. These findings need to be replicated in larger samples before any safe conclusions can be drawn.

More recently, there has been interest in how sibling relationships affect the development of bullying behavior. There is international evidence that children who are victimized at school are more likely, compared to other groups, to be victimized by their siblings at home. Wolke and Samara (2004) found that more than half of victims of bullying by siblings (50.7 %) were also involved in bullying behavior at school compared to only 12.4 % of those not victimized by siblings, indicating a strong link between intrafamilial and extrafamilial peer relationships. Those who were both victimized at home and at school had the highest behavior problems and were the least prosocial. Similar evidence exists in relation to bullying perpetration, suggesting that those who bully at school tend to exhibit similar behaviors towards their siblings at home.

A number of school factors have also been implicated as correlates of bullying behavior. One of the most consistent findings in the international literature is that the number and quality of friends at school is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, protective factor against bullying victimization. Having friends is not sufficient in itself to protect against victimization. For instance, when at-risk children have friends with internalizing problems, who are physically weak or who themselves are victimized, the relation of children’s behavioral risk to victimization is exacerbated.

More recent work on the role of class structure and climate on bullying has shown that variations in peer structure and dominance hierarchies influence the stability of bullying victimization. For example, victims in primary school classes with a more pronounced hierarchical structure are less likely to escape their victim role compared to those in classes with less clearly marked hierarchies (Sch€afer et al. 2005).

Consequences of Bullying

There has been a growing interest in recent years to investigate the long-term effects of bullying involvement on children’s and adolescents’ social, emotional, behavioral, and academic development using longitudinal samples. The results of these studies suggest that victims and bully-victims manifest more adjustment problems than bullies. Victims and, especially, bully-victims are more likely to show elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness; perform less well academically; and display conduct problems. The only negative long-term outcome that has consistently been reported in the literature for bullies is their involvement in later offending. There is also some initial evidence that bullying perpetration is a significant risk factor of poor academic performance.

Several cross-sectional studies have demonstrated negative associations between peer victimization and a range of internalizing problems, including loneliness and low self-esteem. A meta-analysis of 23 cross-sectional studies of the association between peer victimization and psychological maladjustment found that peer victimization was more strongly concurrently associated with depression than with anxiety, loneliness, or self-esteem (Hawker and Boulton 2000).

Over the last decade, research on bullying is increasingly reliant on longitudinal methodologies to disentangle whether victimization contributes to internalizing problems or vice versa. It has been argued, for example, that children who display internalizing behaviors (e.g., anxiety or shyness) are more at risk of being targeted by peers due to their inability to cope effectively with provocation. The majority of longitudinal studies investigating associations between peer victimization and psychological maladjustment have found evidence for both directions.

There is some longitudinal evidence that bullying involvement has a negative impact on academic performance, although more studies are needed to reach a definitive conclusion. A US longitudinal study that began in 2002 with a sample of about 1,700 adolescents found that being a bully had a stronger negative effect on self-perceived academic competence over time than being a victim after controlling for demographic background variables and baseline academic competence (Ma et al. 2009). Furthermore, only bully status predicted lower self-reported grades.

Despite showing fewer adjustment problems than victims and bully-victims, bullies are at an increased risk of later delinquency and criminal offending. A recent meta-analysis of studies measuring school bullying and later offending found that school bullies were 2.5 times more likely than noninvolved students to engage in offending over an 11-year follow-up period (Ttofi et al. 2011). The risk was lower when major childhood risk factors were controlled for, but remained statistically significant. The effect of bullying on later offending was especially pronounced when bullying was assessed in older children. The longitudinal association between bullying perpetration and later offending has been replicated in many countries, including Australia, Canada, and Europe.

Finally, there is evidence that bullying and victimization have a negative impact not only on the individual children involved but also on bystanders. Children who witness bullying incidents report increased anxiety, less satisfaction with school, and lower academic achievement. There is also evidence that in school classes where a lot of victimization is taking place, school satisfaction among students is low.

Bullying Interventions

Following the development of the first anti-bullying program by Dan Olweus in Norway in the 1980s, a considerable number of anti-bullying interventions have flourished around the world to reduce bullying behaviors and protect victims. These fall under four broad categories: curriculum interventions generally designed to promote an anti-bullying attitude within the classroom; whole-school programs that intervene on the school, class, and individual level and address bullying as a systemic problem; social and behavioral skills training; and peer support programs including befriending and peer mediation. A systematic review conducted in 2004 evaluated the strength of scientific evidence in support of anti-bullying programs (Vreeman and Carroll 2007). The review concluded that only a small number of anti-bullying programs have been evaluated rigorously enough to permit strong conclusions about their effectiveness.

Whole-school interventions were found to be more effective in reducing victimization and bullying than interventions that focused only on curriculum changes or social and behavioral skills training. Targeting the whole school involves actions to improve the supervision of the playground, having regular meetings between parents and teachers, setting clear guidelines for dealing with bullying, and using role-playing and other techniques to teach students about bullying. The success of whole-school interventions, relative to other stand-alone approaches, supports the view that bullying is a systemic, sociocultural phenomenon derived from factors operating at the individual, class, school, family, and community level. Hence, interventions that target only one level are unlikely to have a significant impact.

A more recent systematic review of school-based anti-bullying programs found that, overall, these programs are effective in reducing bullying perpetration and victimization by an average of 20–23 % and 17–20 %, respectively (Farrington and Ttofi 2009). The interventions that were found to be most effective were those that incorporated parent training/meetings, disciplinary methods, and videos; targeted older children; and were delivered intensively and for longer. There is less robust evidence on the effectiveness of peer support programs that include activities such as befriending, peer counseling, conflict resolution, or mediation, and a systematic review suggested their use may lead to increases in bullying victimization.

More recently, there has been a growing interest in the use of virtual learning environments to reduce bullying at schools. The basic feature of these programs is a computer-based environment that creates a highly believable learning experience for children who find themselves “present” in the situation that causes emotional distress and, as a result, learn experientially how to deal with school problems. An example of such a program is “FearNot,” an intervention that was developed to help victims of bullying explore the success or otherwise of different coping strategies to dealing with bullying victimization through interactions with “virtual” victims of school bullying. The evaluation of this intervention found that the victims that received the intervention were more likely to escape victimization in the short term than victims in control schools who did not interact with the software (Sapouna et al. 2010). These results suggest that the use of virtual environments might be an engaging and useful component of whole-school anti-bullying policies that merits further testing. A key finding that emerged from this research is that interventions are more likely to be successful if they have the support of teachers and other school personnel and there is a strong commitment to reduce bullying in the school community. This is considered to be one of the reasons behind the huge success of the Olweus’ prevention program that has not been replicated to date.

Although an abundance of knowledge has emerged in recent years regarding the correlates of bullying behavior, there is still relatively little known about the causal processes and mechanisms associated with the bully and victim status. Longitudinal studies, which track bullies and victims over time, offer one of the best chances of disentangling the antecedents of bullying perpetration and victimization from its consequences, and these should form a key part of future research in this field. Another approach which shows much promise is the cutting-edge attempt to unravel the causes of bullying behavior made by researchers investigating biological and environmental influences and the way these influences interact.

One of these studies, involving 1,116 families with 10-year-old twins, found that the tendency for children to be bullied was largely explained by genetics (73 % of variance) and less so by environmental factors that were unique to each child (Ball et al. 2008). Another study of 506 six-year-old twins found that variance in victimization was accounted for only by shared and non-shared environmental influences (29 % and 71 %, respectively) and was not related to the child’s genetic predisposition (Brendgen et al. 2008). These discrepancies might be explained by differences in methodologies used, as studies drew on different informants to assess bullying victimization (mothers and peers, respectively). Although results to date have been contradictory, future breakthroughs in this area have the potential to transform radically the study of bullying.

To understand more fully how bullying behaviors develop, future research will also need to investigate in more depth how individual and classroom level factors interact to cause involvement in bullying. It is not currently understood whether the relationship between risk factors and bullying is the same across different school and class environments or the extent to which consequences of bullying and victimization are dependent on class-and school-level factors.

Finally, another area that would benefit from more attention is the investigation of resilience to bullying. Some initial evidence suggests that maternal warmth has an environmental effect in protecting children from negative outcomes associated with victimization (Bowes et al. 2010). However, we still know relatively little about the factors that promote resilience to bullying and victimization among at-risk children, and also what role bullying has to play in increasing resilience. We also know little about the factors that help victims cope better with the effects of victimization.

To conclude, what the recent flurry of research activity has highlighted is how complex the bullying phenomenon is and that, although much has been learned to date, there is clearly a great need to understand how variables describing the family, school, class, and community environment interact with individual characteristics to determine who gets bullied and who bullies others. Research should neither be blind to nor discouraged by these complexities.

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