conceptual framework in research about bullying

Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

Browse content in Arts and Humanities
Browse content in Archaeology
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
Archaeology by Region
Archaeology of Religion
Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
Biblical Archaeology
Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Historical Archaeology
History and Theory of Archaeology
Industrial Archaeology
Landscape Archaeology
Mortuary Archaeology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Underwater Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Browse content in Architecture
Architectural Structure and Design
History of Architecture
Residential and Domestic Buildings
Theory of Architecture
Browse content in Art
Art Subjects and Themes
History of Art
Industrial and Commercial Art
Theory of Art
Biographical Studies
Byzantine Studies
Browse content in Classical Studies
Classical History
Classical Philosophy
Classical Mythology
Classical Numismatics
Classical Literature
Classical Reception
Classical Art and Architecture
Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
Greek and Roman Papyrology
Greek and Roman Epigraphy
Greek and Roman Law
Greek and Roman Archaeology
Late Antiquity
Religion in the Ancient World
Social History
Digital Humanities
Browse content in History
Colonialism and Imperialism
Diplomatic History
Environmental History
Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Historical Geography
History by Period
History of Emotions
History of Agriculture
History of Education
History of Gender and Sexuality
Industrial History
Intellectual History
International History
Labour History
Legal and Constitutional History
Local and Family History
Maritime History
Military History
National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
Oral History
Political History
Public History
Regional and National History
Revolutions and Rebellions
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social and Cultural History
Theory, Methods, and Historiography
Urban History
World History
Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
Language Learning (Specific Skills)
Language Teaching Theory and Methods
Browse content in Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
History of English
Language Evolution
Language Reference
Language Acquisition
Language Variation
Language Families
Lexicography
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Theories
Linguistic Typology
Phonetics and Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Translation and Interpretation
Writing Systems
Browse content in Literature
Bibliography
Children's Literature Studies
Literary Studies (Romanticism)
Literary Studies (American)
Literary Studies (Asian)
Literary Studies (European)
Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
Literary Studies (Modernism)
Literary Studies - World
Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
Literary Studies (19th Century)
Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
Literary Studies (African American Literature)
Literary Studies (British and Irish)
Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
Literary Studies (History of the Book)
Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
Literary Studies (War Literature)
Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
Mythology and Folklore
Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Browse content in Media Studies
Browse content in Music
Applied Music
Dance and Music
Ethics in Music
Ethnomusicology
Gender and Sexuality in Music
Medicine and Music
Music Cultures
Music and Media
Music and Religion
Music and Culture
Music Education and Pedagogy
Music Theory and Analysis
Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
Musicology and Music History
Performance Practice and Studies
Race and Ethnicity in Music
Sound Studies
Browse content in Performing Arts
Browse content in Philosophy
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
Epistemology
Feminist Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Non-Western Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
Practical Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Browse content in Religion
Biblical Studies
Christianity
East Asian Religions
History of Religion
Judaism and Jewish Studies
Qumran Studies
Religion and Education
Religion and Health
Religion and Politics
Religion and Science
Religion and Law
Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
Religious Studies
Browse content in Society and Culture
Cookery, Food, and Drink
Cultural Studies
Customs and Traditions
Ethical Issues and Debates
Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
Sports and Outdoor Recreation
Technology and Society
Travel and Holiday
Visual Culture
Browse content in Law
Arbitration
Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
Commercial Law
Company Law
Browse content in Comparative Law
Systems of Law
Competition Law
Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Government Powers
Judicial Review
Local Government Law
Military and Defence Law
Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
Construction Law
Contract Law
Browse content in Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Evidence Law
Sentencing and Punishment
Employment and Labour Law
Environment and Energy Law
Browse content in Financial Law
Banking Law
Insolvency Law
History of Law
Human Rights and Immigration
Intellectual Property Law
Browse content in International Law
Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
Public International Law
IT and Communications Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
Law and Politics
Law and Society
Browse content in Legal System and Practice
Courts and Procedure
Legal Skills and Practice
Legal System - Costs and Funding
Primary Sources of Law
Regulation of Legal Profession
Medical and Healthcare Law
Browse content in Policing
Criminal Investigation and Detection
Police and Security Services
Police Procedure and Law
Police Regional Planning
Browse content in Property Law
Personal Property Law
Restitution
Study and Revision
Terrorism and National Security Law
Browse content in Trusts Law
Wills and Probate or Succession
Browse content in Medicine and Health
Browse content in Allied Health Professions
Arts Therapies
Clinical Science
Dietetics and Nutrition
Occupational Therapy
Operating Department Practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and Language Therapy
Browse content in Anaesthetics
General Anaesthesia
Clinical Neuroscience
Browse content in Clinical Medicine
Acute Medicine
Cardiovascular Medicine
Clinical Genetics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Dermatology
Endocrinology and Diabetes
Gastroenterology
Genito-urinary Medicine
Geriatric Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Medical Toxicology
Medical Oncology
Pain Medicine
Palliative Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine
Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
Rheumatology
Sleep Medicine
Sports and Exercise Medicine
Community Medical Services
Critical Care
Emergency Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Haematology
History of Medicine
Browse content in Medical Skills
Clinical Skills
Communication Skills
Nursing Skills
Surgical Skills
Browse content in Medical Dentistry
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Paediatric Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
Surgical Dentistry
Medical Ethics
Medical Statistics and Methodology
Browse content in Neurology
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuropathology
Nursing Studies
Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Gynaecology
Occupational Medicine
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology (ENT)
Browse content in Paediatrics
Neonatology
Browse content in Pathology
Chemical Pathology
Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
Histopathology
Medical Microbiology and Virology
Patient Education and Information
Browse content in Pharmacology
Psychopharmacology
Browse content in Popular Health
Caring for Others
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Self-help and Personal Development
Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Reproduction, Growth and Development
Primary Care
Professional Development in Medicine
Browse content in Psychiatry
Addiction Medicine
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Forensic Psychiatry
Learning Disabilities
Old Age Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Public Health
Browse content in Radiology
Clinical Radiology
Interventional Radiology
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Reproductive Medicine
Browse content in Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
General Surgery
Neurosurgery
Paediatric Surgery
Peri-operative Care
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Surgical Oncology
Transplant Surgery
Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Browse content in Science and Mathematics
Browse content in Biological Sciences
Aquatic Biology
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology and Conservation
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Molecular and Cell Biology
Natural History
Plant Sciences and Forestry
Research Methods in Life Sciences
Structural Biology
Systems Biology
Zoology and Animal Sciences
Browse content in Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Computational Chemistry
Crystallography
Environmental Chemistry
Industrial Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry
Mineralogy and Gems
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Chemistry
Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
Theoretical Chemistry
Browse content in Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Computer Architecture and Logic Design
Game Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Mathematical Theory of Computation
Programming Languages
Software Engineering
Systems Analysis and Design
Virtual Reality
Browse content in Computing
Business Applications
Computer Security
Computer Games
Computer Networking and Communications
Digital Lifestyle
Graphical and Digital Media Applications
Operating Systems
Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Geography
Geology and the Lithosphere
Maps and Map-making
Meteorology and Climatology
Oceanography and Hydrology
Palaeontology
Physical Geography and Topography
Regional Geography
Soil Science
Urban Geography
Browse content in Engineering and Technology
Agriculture and Farming
Biological Engineering
Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
Electronics and Communications Engineering
Energy Technology
Engineering (General)
Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
History of Engineering and Technology
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Technology of Industrial Chemistry
Transport Technology and Trades
Browse content in Environmental Science
Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
History of Science and Technology
Browse content in Materials Science
Ceramics and Glasses
Composite Materials
Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
Nanotechnology
Browse content in Mathematics
Applied Mathematics
Biomathematics and Statistics
History of Mathematics
Mathematical Education
Mathematical Finance
Mathematical Analysis
Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Probability and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
Browse content in Neuroscience
Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
Development of the Nervous System
Disorders of the Nervous System
History of Neuroscience
Invertebrate Neurobiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems
Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
Neuroscientific Techniques
Sensory and Motor Systems
Browse content in Physics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Biological and Medical Physics
Classical Mechanics
Computational Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
History of Physics
Mathematical and Statistical Physics
Measurement Science
Nuclear Physics
Particles and Fields
Plasma Physics
Quantum Physics
Relativity and Gravitation
Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
Browse content in Psychology
Affective Sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Educational Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
Health Psychology
History and Systems in Psychology
Music Psychology
Neuropsychology
Organizational Psychology
Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
Psychology Professional Development and Training
Research Methods in Psychology
Social Psychology
Browse content in Social Sciences
Browse content in Anthropology
Anthropology of Religion
Human Evolution
Medical Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
Regional Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Theory and Practice of Anthropology
Browse content in Business and Management
Business Ethics
Business Strategy
Business History
Business and Technology
Business and Government
Business and the Environment
Comparative Management
Corporate Governance
Corporate Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Health Management
Human Resource Management
Industrial and Employment Relations
Industry Studies
Information and Communication Technologies
International Business
Knowledge Management
Management and Management Techniques
Operations Management
Organizational Theory and Behaviour
Pensions and Pension Management
Public and Nonprofit Management
Social Issues in Business and Management
Strategic Management
Supply Chain Management
Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Forms of Crime
International and Comparative Criminology
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Development Studies
Browse content in Economics
Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
Asian Economics
Behavioural Finance
Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
Economic History
Economic Systems
Economic Methodology
Economic Development and Growth
Financial Markets
Financial Institutions and Services
General Economics and Teaching
Health, Education, and Welfare
History of Economic Thought
International Economics
Labour and Demographic Economics
Law and Economics
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
Microeconomics
Public Economics
Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
Welfare Economics
Browse content in Education
Adult Education and Continuous Learning
Care and Counselling of Students
Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Educational Equipment and Technology
Educational Strategies and Policy
Higher and Further Education
Organization and Management of Education
Philosophy and Theory of Education
Schools Studies
Secondary Education
Teaching of a Specific Subject
Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
Teaching Skills and Techniques
Browse content in Environment
Applied Ecology (Social Science)
Climate Change
Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Social Science)
Natural Disasters (Environment)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Social Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
Sustainability
Browse content in Human Geography
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Political Geography
Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
Communication Studies
Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
Browse content in Politics
African Politics
Asian Politics
Chinese Politics
Comparative Politics
Conflict Politics
Elections and Electoral Studies
Environmental Politics
Ethnic Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Gender and Politics
Human Rights and Politics
Indian Politics
International Relations
International Organization (Politics)
Irish Politics
Latin American Politics
Middle Eastern Politics
Political Behaviour
Political Economy
Political Institutions
Political Methodology
Political Communication
Political Philosophy
Political Sociology
Political Theory
Politics and Law
Politics of Development
Public Policy
Public Administration
Qualitative Political Methodology
Quantitative Political Methodology
Regional Political Studies
Russian Politics
Security Studies
State and Local Government
UK Politics
US Politics
Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
African Studies
Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle Eastern Studies
Native American Studies
Scottish Studies
Browse content in Research and Information
Research Methods
Browse content in Social Work
Addictions and Substance Misuse
Adoption and Fostering
Care of the Elderly
Child and Adolescent Social Work
Couple and Family Social Work
Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
Emergency Services
Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
International and Global Issues in Social Work
Mental and Behavioural Health
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social Policy and Advocacy
Social Work and Crime and Justice
Social Work Macro Practice
Social Work Practice Settings
Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
Welfare and Benefit Systems
Browse content in Sociology
Childhood Studies
Community Development
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Disability Studies
Economic Sociology
Gender and Sexuality
Gerontology and Ageing
Health, Illness, and Medicine
Marriage and the Family
Migration Studies
Occupations, Professions, and Work
Organizations
Population and Demography
Race and Ethnicity
Social Theory
Social Movements and Social Change
Social Research and Statistics
Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Education
Sport and Leisure
Urban and Rural Studies
Browse content in Warfare and Defence
Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
Land Forces and Warfare
Military Administration
Military Life and Institutions
Naval Forces and Warfare
Other Warfare and Defence Issues
Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
Weapons and Equipment

Bullying: A Guide to Research, Intervention, and Prevention

< Previous chapter
Next chapter >

3 Theories That Help to Understand Bullying

Published: May 2012
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

This chapter will entail a review of theoretical frameworks that are typically utilized to understand and address bullying, including an ecological systems framework, social learning, cognitive behavioural, attribution, lifestyles exposure and resilience frameworks. The complexity of bullying demands that more than one theoretical lens be used to help understand this phenomenon and to inform effective prevention and intervention strategies and programs. An ecological systems theoretical framework serves as an overarching umbrella within which the complex factors and interactions that influence bullying behavior can be examined and addressed. Innumerable theories can be applied within an ecological systems framework—at different times, sequentially or simultaneously.

Personal account

Sign in with email/username & password
Get email alerts
Save searches
Purchase content
Activate your purchase/trial code
Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with username/password
Recommend to your librarian
Institutional account management
Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institutionâ€™s website and Oxford Academic.

Click Sign in through your institution.
Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institutionâ€™s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see â€˜Sign in through society siteâ€™ in the sign in pane within a journal:

Click Sign in through society site.
When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.

Month:	Total Views:
October 2022	61
November 2022	64
December 2022	20
January 2023	9
February 2023	16
March 2023	20
April 2023	10
May 2023	20
June 2023	5
July 2023	15
August 2023	4
September 2023	8
October 2023	30
November 2023	28
December 2023	12
January 2024	19
February 2024	7
March 2024	16
April 2024	10
May 2024	13
June 2024	17
July 2024	4
August 2024	5
September 2024	3

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Rights and permissions
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

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

___________________

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.

Berne, S., Frisén, A., Schultze-Krumbholz, A., Scheithauer, H., Naruskov, K., Luik, P., Katzer, C., Erentaite, R., and Zukauskiene, R. (2013). Cyberbullying assessment instruments: A systematic review. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 18 (2), 320-334.

Bradshaw, C.P., Waasdorp, T.E., and Johnson, S.L. (2015). Overlapping verbal, relational, physical, and electronic forms of bullying in adolescence: Influence of school context. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 44 (3), 494-508.

Burk, F.L. (1897). Teasing and bullying. The Pedagogical Seminary, 4 (3), 336-371.

Currie, C., Zanotti, C., Morgan, A., Currie, D., de Looze, M., Roberts, C., Samdal, O., Smith, O.R., and Barnekow, V. (2012). Social determinants of health and well-being among young people. Copenhagen, Denmark: World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe.

Eisenberg, M.E., and Aalsma, M.C. (2005). Bullying and peer victimization: Position paper of the Society for Adolescent Medicine. Journal of Adolescent Health, 36 (1), 88-91.

Espelage, D.L., and Swearer, S.M. (2003). Research on school bullying and victimization: What have we learned and where do we go from here? School Psychology Review, 32 (3), 365-383.

Farrington, D., and Ttofi, M. (2009). School-based programs to reduce bullying and victimization: A systematic review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 5 (6).

Finkelhor, D., Ormrod, R.K., and Turner, H.A. (2007). Poly-victimization: A neglected component in child victimization. Child Abuse & Neglect , 31 (1), 7-26.

Gladden, R.M., Vivolo-Kantor, A.M., Hamburger, M.E., and Lumpkin, C.D. (2014). Bullying Surveillance among Youths: Uniform Definitions for Public Health and Recommended Data Elements, Version 1.0 . Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Education.

Godleski, S.A., Kamper, K.E., Ostrov, J.M., Hart, E.J., and Blakely-McClure, S.J. (2015). Peer victimization and peer rejection during early childhood. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 44 (3), 380-392.

Hamburger, M.E., Basile, K.C., and Vivolo, A.M. (2011). Measuring Bullying Victimization, Perpetration, and Bystander Experiences: A Compendium of Assessment Tools. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Hellström, L., Persson, L., and Hagquist, C. (2015). Understanding and defining bullying—Adolescents’ own views. Archives of Public Health, 73 (4), 1-9.

Holt, M.K., Vivolo-Kantor, A.M., Polanin, J.R., Holland, K.M., DeGue, S., Matjasko, J.L., Wolfe, M., and Reid, G. (2015). Bullying and suicidal ideation and behaviors: A meta-analysis. Pediatrics, 135 (2), e496-e509.

Hopkins, L., Taylor, L., Bowen, E., and Wood, C. (2013). A qualitative study investigating adolescents’ understanding of aggression, bullying and violence. Children and Youth Services Review, 35 (4), 685-693.

Hymel, S., and Swearer, S.M. (2015). Four decades of research on school bullying: An introduction. American Psychologist, 70 (4), 293.

Institute of Medicine. (1994). Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders: Frontiers for Preventive Intervention Research. Committee on Prevention of Mental Disorders. P.J. Mrazek and R.J. Haggerty, Editors. Division of Biobehavioral Sciences and Mental Disorders. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. (2011). The Science of Adolescent Risk-taking: Workshop Report . Committee on the Science of Adolescence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. (2012). Communications and Technology for Violence Prevention: Workshop Summary . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. (2014a). The Evidence for Violence Prevention across the Lifespan and around the World: Workshop Summary . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. (2014b). Strategies for Scaling Effective Family-Focused Preventive Interventions to Promote Children’s Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Health: Workshop Summary . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. (2014c). Building Capacity to Reduce Bullying: Workshop Summary . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. (2015). Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Kim, Y.S., and Leventhal, B. (2008). Bullying and suicide. A review. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 20 (2), 133-154.

Koo, H. (2007). A time line of the evolution of school bullying in differing social contexts. Asia Pacific Education Review, 8 (1), 107-116.

Kota, R., Schoohs, S., Benson, M., and Moreno, M.A. (2014). Characterizing cyberbullying among college students: Hacking, dirty laundry, and mocking. Societies, 4 (4), 549-560.

McDougall, P., and Vaillancourt, T. (2015). Long-term adult outcomes of peer victimization in childhood and adolescence: Pathways to adjustment and maladjustment. American Psychologist, 70 (4), 300.

Monks, C.P., and Smith, P.K. (2006). Definitions of bullying: Age differences in understanding of the term and the role of experience. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24 (4), 801-821.

National Institute of Justice. (2015). Comprehensive School Safety Initiative. 2015. Available: http://nij.gov/topics/crime/school-crime/Pages/school-safety-initiative.aspx#about [October 2015].

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2002). Community Programs to Promote Youth Development . Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth. J. Eccles and J.A. Gootman, Editors. Board on Children, Youth, and Families, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2003). Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence . Case Studies of School Violence Committee. M.H. Moore, C.V. Petrie, A.A. Barga, and B.L. McLaughlin, Editors. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Research Council and Institute of Medicine. (2009). Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders among Young People: Progress and Possibilities. Committee on the Prevention of Mental Disorders and Substance Abuse Among Children, Youth, and Young Adults: Research Advances and Promising Interventions. M.E. O’Connell, T. Boat, and K.E. Warner, Editors. Board on Children, Youth, and Families, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Olweus, D. (1978). Aggression in the Schools: Bullies and Whipping Boys. Washington, DC: Hemisphere.

Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at School. What We Know and Whal We Can Do. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Olweus, D. (1996). Bully/victim problems in school. Prospects, 26 (2), 331-359.

Slonje, R., and Smith, P.K. (2008). Cyberbullying: Another main type of bullying? Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 49 (2), 147-154.

Smith, P. ., and Monks, C. . (2008). Concepts of bullying: Developmental and cultural aspects. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 20 (2), 101-112.

Sourander, A. (2010). The association of suicide and bullying in childhood to young adulthood: A review of cross-sectional and longitudinal research findings. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 55 (5), 282.

Sticca, F., and Perren, S. (2013). Is cyberbullying worse than traditional bullying? Examining the differential roles of medium, publicity, and anonymity for the perceived severity of bullying. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42 (5), 739-750.

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.

Vlachou, M., Andreou, E., Botsoglou, K., and Didaskalou, E. (2011). Bully/victim problems among preschool children: A review of current research evidence. Educational Psychology Review, 23 (3), 329-358.

Wolke, D., and Lereya, S.T. (2015). Long-term effects of bullying. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 100 (9), 879-885.

Ybarra, M.L., Espelage, D.L., and Mitchell, K.J. (2014). Differentiating youth who are bullied from other victims of peer-aggression: The importance of differential power and repetition. Journal of Adolescent Health, 55 (2), 293-300.

This page intentionally left blank.

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.

READ FREE ONLINE

Welcome to OpenBook!

You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

Show this book's table of contents , where you can jump to any chapter by name.

...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

Switch between the Original Pages , where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter .

Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

View our suggested citation for this chapter.

Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

Get Email Updates

Do you enjoy reading reports from the Academies online for free ? Sign up for email notifications and we'll let you know about new publications in your areas of interest when they're released.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings
My Bibliography
Collections
Citation manager

Save citation to file

Email citation, add to collections.

Create a new collection
Add to an existing collection

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search, create a file for external citation management software, your rss feed.

Search in PubMed
Search in NLM Catalog
Add to Search

A conceptual framework for understanding the association between school bullying victimization and substance misuse

Affiliations.

1 School of Social Work, Wayne State University.
2 School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
3 School of Social Welfare, University of California.
4 College of Education, Wayne State University.
PMID: 25545436
PMCID: PMC4291077
DOI: 10.1037/ort0000036

This article reviews current research findings and presents a conceptual framework for better understanding the relationship between bullying victimization (hereafter referred to as victimization) and substance misuse (hereafter referred to as SM) among adolescents. Although victimization and SM may appear to be separate problems, research suggests an intriguing relationship between the 2. We present a brief, empirical overview of the direct association between victimization and adolescent SM, followed by a proposed conceptual framework that includes co-occurring risk factors for victimization and SM within family, peer, and school and community contexts. Next, we discuss potential mediators linking victimization and SM, such as internalizing problems, traumatic stress, low academic performance, and school truancy and absence. We then identify potential moderating influences of age, gender and sex, social supports, and school connectedness that could amplify or abate the association between victimization and SM. Finally, we discuss practice and policy implications.

PubMed Disclaimer

A conceptual framework on the…

A conceptual framework on the association between bullying victimization and substance misuse

Publication types

Search in MeSH

Related information

Grants and funding.

K23 AA017702/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/United States
K23AA017702/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/United States

LinkOut - more resources

Full text sources.

American Psychological Association
Europe PubMed Central
Ovid Technologies, Inc.
PubMed Central

Other Literature Sources

scite Smart Citations
MedlinePlus Consumer Health Information
MedlinePlus Health Information
Citation Manager

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
JMIR Pediatr Parent
v.2(1); Jan-Jun 2019

Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: Stakeholder-Driven Concept Mapping Approach

Megan andreas moreno.

1 Department of Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Nikita Midamba

2 Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, WA, United States

Henry S Berman

3 Seattle Children's Hospital, Seattle, WA, United States

Peter S Moreno

4 Department of Continuing Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Mike Donlin

5 The School Safety Center, Office of the State Superintendent, Olympia, WA, United States

Erik Schlocker

Cyberbullying includes bullying behaviors on the Web; these behaviors are inconsistently measured and lack standardized definitions. The Uniform Definition of Bullying provides a consensus-based definition of bullying, and it highlights the need for an evidence-based definition of a model for cyberbullying.

Toward understanding the key elements and constructs defining cyberbullying, the objective of this study was to develop a stakeholder-driven conceptual model of cyberbullying.

Concept mapping is a validated research method that leverages both qualitative and quantitative approaches to integrate stakeholder input on complex topics. This process was used to develop a concept map and adapt it through participant input to a conceptual model. The validated concept mapping approach includes 5 steps: preparation, generation (brainstorming), structuring (sorting), representation (statistical analysis), and interpretation. We recruited stakeholder participants, including adolescents, as well as parents and professionals representing education, health, and the justice system. Analysis included hierarchical cluster analysis to develop a cluster map representing cyberbullying, followed by adaptation of that map to a conceptual model through qualitative participant feedback.

A total of 177 participants contributed to the concept mapping process, including 69% females, 50% adults, and 68% Caucasian, representing each of our stakeholder groups. A total of 228 brainstorming items were generated and sorted into a concept map that included 9 clusters. Clusters included topics that had strong overlap with traditional bullying, such as consequences for perpetrators and targets, with example items “alienating” and “crippling.” Some clusters were unique, such as cyberbullying techniques, with example item “excessive messaging,” and characteristics of the cyberbullying experience, with example item “constant.” Through the interpretation step, a conceptual model emerged, illustrating connections and distinctions between traditional bullying and cyberbullying.

Conclusions

We found that in generating a stakeholder-driven concept map of cyberbullying, participants could not describe cyberbullying without integrating key concepts from traditional bullying. On the basis of our conceptual model, there are unique characteristics of cyberbullying that suggest that uniform definitions of bullying need to be evaluated to ensure their application to cyberbullying.

Introduction

Bullying is both a public health and a criminal justice problem that occurs throughout the world, and bullying can happen at many stages in the life course, from childhood to adolescence, even into adulthood. Although traditional “schoolyard” bullying remains problematic, over the past decade, technologies have provided new platforms on which bullying can occur. It is estimated that 19.6% of children of ages 14 to 18 years were bullied on school property, and 14.8% of children aged 14 to 18 years were electronically bullied [ 1 ]. These electronic forms of contact may include social networking websites (eg, Instagram, Twitter), Web-based games, instant messaging, short message service text messaging, and mobile phone pictures. This phenomenon has come to be known as cyberbullying. It is estimated that 1% to 41% of US adolescents have perpetrated cyberbullying and 3% to 72% have been targets [ 2 ].

Consequences of Bullying and Cyberbullying

Previous studies have examined the substantial negative effects that cyberbullying can have on both targets and perpetrators. Adolescents who have experienced cyberbullying report higher levels of depression and lower self-esteem [ 3 ]. Furthermore, emotional distress, anger, sadness, detachment, externalized hostility, and delinquency are more common in targets of cyberbullying than in the general population [ 2 ]. Many of these effects are also seen in targets of traditional bullying, suggesting similarities in the negative consequences of these phenomena [ 4 ].

Current Challenges in Understanding Cyberbullying

Assessing the prevalence of cyberbullying remains challenging, partly as the field lacks a conceptual approach or an operational definition of the term [ 5 ]. A consistent definition can support tracking of cyberbullying over time, and it has been called out as one of the major challenges in the field [ 6 ]. In the realm of traditional bullying, collaboration across experts in the field led to the development of a consensus-driven definition. Led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Uniform Definition of Bullying is as follows: Bullying is any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners; bullying involves an observed or perceived power imbalance, and it 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 [ 7 ]. Within this definition, 4 different types of bullying behavior are commonly identified: physical, verbal, relational, and damage to property [ 6 ]. Observational studies have shown that the different forms of bullying of youths may overlap [ 8 , 9 ]. Within the CDC definition, cyberbullying is considered bullying by digital electronic means. Thus, cyberbullying is considered a context in which bullying occurs.

The extent to which the Uniform Definition can be applied to cyberbullying remains uncertain. A previous study that used focus groups with college students to discuss whether the Uniform Definition applied to cyberbullying found that students were wary of applying the definition. Participants in this study described elements of cyberbullying that they felt were distinct from the Uniform Definition, including their perception that cyberbullying often involves less emphasis on aggression, intention, and repetition than other forms of bullying [ 10 ]. A conceptual model describing key elements of cyberbullying could contribute to understanding the key components of cyberbullying and assessing how it may be similar or different compared with traditional bullying. A data-driven conceptual model could potentially provide evidence to inform definitions, measurement approaches, or future interventions.

Study Purpose

Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop a stakeholder-informed conceptual model for cyberbullying. To fulfill this purpose and ensure the model was driven by participant views and data, concept mapping methodology was applied. This validated methodology has been applied toward developing conceptual frameworks to describe complex topics [ 9 - 11 ]. Previous concept mapping studies have been applied to complex topics, such as intimate partner violence, physical rehabilitation experiences, and adolescent sexuality [ 12 - 14 ]. This method has also been used in previous health research to provide insights into mental health and illness [ 10 , 12 , 14 , 15 ]. The outcome of this process is a concept map, a visual representation of the key concepts and their interrelationships. The final map that is created is entirely in the language of the participants, and it produces an easily interpreted visual representation that can be adapted to represent a conceptual model.

Study Setting and Design

This study was conducted in Washington State, and this study recruited participants from academic and community settings. The study design was concept mapping. The Western Institutional Review Board approved this study.

Participants and Recruitment

The concept mapping approach is ideally suited for data collection from stakeholders relevant to the concept under investigation. To ground our conceptual framework in views of stakeholders involved in cyberbullying, participants included adolescents and young adults, aged 12 to 21 years, as these youth are those who directly experience cyberbullying. We also included parents of the youth of these ages, as parents are often involved when their children are cyberbullying. In selecting additional stakeholders for this study, we considered the evidence that cyberbullying can occur at home, at school, and in the community [ 16 , 17 ]. Thus, we included educators, including teachers and administrators. We also included professionals typically involved in cyberbullying prevention and identification or intervention: health professionals, such as physicians, nurses, social workers, researchers and counselors, and professionals involved in law and policy, including attorneys. Additional eligibility criteria included English speaking. Concept mapping studies typically use qualitative-sized samples of approximately 50 to 80 participants in total [ 9 ], often with higher numbers of participants at the data generation and interpretation steps (brainstorming and interpretation steps). As we had several stakeholder groups involved in this study, we planned to include a larger number of participants to ensure we achieved stakeholder representation across each concept mapping step and across the number of groups involved in this study [ 11 ]. All participants were recruited through purposeful sampling from academic and community organizations between March 2013 and December 2015. Purposeful sampling included contacting local schools, parent organizations, and universities to identity participants. Each adult participant gave written consent for participation; parental consent and adolescent assent were obtained for youth participants. Before the start of each data collection, participants completed a survey that included questions about age, gender, race/ethnicity, and role (ie, student, professional, and parent). Participants who completed the survey were provided a US $5 incentive, and participants who completed all other stages of data collection were provided a US $20 incentive.

Concept Mapping

The concept mapping methodology was chosen, as it directly involves participants and balances group consensus with individual contribution, as some steps require group participation, whereas others are done individually. The method also allows for the consolidation of key concepts from a broad array of initial data points. A total of 5 steps are involved with the concept map creation process: preparation, generation, structuring, representation, and interpretation [ 9 ]. As we wanted to use our concept map to and wanted it to translate to a draft conceptual model, we also added a final step to propose and get feedback on a conceptual model.

Preparation

The goal of preparation was to develop a focus prompt to encourage brainstorming statements from participants in the generation step. The prompt was specifically designed to be an open-ended question that required participants to complete a sentence to achieve consistent phrasing. We developed a focus prompt of “A behavior or characteristic of cyberbullying is...”. This prompt was pilot tested with a convenience sample of adolescents, researchers, and health care providers before its use for data collection.

Generation (Brainstorming) Sessions

The goal of the brainstorming step was to generate a list of participant-generated items with sufficient breadth and depth to represent the full spectrum of ideas related to what defines cyberbullying. The concept mapping literature describes 2 approaches to collect brainstorming responses: Web-based survey and focus groups. To develop a brainstorming list with sufficient breadth and depth to inform our concept map, we used both approaches. First, individual brainstorming responses were conducted using a secure Web-based survey tool. The goal of the Web-based brainstorming approach was to allow for greater reach in participant sampling among the adult professional population. Second, brainstorming was conducted using a semistructured focus group format. Focus groups allowed for interaction among participants, as well as opportunities for participants to build on each other’s thoughts [ 18 ]. Each focus group included 5 to 8 participants and lasted between 45 and 90 min. Focus groups with youths were held separately from focus groups with adults. During focus groups, after obtaining consent and providing instructions, the facilitator presented the focus prompt to the group. Participants were initially given 10 min to write individual responses to the prompt on paper. Thereafter, the topic was opened for group discussion toward further idea generation and revision. At the conclusion of the session, all written responses were collected from the participants; any additional ideas that were discussed by the group as a whole were recorded by the facilitator through transcription of the audio recording. All focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. A total of 2 investigators reviewed the transcripts to identify items to contribute to the brainstorming list. The brainstorming list was reviewed by 2 investigators to eliminate redundancy, and it was compiled into 1 revised list, representing all ideas and statements generated by the brainstorming step.

Structuring (Sorting) Sessions

The goal of the structuring step was to sort the statements generated in the brainstorming step. To form overarching constructs, this process provides insights into how individual ideas are related. In the sorting step, participants were given a stack of index cards, each of which had a single written item from the revised brainstorming list. Individuals were asked to sort the cards into categories that made sense to them and create a label for each pile. All groups were determined by the participants, each item could be sorted into only 1 group, and every group needed at least 1 item within it.

Representation

The goal of representation was to apply quantitative approaches to analyze the data toward creation of a visual point map representing individual items. Analyses were conducted using the Concept Systems Core software Build 2016.062.11 (Concept Systems Inc) and SAS software version 9.3 (SAS Institute). Sort data were organized into a square symmetric-similarity matrix (SSSM) for each participant. In this process, pairs of brainstorming ideas were tested to determine if they had been grouped together. An overall SSSM was constructed by summing the matrices for all participants. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) of the overall SSSM was used to produce a 2-dimensional point map [ 19 ]. The point map represented all items in a 2-dimensional plane; items that were commonly grouped together were closer together on the point map. Items that were rarely or never grouped together were further apart on the point map. Stress index was calculated to assess the fit of the MDS solution to the data. Stress indices ranging from 0.10 to 0.35 indicate acceptable fit for concept mapping, with lower values indicating better fit [ 9 , 12 ]. The cluster map was created by applying hierarchical cluster analysis over the overall SSSM. During this step, the software analyzes the data to perform cluster analysis and MDS to create a visual representation of the ideas in the form of clusters. The analysis process groups the ideas according to the results of the MDS into clusters. Items that were similarly categorized by participants appear closer together on the map than items that were not commonly categorized together. We then reviewed the point map overlaid with a range of clusters generated by the Concept Systems software. The role of the investigators was to use a consensus-driven iterative process to identify the cluster arrangement with the strongest theoretical support. Using the point map, the concept mapping software generates sequential versions of the concept map with a change of 1 cluster per version. The upper bound of the range of cluster arrangements examined was 2 SDs above the mean number of statement groups produced during the sort process. The lower bound of the range of number of clusters was the minimum number of clusters created by any participant. The analysis process included reviewing cluster arrangements sequentially and identifying the optimal cluster solution through an iterative process. Finally, the investigators assigned a label to each cluster on the basis of the theoretical construct described by its constituent statements. Each cluster was initially named by the software on the basis of the ideas generated by participants; names were reviewed and revised for clarity by 3 raters. The draft concept map was reviewed by all investigators to ensure it was qualitatively consistent and logical. Any revisions to the map were based on consensus of the investigators.

Interpretation

The first goal of these sessions was to conduct focus groups to allow participants to view, discuss, and interpret the concept map. The discussion was led by a facilitator and began with an introduction and review of the concept mapping methodology. The steps of the project and the focus prompt were reviewed; thereafter, the preliminary concept map was introduced. Participants were asked to discuss cluster groupings and labels, as well as to explore the overall structure of the map. Each group was asked ways in which the map represented the definition of cyberbullying and the ways it could be improved. After concluding focus groups, the data were transcribed verbatim and evaluated by 2 investigators. All focus groups were analyzed for comments reinforcing elements of the concept map, as well as suggesting edits to the map. A total of 2 investigators identified areas of consensus and used these to modify the concept map. If consensus was not reached via 2 investigators, a third was asked to review data and determine a decision on whether to modify the concept map. Following finalization of the concept map, the investigators then identified feedback specific to a conceptual model. The draft conceptual model was developed on the basis of feedback from participants in the interpretation groups. Similar to the abovementioned, 2 investigators identified areas of consensus and used these to modify the model. If consensus was not reached via 2 investigators, a third was asked to review data and determine a decision.

Translation to a Conceptual Model

We concluded focus groups in the interpretation step by asking about the transition to a conceptual model. We wanted to ensure the conceptual model was representative of the concept map and get input on the transition to such a model. Using a draft conceptual model, we then conducted a final series of key informant interviews to obtain feedback on both the concept map and the conceptual model to ensure alignment. These interviews were also recorded and transcribed verbatim. A total of 2 investigators reviewed transcripts. They identified areas of consensus around elements of the conceptual model and proposed edits to the model to reflect participant feedback.

Participants

A total of 177 participants contributed to the study. A total of 80 participants contributed the generation step; this included 37 Web-based survey participants and 43 focus group participants across 6 groups. In the structuring session, 26 participants completed sort activities. In the interpretation step, a total of 71 participants contributed to a focus group or key informant interview. Youth had an average age of 17 (SD 2.25), and adults had an average age of 43 (SD 12.9). There were 50% of adults over age 21; adult professionals included 24% health professionals, 22% clinical researchers, 12% educators, and 2% attorneys. Table 1 provides demographic information of our participants across the concept mapping process.

Participant demographics across steps of the concept mapping process.

Demographics of participants across concept mapping steps		Step 2: Brainstorming (n=43)	Step 2: Brainstorming (n=37)	Step 3: Sorting (n=26)	Step 5: Interpretation (n=63)	Translation to conceptual model (n=8)	Total

	Female	34 (79)	32 (86)	17 (65)	34 (54)	5 (62.5)	122 (69)
	Male	8 (19)	5 (14)	8 (31)	29 (46)	3 (37.5)	53 (30)
	Unknown	1 (2)	0 (0)	1 (4)	0 (0)	0 (0)	2 (1)

	Adults over 21 years of age	5 (12)	35 (95)	19 (73)	21 (33)	8 (100)	88 (50)
	Youth aged 21 and under	21 (49)	0 (0)	6 (23)	37 (59)	0 (0)	64 (36)
	Age unknown	17 (40)	2 (5)	1 (4)	5 (8)	0 (0)	25 (14)

	Black/African American	3 (7)	2 (5)	2 (8)	4 (6)	1 (12)	12 (7)
	Asian/Pacific Islander	1 (2)	8 (22)	2 (8)	11 (17)	0 (0)	22 (12)
	Caucasian	31 (72)	25 (68)	20 (77)	40 (64)	5 (64)	121 (68)
	Hispanic/Latino	2 (5)	1 (3)	1 (4)	2 (3)	1 (12)	7 (4)
	Native American	3 (7)	0 (0)	0 (0)	4 (6)	0 (0)	7 (4)
	Mixed race	1 (2)	0 (0)	0 (0)	3 (4)	1 (12)	4 (2)
	Other/unknown	2 (5)	1 (3)	1 (4)	0 (0)	0 (0)	4 (2)

	Student	22 (51)	1 (3)	5 (19)	28 (44)	0 (0)	56 (32)
	Health professional	13 (30)	8 (22)	1 (4)	15 (24)	2 (25)	39 (22)
	Educator/teacher	3 (7)	1 (3)	5 (19)	0 (0)	0 (0)	9 (5)
	Administrator/librarian	0 (0)	9 (24)	0 (0)	0 (0)	0 (0)	9 (5)
	Researcher	0 (0)	13 (35)	6 (23)	14 (27)	6 (75)	40 (24)
	Social worker	0 (0)	2 (5)	0 (0)	1 (2)	0 (0)	3 (2)
	Counselor	0 (0)	3 (8)	1 (4)	1 (2)	0 (0)	5 (3)
	Law professional	0 (0)	(0)	3 (12)	0 (0)	0 (0)	3 (2)
	Other/unknown	5 (12)	0 (0)	5 (19)	3 (3)	0 (0)	13 (7)

	Parent	4 (9)	0 (0)	13 (50)	7 (12)	2 (25)	26 (15)
	Nonparent	0 (0)	0 (0)	11 (42)	52 (83)	6 (75)	63 (35)
	Unknown	39 (91)	37 (100)	2 (8)	10 (0)	0 (0)	88 (50)

Step 2: Generation

A total of 311 statements were produced during the generation step of data collection. Refining the statement list led to removing of duplicate statements (n=18) and merging of similar statements (n=65). The final list of brainstorming statements included 228 unique aspects of cyberbullying.

Step 3: Structuring

During the sorting procedure, participants sorted the statements into individual groups, the number of groups ranged between 4 and 30 individual groups (mean 12.9, SD 6.1, median 11).

Step 4: Representation

The stress value for the fit of the MDS solution to the structuring data was 0.3 for the 9 cluster solution, indicating adequate fit. Overall, the 9 cluster solution presented in Figure 1 was found to represent the best fit for the data after assessing a total of 10 unique cluster solutions, ranging between 2 and 12 clusters. The 9 clusters depicted on the Cyberbullying Concept Map are described in Table 2 .

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is pediatrics_v2i1e12683_fig1.jpg

Cyberbullying concept map developed by stakeholders including adolescents and young adults, parents, community members such as educators, clinicians and attorneys. Each number represents a single item proposed by participants, and the clusters represents how participants sorted items into groups of alike concepts.

Cyberbullying concept map clusters.

Cluster number	Proposed name	Example items
1	Characteristics of perpetrators and targets	Lack of empathy, afraid to go back to school, and “small minds”
2	Consequences for perpetrators and targets	Alienating, crippling, and devastating
3	Characteristics of the bullying experience	Aggressive, intent to harm, disrespect, and hostile
4 and 8	Bullying techniques	Ostracize, antagonize, and “mean girls”
5	Characteristics of the cyberbullying experience	Anonymous, constant, and perceived lack of consequences
6	Cyberbullying techniques	Making unwanted posts go viral, excessive messaging
7	Cyberbullying cases	Sending rude messages from someone else’s account to get people mad at the person
9	Perceived vulnerabilities	Negative statements about clothes, family situation, intelligence, social status, appearance, and sexuality

Step 5: Interpretation

The interpretation step first involved reviewing the concept map and discussing participant perceptions of that map. Discussions by participants consistently centered on how to describe cyberbullying as a phenomenon that was perceived as both similar to and distinct from traditional bullying. Common topics of discussion included that many characteristics and motivations for bullying were considered to be similar and sometimes identical for both cyberbullying and traditional bullying. However, participants felt strongly that there were unique aspects to cyberbullying, including novel methods or situations in which bullying could arise, as well as providing new tools for bullying perpetrators. For example, participants described that a unique aspect of cyberbullying was that cyberbullying situations could arise from innocuous comments on the Web that are taken out of context or jokes that go too far. These messages can be virally spread, such that they then represent bullying. As an example, an adolescent described how compliments posted on the Web can be twisted to become “backlash compliments, like oh your hair looks great [emphasis added].” The adolescent further described that these sarcastic comments were more likely to be “liked” or “shared,” allowing them to be seen and disseminated by others. Another example described by a parent was learning that her son’s school was having a Web-based “draft,” described as follows: “they are actually, like, doing a draft, a first round draft, about which girls they want to take to the prom and ranking them, it is all done online.” It was described that this scenario may not be considered a traditional bullying situation but that it could have similar negative impacts on youth who were the targets. In these scenarios, the initial communication or situation may not have been unwanted or aggressively hurtful, but the situation could devolve into bullying because of the format of Web-based communication. Another area in which participants noted unique aspects of cyberbullying was how the Web-based environment provides tools so that a target of bullying can “turn the tables” to become a perpetrator. A quote from an adolescent described the following:

...cause when you’re in person you can see the physical build of the person and if they’re bigger than you, you don’t usually want to pick a fight with them. But on the internet, it’s just a screen in front of you with a username and they’re all the same that way.

This quote describes participants’ views of how a target of bullying can achieve power by using a “screen in front of you” to bully his/her perpetrator. Participants frequently discussed their perceptions of heightened fluidity of the roles of perpetrator and target in cyberbullying situations. The interconnectedness of traditional in-person bullying and cyberbullying was also a common topic. One example quote from an adolescent described the following:

Umm so the people I know that, or the people that I’ve known that have been cyberbullied usually they’re the targets from like bullying at school and they go and try to pass the pain on the internet to someone else, so it’s kind of like a circle going around like that cause they can’t like, they’re not like, the smaller guy can’t beat up the bigger guy, so he goes on the internet and destroys him on the internet, and the bigger guy comes back and destroys the little guy at school, so it’s just like a circle between the two.

A notable trend in participant contributions to the topic is that so many spoke from personal experiences with cyberbullying scenarios. Adolescents spoke about situations they or their peers had experienced. Parents often shared situations their children had experienced. A parent described the following:

I wrote down some based on, um, experience one of our daughters had about a year ago. Uh, repeated contacts that were unwanted, so, just continuous contacting, right, um, when not asked for, attempt to push beliefs on to the recipient that are not those of the recipient, uh, profane language if, of course it’s not wanted, uh, yelling in the electronic message if that’s not the, ya know, normal tone of the message, and just threats or blackmail.

On the basis of participant input, the conceptual model of cyberbullying included the relationship between cyberbullying and bullying ( Figure 2 ). Key aspects of the conceptual model included the overlap in bullying perpetrators and targets, which includes clusters 1 and 9 from the concept map. Important characteristics of bullying perpetrators suggested by participants included bullying as “a way to deal with insecurities,” which was suggested by a teacher. A characteristic of bullying targets nominated by a legal professional was “afraid to go back to school.” Within the circle describing bullying targets were specific characteristics that were nominated as denoting particular risk for bullying, including being of racial or sexual minority groups. Some shared characteristics of both perpetrators and targets included “depression risk,” suggested by several participants, including adults and adolescents. The conceptual model also included 2 overlapping boxes, with the larger describing characteristics of the bullying experience; these included descriptors, such as disrespectful, mean, and aggressive. Overlapping this box was a smaller box representing unique characteristics of cyberbullying proposed by participants, such as “hides behind screen” (adult, parent). Similarly, a larger box described bullying techniques, including false information, public shaming, or belittling. Overlapping this box was a smaller box representing techniques that were specific to cyberbullying, including “displaying negative images” (adult, health professional) “covering with false names” (adult, social worker), and “virtual clique” (adult, administrator). Nestled within this box was a smaller box in which specific examples of cyberbullying cases were described, including “photo-sharing without consent” (adult, parent). The construct describing consequences to bullying perpetrator and targets was a shared construct. Participants reflected that they did not perceive specific differences between cyberbullying and traditional bullying for this construct. An area of discussion in which there was a lack of consensus was whether the concept map or conceptual model appropriately represented the role of bystanders. A quote from an older adolescent was, “I feel like this entire thing is just focused on the bully and the victim and not just, it’s just on them, and not the bystanders.” However, other youth discussed viewing cluster 4 on the concept map as adequately representing the role of bystanders.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is pediatrics_v2i1e12683_fig2.jpg

Conceptual model of cyberbullying and its relationship with bullying. Cluster numbers on the diagram are from cyberbullying concept map in parentheses.

This study used a concept mapping approach to gain insights and perspectives from stakeholders toward a concept map and a stakeholder-driven conceptual model of cyberbullying. During the brainstorming step, stakeholders generated a diverse and expansive list of statements describing cyberbullying. The sorting procedure yielded a robust concept map of 9 clusters that comprised characteristics of the people involved, actions, and consequences that define bullying and cyberbullying. After our concept mapping process, we utilized stakeholder insights to develop a conceptual model that illustrates areas in which cyberbullying is similar to and unique from traditional bullying. This conceptual model represents participants’ perception of cyberbullying and suggests that cyberbullying can be best understood within the context of all bullying behavior, with recognition of the unique challenges it presents.

Principal Findings

A major finding of this study is the several ways in which bullying and cyberbullying were aligned. This finding is aligned with emerging literature supporting strong connections between bullying and cyberbullying. Recently studies have illustrated that individuals involved in bullying often experience different types of bullying within a given situation, which may include verbal, physical, and cyber experiences [ 18 , 20 ]. Similarly, we found that a key area of overlap between cyberbullying and traditional bullying includes characteristics of the individuals involved. This study’s participants described characteristics of both bullying perpetrators and targets that applied to traditional bullying and cyberbullying, including describing bullying as a way to address insecurities. Participants emphasized the fluidity of roles between perpetrator and targets for both cyberbullying and bullying. They noted that an adolescent’s ability to engage in cyberbullying would not be limited by physical or social power; thus, cyberbullying may augment the fluidity of roles between perpetrator and target. This fluidity in roles is supported by Olweus’ descriptions of “the bullying circle” in which targets may become perpetrators (and vice versa) depending on situations and circumstances [ 21 ]. The Uniform Definition of bullying describes that bullying behavior involves an actual or perceived power imbalance. In this study, the fluidity in roles of perpetrator and target does not seem to represent a shift in the actual power of the individual, but it could represent power derived from the tool that is used to bully: the internet. Another area of similarity between cyberbullying and traditional bullying was that the consequences of both were described in a single construct in the interpretation diagram. This single construct implies that our diverse stakeholders, including educators, legal experts, health professionals, as well as teens themselves, perceive that significant and similar negative consequences result from both cyberbullying and traditional bullying. A second critical finding is the areas in which stakeholders elucidated their perceptions of differences between cyberbullying and traditional bullying. These included characteristics of the bullying experience, including the capacity for anonymity by “hiding behind screens” in cyberbullying. The role of anonymity in cyberbullying has been noted in previous studies [ 2 ]. However, traditional bullying is not without the capacity for anonymous actions, including sending threatening notes anonymously or damaging property secretly. Even so, the perceptions of participants about anonymous bullying via the internet was a topic of concern and even alarm for many participants. Finally, the concept map and accompanying conceptual model serve as data-driven visual representations of the complexity of bullying. This complexity is illustrated in our concept map, and it includes shared characteristics among perpetrators and targets, a variety of tools and approaches to consider, and negative consequences for both actors. Our findings support a need for research that considers mechanisms or processes that can explain how an individual may experience bullying and its consequences differently, depending on the context of that bullying event or situation. A “person by situation by context” interaction has been applied to research in other areas, and the recent National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report supports integration of these frameworks into research on bullying [ 21 ]. This study’s findings provide a conceptual model to understand an individual’s journey through these experiences, but further work is needed to understand how context plays a role in determining outcomes of a bullying event or experience.

Limitations

Several limitations to this study should be considered. Traditional concept mapping methodology provides guidelines for small numbers of participants at each stage. To provide additional depth to this process, we included a larger number of participants than is typically involved in concept mapping to represent the various stakeholders who are involved in cyberbullying. As we used a purposeful sample, this study’s participants are not generalizable, and they may have had similar perspectives. However, this study’s findings that many participants provided insights and quotations from direct experience with cyberbullying support our purposeful sampling approach to engage a stakeholder involved in cyberbullying situations. Furthermore, the majority of data collection was focused in 1 geographic location. This study focused on cyberbullying applied to adolescents; we did not specifically target or include cyberbullying as applied to children or adults. Further work should investigate whether findings may generalize to young-adult age groups, in which cyberbullying has been shown to be common [ 22 , 23 ]. Finally, we modified the traditional concept mapping approach by adding a translation to the conceptual model step using key informant interviews. This step adds value to this study’s outcomes, but this is by definition outside the typical 5-step concept mapping process.

Implications

Despite these limitations, this study has important implications in illustrating the key factors that define cyberbullying from the perspectives of stakeholders. The conceptual model developed in this project illustrates what key factors have been internalized by stakeholders both through direct experience and through exposure to sources, such as schools, media, and patients. The arrangement of concepts in our conceptual model suggests that cyberbullying cannot be considered a distinct entity from bullying, which is supported by the recent National Academies report [ 21 ]. However, stakeholders perceive that there are aspects of cyberbullying that support it as more than just another bullying context. Although the Uniform Definition of bullying was created to apply to bullying across all types and contexts, this study illustrates that there is still a strong public perception that cyberbullying presents distinct opportunities and challenges compared with traditional constructs of bullying. To unify efforts to prevent and intervene with bullying, as well as to measure and assess it over time, future work must address these stakeholder perceptions. To promote acceptance and uptake of the Uniform Definition of bullying among stakeholders, it is possible that the definition would benefit from evaluation for the context of cyberbullying or consideration toward adding language to clarify its application to cyberbullying. This study’s findings suggest that clarifications to the Uniform Definition may include acknowledgment that power imbalance may be created by tools such as the internet rather than cyberbullying being solely considered as a preexisting condition within a perpetrator. As the Uniform Definition is meant to be used by educators, policy makers, and researchers in the realms of both traditional bullying and cyberbullying, it is important to ensure consistency in interpretation and application of this definition across these stakeholder groups. Implications for policy include providing clarity and consistency in language when measuring bullying and in policies that address bullying. Assessment tools may need to clarify whether questions about bullying behavior include cyberbullying, and they may need to use consistent terms and language to ensure responses are valid across populations and over time. Furthermore, most states currently have separate policies for addressing bullying and cyberbullying, which may contribute to public perceptions that these represent separate entities [ 21 ]. This study’s findings support that integration of these concepts is supported by the overlap in key concepts. Implications for health providers working with teens and their parents include understanding that assessments for bullying need to address both traditional bullying and cyberbullying. Asking questions in a clinic that encompass both experiences or are open ended—such as “have you ever had any experiences with bullying?—may promote open discussion about the different types of bullying or different roles a teen may have played. Furthermore, providers can acknowledge that experiencing either or both types of bullying is common and consequential. Fortunately, newer studies suggest that interventions designed to address cyberbullying also affect bullying, further illustrating the strong connection across bullying behavior [ 20 , 24 ].

In conclusion, findings support that cyberbullying is best understood in the broader context of bullying, but findings also support that stakeholder perceptions about the uniqueness of cyberbullying are strong. Bullying presents a complex set of behavior within roles that may be fluid and may lead to negative consequences for both perpetrators and targets. Findings may be applied toward achieving greater consistency in our definitions, assessments, and policies regarding bullying, and findings may be applied toward working toward a shared understanding of key concepts in bullying with stakeholders who are in the field, addressing bullying with teens and their parents as part of their everyday jobs.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the stakeholders for their contributions to the study. This study was funded by the National Institute of Justice, grant 2013-IJ-CX-0051.

Abbreviations

CDC	Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
MDS	multidimensional scaling
SSSM	square symmetric-similarity matrix

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

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

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

Cite this article

conceptual framework in research about bullying

Paul Horton 1 &
Selma Therese Lyng 2

10k Accesses

12 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

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.

Allen, K. A. (2015). “We don’t have bullying, but we have drama”: Understandings of bullying and related constructs within the school milieu of a U.S. high school. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment , 25 (3), 159–181.

Barrett, B., & Bound, A. M. (2015). A critical discourse analysis of No Promo Homo policies in US schools. Educational Studies, 51 (4), 267–283.

Article Google Scholar

Bethune, J., & Gonick, M. (2017). Schooling the mean girl: A critical discourse analysis of teacher resource materials. Gender and Education, 29 (3), 389–404.

Bjereld, Y. (2018). The challenging process of disclosing bullying victimization: A grounded theory study from the victim’s point of view. Journal of Health Psychology, 23 (8), 1110–1118.

Article PubMed Google Scholar

Bosacki, S. L., Marini, Z. A., & Dane, A. V. (2006). Voices from the classroom: Pictorial and narrative representations of children’s bullying experiences. Journal of Moral Education, 35 (2), 231–245.

Burk, F. L. (1897). Teasing and Bullying. Pedagogical Seminary, 4 (3), 336–371.

Clarke, V., Kitzinger, C., & Potter, J. (2004). ‘Kids are just cruel anyway’: Lesbian and gay parents’ talk about homophobic bullying. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43 (4), 531–550.

Cunningham, C. E., Mapp, C., Rimas, H., Cunningham, S. M., Vaillancourt, T., & Marcus, M. (2016). What limits the effectiveness of antibullying programs? A thematic analysis of the perspective of students. Psychology of Violence, 6 (4), 596–606.

Davies, B. (2011). Bullies as guardians of the moral order or an ethic of truths? Children & Society, 25 , 278–286.

Dennehy, R., Meaney, S., Walsh, K. A., Sinnott, C., Cronin, M., & Arensman, E. (2020). Young people’s conceptualizations of the nature of cyberbullying: A systematic review and synthesis of qualitative research. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 51 , 101379.

Ellwood, C., & Davies, B. (2010). Violence and the moral order in contemporary schooling: A discursive analysis. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 7 (2), 85–98.

Eriksen, I. M., & Lyng, S. T. (2018). Relational aggression among boys: Blind spots and hidden dramas. Gender and Education, 30 (3), 396–409.

Evaldsson, A. -C., Svahn, J. (2012). School bullying and the micro-politics of girls’ gossip disputes. In S. Danby & M. Theobald (Eds.). Disputes in everyday life: Social and moral orders of children and young people (Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, Vol. 15) (pp. 297–323). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing.

Forsberg, C., & Horton, P. (2022). ‘Because I am me’: School bullying and the presentation of self in everyday school life. Journal of Youth Studies, 25 (2), 136–150.

Forsberg, C., & Thornberg, R. (2016). The social ordering of belonging: Children’s perspectives on bullying. International Journal of Educational Research, 78 , 13–23.

Ganbaatar, D., Vaughan, C., Akter, S., & Bohren, M. A. (2021). Exploring the identities and experiences of young queer people in Mongolia using visual research methods. Culture, Health & Sexuality . Advance Online Publication: https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2021.1998631

Gillies-Rezo, S., & Bosacki, S. (2003). Invisible bruises: Kindergartners’ perceptions of bullying. International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 8 (2), 163–177.

Goldsmid, S., & Howie, P. (2014). Bullying by definition: An examination of definitional components of bullying. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 19 (2), 210–225.

Gumpel, T. P., Zioni-Koren, V., & Bekerman, Z. (2014). An ethnographic study of participant roles in school bullying. Aggressive Behavior, 40 (3), 214–228.

Haines-Saah, R. J., Hilario, C. T., Jenkins, E. K., Ng, C. K. Y., & Johnson, J. L. (2018). Understanding adolescent narratives about “bullying” through an intersectional lens: Implications for youth mental health interventions. Youth & Society, 50 (5), 636–658.

Heinemann, P. -P. (1972). Mobbning – gruppvåld bland barn och vuxna [Bullying – group violence amongst children and adults]. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur.

Hepburn, A. (1997). Discursive strategies in bullying talk. Education and Society, 15 (1), 13–31.

Hong, J. S., & Espelage, D. L. (2012). A review of mixed methods research on bullying and peer victimization in school. Educational Review, 64 (1), 115–126.

Horton, P. (2019). The bullied boy: Masculinity, embodiment, and the gendered social-ecology of Vietnamese school bullying. Gender and Education, 31 (3), 394–407.

Horton, P. (2021). Building walls: Trump election rhetoric, bullying and harassment in US schools. Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics , 8 (1), 7–32.

Hutchinson, M. (2012). Exploring the impact of bullying on young bystanders. Educational Psychology in Practice, 28 (4), 425–442.

Hutson, E. (2018). Integrative review of qualitative research on the emotional experience of bullying victimization in youth. The Journal of School Nursing, 34 (1), 51–59.

Jacobson, R. B. (2010). A place to stand: Intersubjectivity and the desire to dominate. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29 , 35–51.

Jennifer, D., & Cowie, H. (2012). Listening to children’s voices: Moral emotional attributions in relation to primary school bullying. Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties, 17 (3–4), 229–241.

Johnson, C. W., Singh, A. A., & Gonzalez, M. (2014). “It’s complicated”: Collective memories of transgender, queer, and questioning youth in high school. Journal of Homosexuality, 61 (3), 419–434.

Khanolainen, D., & Semenova, E. (2020). School bullying through graphic vignettes: Developing a new arts-based method to study a sensitive topic. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 19 , 1–15.

Lopez-Ropero, L. (2012). ‘You are a flaw in the pattern’: Difference, autonomy and bullying in YA fiction. Children’s Literature in Education, 43 , 145–157.

Lyng, S. T. (2018). The social production of bullying: Expanding the repertoire of approaches to group dynamics. Children & Society, 32 (6), 492–502.

Malaby, M. (2009). Public and secret agents: Personal power and reflective agency in male memories of childhood violence and bullying. Gender and Education, 21 (4), 371–386.

Maran, D. A., & Begotti, T. (2021). Measurement issues relevant to qualitative studies. In P. K. Smith & J. O’Higgins Norman (Eds.). The Wiley handbook of bullying (pp. 233–249). John Wiley & Sons.

Mishna, F., Scarcello, I., Pepler, D., & Wiener, J. (2005). Teachers’ understandings of bullying. Canadian Journal of Education, 28 (4), 718–738.

Moretti, C., & Herkovits, D. (2021). Victims, perpetrators, and bystanders: A meta-ethnography of roles in cyberbullying. Cad. Saúde Pública, 37 (4), e00097120.

Newman, M., Woodcock, A., & Dunham, P. (2006). ‘Playtime in the borderlands’: Children’s representations of school, gender and bullying through photographs and interviews. Children’s Geographies, 4 (3), 289–302.

Odenbring, Y. (2022). Standing alone: Sexual minority status and victimisation in a rural lower secondary school. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 26 (5), 480–494.

Oliver, C., & Candappa, M. (2007). Bullying and the politics of ‘telling.’ Oxford Review of Education, 33 (1), 71–86.

Olweus, D. (1978). Aggression in the schools – Bullies and the whipping boys . Wiley.

Google Scholar

Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying in school: What we know and what we can do . Blackwell.

Patton, D. U., Hong, J. S., Patel, S., & Kral, M. J. (2017). A systematic review of research strategies used in qualitative studies on school bullying and victimization. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 18 (1), 3–16.

Pellegrini, A. D., & Bartini, M. (2000). A longitudinal study of bullying, victimization, and peer affiliation during the transition from primary school to middle school. American Educational Research Journal, 37 (3), 699–725.

Rachoene, M., & Oyedemi, T. (2015). From self-expression to social aggression: Cyberbullying culture among South African youth on Facebook. Communicatio: South African Journal for Communication Theory and Research , 41 (3), 302–319.

Ringrose, J., & Rawlings, V. (2015). Posthuman performativity, gender and ‘school bullying’: Exploring the material-discursive intra-actions of skirts, hair, sluts, and poofs. Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics , 3 (2), 80–119.

Ringrose, J., & Renold, E. (2010). Normative cruelties and gender deviants: The performative effects of bully discourses for girls and boys in school. British Educational Research Journal, 36 (4), 573–596.

Skrzypiec, G., Slee, P., & Sandhu, D. (2015). Using the PhotoStory method to understand the cultural context of youth victimization in the Punjab. The International Journal of Emotional Education, 7 (1), 52–68.

Smith, P., Robinson, S., & Slonje, R. (2021). The school bullying research program: Why and how it has developed. In P. K. Smith & J. O’Higgins Norman (Eds.). The Wiley handbook of bullying (pp. 42–59). John Wiley & Sons.

Smith, P. K., & Berkkun, F. (2017). How research on school bullying has developed. In C. McGuckin & L. Corcoran (Eds.), Bullying and cyberbullying: Prevalence, psychological impacts and intervention strategies (pp. 11–27). Hauppage, NY: Nova Science.

Strindberg, J., Horton, P., & Thornberg, R. (2020). The fear of being singled out: Pupils’ perspectives on victimization and bystanding in bullying situations. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 41 (7), 942–957.

Sylwander, K. R. (2019). Affective atmospheres of sexualized hate among youth online: A contribution to bullying and cyberbullying research on social atmosphere. International Journal of Bullying Prevention, 1 , 269–284.

Søndergaard, D. M. (2012). Bullying and social exclusion anxiety in schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33 (3), 355–372.

Temko, E. (2019). Missing structure: A critical content analysis of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. Children & Society, 33 (1), 1–12.

Tholander, M. (2019). The making and unmaking of a bullying victim. Interchange, 50 , 1–23.

Tholander, M., Lindberg, A., & Svensson, D. (2020). “A freak that no one can love”: Difficult knowledge in testimonials on school bullying. Research Papers in Education, 35 (3), 359–377.

Thornberg, R. (2011). ‘She’s weird!’ – The social construction of bullying in school: A review of qualitative research. Children & Society, 25 , 258–267.

Thornberg, R. (2018). School bullying and fitting into the peer landscape: A grounded theory field study. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 39 (1), 144–158.

Torrance, D. A. (2000). Qualitative studies into bullying within special schools. British Journal of Special Education, 27 (1), 16–21.

Varjas, K., Meyers, J., Kiperman, S., & Howard, A. (2013). Technology hurts? Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth perspectives of technology and cyberbullying. Journal of School Violence, 12 (1), 27–44.

Volk, A. A., Dane, A. V., & Marini, Z. A. (2014). What is bullying? A Theoretical Redefinition, Developmental Review, 34 (4), 327–343.

Walton, G. (2005). Bullying widespread. Journal of School Violence, 4 (1), 91–118.

Walton, G. (2011). Spinning our wheels: Reconceptualizing bullying beyond behaviour-focused Approaches. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education , 32 (1), 131–144.

Walton, G., & Niblett, B. (2013). Investigating the problem of bullying through photo elicitation. Journal of Youth Studies, 16 (5), 646–662.

Wiseman, A. M., & Jones, J. S. (2018). Examining depictions of bullying in children’s picturebooks: A content analysis from 1997 to 2017. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 32 (2), 190–201.

Wiseman, A. M., Vehabovic, N., & Jones, J. S. (2019). Intersections of race and bullying in children’s literature: Transitions, racism, and counternarratives. Early Childhood Education Journal, 47 , 465–474.

Ybarra, M. L., Espelage, D. L., Valido, A., Hong, J. S., & Prescott, T. L. (2019). Perceptions of middle school youth about school bullying. Journal of Adolescence, 75 , 175–187.

Download references

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.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning (IBL), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

Paul Horton

Work Research Institute (WRI), Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway

Selma Therese Lyng

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Horton .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

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

Download citation

Published : 12 August 2022

Issue Date : September 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-022-00139-5

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Find a journal
Publish with us
Track your research

IMAGES

Conceptual Framework for Bullying
Figure 1. Conceptual Framework of Bullying by Twale and de Luca (2008
Conceptual Framework In Research Paper About Bullying
| Conceptual framework of the poor psychosocial well-being of bullying
Integrative theoretical framework for bullying.
Example Of Conceptual Framework In Research About Bullying

VIDEO

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK, RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS, AND DEFINITION OF TERMS
What is a Theoretical Framework really? simple explanation
the causes and effects of bullying in the modern world
2014 -- Namie -- Workplace Bullying Prevalence
Research on School Bullying ER October 2011
Research Alignment, part 2

COMMENTS

Conceptual Framework for Bullying
Indirect bullying is spreading bad news and gossip and provoking others to dislike the victims (Dixon & Smith, 2011). Based on the aforementioned forms, a conceptual framework of bullying can be ...
A Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Association between School
The conceptual framework presented in this article provides guidance for school and policy officials to effectively address bullying and the associated risk behaviors, such as SM. Law-makers have recognized the detriments of bullying victimization in school and responded accordingly, such as the enactment of zero-tolerance policies.
3 Theories That Help to Understand Bullying
This chapter will entail a review of theoretical frameworks that are typically utilized to understand and address bullying, including an ecological systems framework, social learning, cognitive behavioural, attribution, lifestyles exposure and resilience frameworks. The complexity of bullying demands that more than one theoretical lens be used ...
Full article: Understanding bullying from young people's perspectives
Introduction. With its negative consequences for wellbeing, bullying is a major public health concern affecting the lives of many children and adolescents (Holt et al. 2014; Liu et al. 2014). Bullying can take many different forms and include aggressive behaviours that are physical, verbal or psychological in nature (Wang, Iannotti, and Nansel ...
Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice
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 ...
PDF A Relational Framework for Understanding Bullying
Philip C. Rodkin and Dorothy L. Espelage Laura D. Hanish. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Arizona State University. This article reviews current research on the relational processes involved in peer bullying, considering develop-mental antecedents and long-term consequences. The fol-lowing themes are highlighted: (a) aggression can ...
What is bullying? A theoretical redefinition
Although the label of bully has been applied inconsistently across research groups conducting person-centered analyses of bullying, this is more of a methodological than a conceptual problem, which could be solved by adopting an empirically-based standard threshold or cut-off above which a research participant would be classified as a bully or ...
Developing a cyberbullying conceptual framework for educators
The Cyberbullying Conceptual Framework (see Fig. 1 below) has been developed to provide a new structure to assist educators and researchers to act on and understand this complex issue. Huang and Chou [19] reported that "[i]t would be helpful if school teachers have more knowledge about the medium and mechanism of the new form of bullying among students" (p. 235) and this framework aims to ...
Theoretical Explanations for Bullying in School: How Ecological
Bullying is a complex social dynamic that can best be understood by using various theoretical frameworks. The current article uses social capital theory, dominance theory, the theory of humiliation, and organizational culture theory to better understand the motivations behind bullying behavior, bullying's negative effects on victims, and how school culture and climate play a role in the ...
Toward a More Comprehensive Understanding of Bullying in School
The phenomenon of bullying has received a great deal of international attention in the last few decades. In this article, we provide a critical review of some of the major contributions from the field of educational research. We first provide an overall description of the classic concept of bullying, including certain characteristics of bullies and victims that have received particular ...
A conceptual framework for understanding the association between school
This article reviews current research findings and presents a conceptual framework for better understanding the relationship between bullying victimization (hereafter referred to as victimization) and substance misuse (hereafter referred to as SM) among adolescents. Although victimization and SM may …
Bullying Victimization and Trauma
Bullying victimization and trauma research traditions operate quite separately. Hence, it is unclear from the literature whether bullying victimization should be considered as a form of interpersonal trauma. We review studies that connect bullying victimization with symptoms of PTSD, and in doing so, demonstrate that a conceptual understanding ...
Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: Stakeholder-Driven Concept Mapping
A "person by situation by context" interaction has been applied to research in other areas, and the recent National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report supports integration of these frameworks into research on bullying . This study's findings provide a conceptual model to understand an individual's journey through ...
Understanding Bullying and Cyberbullying Through an ...
Recognized as complex and relational, researchers endorse a systems/social-ecological framework in examining bullying and cyberbullying. According to this framework, bullying and cyberbullying are examined across the nested social contexts in which youth live—encompassing individual features; relationships including family, peers, and educators; and ecological conditions such as digital ...
Bullying in schools: the state of knowledge and effective interventions
Abstract. During the school years, bullying is one of the most common expressions of violence in the peer context. Research on bullying started more than forty years ago, when the phenomenon was defined as 'aggressive, intentional acts carried out by a group or an individual repeatedly and over time against a victim who cannot easily defend him- or herself'.
Developing a cyberbullying conceptual framework for educators
The Framework Method from Gale, Heath, Cameron, Rashid and Redwood [11] was modified to create the Cyberbullying Conceptual Framework. The framework was founded from Mallon's [12] social constructionist method and using a deductive analysis of relevant and available literature which enables the authors to new incites yet build on the. The ...
Theoretical Frameworks That Have Explained Workplace Bullying
Furthermore, theories can be combined with related concepts and empirical research to develop frameworks that guide researchers in new theory development (theoretical frameworks) and in the "advancement and systematization of knowledge about related concepts or issues" (conceptual frameworks) (Rocco & Plakhotnik, 2009, p. 128).
Workplace bullying: Building a conceptual framework and a research
Workplace bullying: Building a conceptual framework and a research agenda. August 2019. DOI: 10.4324/9780429439919-16. In book: Contemporary Issues in Work and Organisations: Actors and ...
PDF A Framework for School-Wide Bullying Prevention and Safety
prevent, and intervene in bullying behavior have been developed and replicated in schools across the country (see Farrington & Ttofi, 2009; Merrell, Guelder, Ross, & Isava, 2008). These include, but are not limited to, adult training A FRAMEWORK FOR SCHOOL-WIDE BULLYING PREVENTION 2 Successful bullying prevention efforts in schools should consider
Cyberbullying: Concepts, theories, and correlates informing evidence
Cyberbullying has been conceptualized as a form of traditional bullying which may be inadequate. • Theories that sufficiently explain cyberbullying perpetration are needed. • Emerging research identifies group differences in the risk for cybervictimization but current evidence is limited. •
Developing a cyberbullying conceptual framework for educators
Schools may refer to the 'cyberbullying conceptual framework for educators' to create a cyberbullying manual and/or educational resources for teachers, faculties, and administrators (Redmond et al ...
Qualitative Methods in School Bullying and Cyberbullying Research: An
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 and Olweus ().Highlighting the extent to which research on bullying has grown exponentially since then, Smith et al. found ...
Conceptual Framework of School Violence and Bullying
Download scientific diagram | Conceptual Framework of School Violence and Bullying from publication: Forestalling Bullying in Primary and Secondary Schools in Spain | Bullying refers to degrading ...

Sign in through your institution

3 Theories That Help to Understand Bullying

Personal account

Institutional access

IP based access

Society Members

Sign in through society site

Sign in using a personal account

Viewing your signed in accounts

Signed in but can't access content

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

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

STUDY CHARGE

CONTEXT FOR THE STUDY

Historical Context

Federal Efforts to Address Bullying and Related Topics

Definitional Context

THE COMMITTEE’S APPROACH

Information Gathering

Terminology

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

Welcome to OpenBook!

Get Email Updates

Save citation to file

Add to My Bibliography

A conceptual framework for understanding the association between school bullying victimization and substance misuse

Similar articles

Publication types

Related information

LinkOut - more resources

Other Literature Sources

Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: Stakeholder-Driven Concept Mapping Approach

Nikita Midamba

Henry S Berman

Peter S Moreno

Mike Donlin

Erik Schlocker

Conclusions

Introduction

Consequences of Bullying and Cyberbullying

Current Challenges in Understanding Cyberbullying

Study Purpose

Study Setting and Design

Participants and Recruitment

Concept Mapping

Preparation

Generation (Brainstorming) Sessions

Structuring (Sorting) Sessions

Representation

Interpretation

Translation to a Conceptual Model

Participants

Step 2: Generation

Step 3: Structuring

Step 4: Representation

Step 5: Interpretation

Principal Findings

Limitations

Implications

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

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

Cite this article

Introduction

Included Articles

Acknowledgements

Author information

Corresponding author

Rights and permissions

About this article

Share this article

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS