Bullying among SchoolAged Youth: Examining Student and Teacher Perceptions

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Bullying among School-Aged Youth Examining
Student and Teacher Perceptions

• Kisha M. Haye, M.A.
• Courtney K. Miller, Ed.S.
• Susan M. Swearer, Ph.D.
• Rhonda Turner, M.A.
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
  National Association of School Psychologists,
  Dallas, Texas, April, 2004

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Target Bullying Ecologically-Based Prevention
and Intervention for Schools
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Overview

• The definition, prevalence, and assessment of
  bullying behaviors in school will be reviewed
• A definition of school climate will be discussed
• Comparison of student and teacher attitudes
  towards bullying and perceptions of school
  climate will be examined
• Role of the bystander and implications that these
  students might have for prevention and
  intervention will be discussed

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Bullying and Peer Victimization
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Definition

• Students are being bullied when another student
  or several other students
• Say mean and hurtful things to them or make fun
  of them.
• Completely ignore or exclude them from their
  group of friends or leave them out of things on
  purpose.
• Hit, kick, push, shove around, or lock them
  inside a room.

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Definition (continued)

• Tell lies, spread false rumors about them or send
  mean notes and try to make other students dislike
  them.
• And
• These things happen repeatedly.
• It is difficult for the student being bullied to
  defend himself or herself.

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Therefore..

• Bullying is
• 1) negative, mean behavior that
• 2) occurs repeatedly (over time)
• 3) in a relationship that is characterized by an
  imbalance of power or strength.
• (Olweus, 1999)

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Our Survey Definition

• Bullying is anything from teasing, saying mean
  things, writing mean notes, or leaving someone
  out of a group, to physical attacks (hitting,
  pushing, kicking) where one person or a group of
  people picks on another person over and over
  again. Kids who are bullied have a hard time
  defending themselves.

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Prevalence Rates for Bullying

• According to Solberg and Olweus (2003), Two or
  three times a month is an accurate indicator of
  the prevalence of bullying and peer
  victimization.
• 10.1 (Solberg Olweus, 2003) to 37 of students
  (Limber Small, 2000) report being bullied two
  or three times a month
• 8.4 (Nansel et al., 2001) to 34 (Stockdale,
  Hangaduambo, Duys, Larson, Sarvela, 2002) of
  students in the U.S. report being victimized at
  least once per week.

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Prevalence Rates (continued)

• Worldwide rates range from 3 to 20 (Whitney
  Smith, 1993)
• 75 of adolescents report having been bullied at
  some time during their school years (Hoover,
  Oliver, Hazler, 1992)

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Bully/Victim Continuum

• Bully
• Bully-victim
• Victim
• Bystander
• Not-involved

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The Bystander

• Bystanders are key to school climate.
• When bystanders take a stand against bullying
  they help create an environment that is safer and
  more conducive to learning.
• (Tremlow, Peaceful Schools Project,
• study with Topeka schools, 2002)

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Role of Bystanders 80 of all participants
indicated that they had observed bullying
behavior in their school.
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Benefits of School-wide Assessment

• Accurate estimates of the prevalence of bullying
  in a particular school.
• Identification of the students who are most
  likely to use bullying behaviors, or to be
  victimized (or both), or onlooker behaviors
  (bystanders).
• Identification of students who are not involved
  in the bully/victim continuum.
• Information about school policies and practices
  that might be encouraging or discouraging
  bullying.

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School Climate

• School climate can be defined as the total
  environmental quality within a school and is
  multi-dimensional physical, social, culture,
  milieu (Anderson, 1982).
• Researchers have limited knowledge about the
  effects of the school setting on bullying,
  particularly how school climate affects victims
  and bullies (Ma, 2001) as well as the social and
  environmental factors that facilitate or inhibit
  bullying (Nansel et al., 2001).

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School Climate (cont.)

• The construct of school climate is often
  ill-defined and there is a limited number of
  validated assessment measures for this construct.
• For the purpose of this study, school climate is
  defined as the positive and negative
  relationships between students and teachers.

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Comprehensive Assessment Target Bullying

• Self-nomination Bully survey
• Peer nomination Inventory
• Teacher nomination Inventory
• Assessment of internalizing problems Depression
  (CDI), Anxiety (MASC), Hopelessness, Locus of
  Control, Aggression.
• School records data Grades, GPA, Test Scores,
  Office referrals, Absences, Suspensions
• School climate measure

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Bully Attitudinal Scale

• 12-item scale measuring attitudes towards
  bullying.
• Items are rated on a five-point scale 1
  Totally False to 5 Totally True
• Scores range from 12 to 60 higher scores
  indicate more pro-bullying attitudes

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School Social Climate Measure

• 13-item scale measuring aspects of school climate
  hypothesized to be relevant to students
  emotional and behavioral development.
• Items are rated on a four-point scale 1
  Totally False to 4 Totally True
• Scores range from 13 to 52 higher scores
  indicate more positive perceptions of school
  climate.

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Participants Spring 2003

• Total 347 students 69 teachers
• School A
• 126 students (53 male 73 female)
• 13 teachers (2 male 11 female)
• School B
• 125 students (58 male 67 female)
• 28 teachers (10 male 18 female)
• School C
• 96 students (96 male)
• 28 teachers (18 male 10 female)

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Participants Racial Distribution

• School A
• Students 61 Caucasian, 9.5 Biracial, 7.9
  African-American, 7.1 Asian, 5.6 Latino(a),
  2.4 Middle Eastern, 2.4 Native American, and
  0.8 Eastern European
• Teachers 92 Caucasian and 8 Biracial
• School B
• Students 92 Caucasian, 2.4 Biracial, 2.4
  African-American, 1.6 Latino(a), 0.8 Native
  American, and 0.8 Eastern European
• Teachers 92.8 Caucasian, 3.6
  African-American, and 3.6 Eastern European
• School C
• Students 89 Caucasian, 4 Biracial, 4
  Latino(a), 2 African-American, and 1 Asian
• Teachers 100 Caucasian

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Bully/Victim Status across Schools
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Bully/Victim Status
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Bully/Victim Status by School
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Student and Teacher Attitudes Towards Bullying
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Measuring Attitudes Towards Bullying

• A one-way analysis of variance was conducted to
  evaluate the relationship between position
  (student or teacher) and attitudes towards
  bullying.
• There was a significant difference between
  student and teacher attitudes towards bullying
  across the entire sample and across schools, with
  students reporting more pro-bullying attitudes.
• A one-way ANOVA was significant for all schools.
• School A F (1, 137) 5.066, p lt .05
• School B F (1, 151) 12.509, p lt .01
• School C F (1, 122) 30.862, p lt .01

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Support for Bullying
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Bully/Victim Status Differences in Attitudes
Towards Bullying
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Attitudes Towards Bullying Summary

• Bullies reported the most pro-bullying attitudes,
  followed by bully-victims, not-involved students,
  bystanders, and victims.
• Bullies reported significantly different
  attitudes towards bullying than victims,
  bystanders, and not-involved students.
• Bully-victims reported significantly different
  attitudes towards bullying than bystanders and
  victims.

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Attitudes Towards Bullying Summary (cont.)

• Teachers were less supportive of bullying
  behaviors compared to students across schools.
• Bullies and bully-victims (individuals who bully)
  reported the most supportive attitudes towards
  bullying, while victims and bystanders were the
  least supportive.

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Perception

• Perceptions will vary from person to person
  across the same situation.
• We assign different meanings to what we perceive.
  
• Why will individuals observing or experiencing
  the same situation perceive it differently?

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The Power of Perception
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Therefore

• Individuals in the same environment may have a
  different perception of the climate in that
  environment.
• This perception is likely to be affected by
  current or past experiences within that
  environment.
• This leads to some of the difficulty in defining
  and assessing school climate.

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Student and Teacher Perceptions of School
Climate Across Schools
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Bullying and Perceptions of School Environment

• A one-way analysis of variance was conducted to
  evaluate the relationship between position
  (student and teacher) and perception of school
  climate.
• The results were not consistent across schools.
• School A The ANOVA was not significant, F (1,
  137) 14.902, p .479
• School B The ANOVA was significant, F (1, 151)
  18.391, p lt .01
• School C The ANOVA was significant, F (1, 122)
  8.953, p lt .01

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Perception of School Climate
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School Climate

• At School A there was overlap in the student and
  teacher perceptions of school climate.
• Possible reasons School A has participated in
  the Target Bullying study since 1999.
• At Schools B and C, students reported
  significantly lower perceptions (more negative)
  of their school climate compared to teachers.

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School Climate - Summary

• Students not involved and bystanders tended to
  report more positive perceptions of school
  climate compared to those students involved in
  bullying (i.e., victims, bully-victims, and
  bullies).

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Global Summary

• Attitudes
• Educating students about bullying and modeling of
  pro-social behaviors are important components to
  include in prevention and intervention
  strategies.
• Schools should take an active approach towards
  addressing bullying and peer victimization.

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Global Summary (cont.)

• School climate
• It is important to define school climate and
  assess your school to determine the climate at
  that point in time.
• Student perceptions of school climate can be an
  indicator of the effectiveness of school response
  to bullying.

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Suggestions for Intervention

• Interventions delivered at the individual,
  classroom and school levels need to be
  coordinated
• Conduct a school-wide assessment of bullying and
  engage in data-based decision making.
• Promote facts, not myths about bullying
• Dispel beliefs about the outcome of aggressive
  behavior
• Develop a student code of conduct
• Individualize counseling services across subtypes
  of bully/victims
• Target counseling services to address
  internalizing problems such as depression and
  anxiety

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Suggestions for Intervention

• Involve parents in the intervention process
• (for example, have parents volunteer as hallway
  monitors)
• Implement intervention strategies specific to
  bully/victim subtypes
• Intervene quickly
• Examine teacher responses to bullying
• Create an open-door policy for all students
• Take all reports seriously
• Accountability and evaluation for everyone

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Directions for Future Research

• Limitations of this study
• Psychometric properties of the Thoughts About
  Your School (TAS) are still being tested
• Bully/victim status was based on self-report only
• Small teacher sample
• Future Research
• Defining school climate in relation to bullying
• How individual schools address bullying
• Exploring student responses to bullying

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Conclusion

• The goal of the Target Bullying
  Ecologically-Based Prevention Intervention for
  Schools Project is to use assessment data to
  create state-of-the art intervention techniques
  to address bullying and victimization in
  school-aged youth.
• Research is the key to developing an
  empirically-guided program and to helping schools
  determine which programs to use.
• One size does not fit all!

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Lawrence Erlbaum Associates http//www.erlbaum.com
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Target Bullying Ecologically-Based Prevention
Intervention for Schools

• Susan M. Swearer, Ph.D.
• School Psychology Program
• 40 Teachers College Hall
• Lincoln, NE, 68588-0345
• [phone]
• sswearer_at_unlserve.unl.edu