DEFINITION, TYPES AND PREVALENCE OF SCHOOL BULLYING AND VIOLENCE

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DEFINITION, TYPES AND PREVALENCE OF SCHOOL
BULLYING AND VIOLENCE

• Peter K Smith
• Unit for School and Family Studies
• Goldsmiths College
• University of London
• p.smith_at_gold.ac.uk

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Overview

• Definitions of violence
• Definition of bullying
• Types of violence and bullying
• Main ways of assessing violence and bullying
• Some statistics on prevalence

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Three definitions of violence

• Encarta dictionary (1999) 1 the use of
  physical force to injure somebody or damage
  something 2 the illegal use of unjustified
  force, or the effect created by the threat of
  this.
• Olweus (1999) Aggressive behaviour where the
  actor or perpetrator uses his or her own body or
  an object (including a weapon) to inflict
  (relatively serious) injury or discomfort upon
  another individual.
• World Health Organisation The intentional use of
  physical and psychological force or power,
  threatened or actual, against oneself, another
  person, or against a group or community, that
  either results in or has a high likelihood of
  resulting in injury, death, psychological harm,
  mal-development, or deprivation.

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Shared and non-shared features of the definitions

• Shared features are normally that violence is
  
• (a) harmful or damaging, or at least threatens
  such harm or damage, and
• (b) is intended (accidental damage or hurt done
  by someone is not usually thought of as violent).
  
• But at least 5 areas of disagreement.

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Disagreements in definition of violence - 1

• Is violence necessarily physical?
• YES, according to Encarta (1) and Olweus.
• NO, according to Encarta (2) or WHO.
• Probably the most crucial issue. Limiting
  violence to physical acts makes it more
  restricted in focus, and perhaps easier to
  measure (physical acts of violence are probably
  easier to monitor than verbal or relational
  violence). It makes violence different from
  aggression.
• However, it clearly excludes other intentional
  harmful behaviours such as verbal abuse, social
  exclusion, nasty rumour spreading.

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Disagreements in definition of violence - 2

• Is violence necessarily against a person?
• NO, according to Encarta
• YES, according to Olweus, and possibly WHO.
• In other words, is vandalism (the malicious or
  deliberate defacement or destruction of somebody
  elses property Encarta 1999) included as
  violence?
• Does graffitti on the school walls, or
  intentional damage to school books or equipment,
  count as violence?

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Disagreements in definition of violence - 3

• Does violence actually have to be manifested as
  behaviour that damages someone or something, or
  is just the threat of this sufficient (as stated
  in Encarta (2) and WHO)?
• An emphasis on threatened as well as actual
  violence can justify the inclusion of measures
  such as feelings of insecurity.

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Disagreements in definition of violence - 4

• Is violence still violence if it is legal?
• NO according to Encarta (2), but implicitly YES
  in other definitions.
• If YES, a parent smacking a child is certainly
  violent.
• Maybe too a teacher disciplining a pupil, a
  policeman restraining a criminal, a judge
  sentencing an offender.
• But if NO, then are we assuming an acceptance of
  societal-defined legality? Might this be
  challenged?

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Disagreements in definition of violence - 5

• Does violence have to be done by somebody
  (Olweus), or can it be done more impersonally by
  a social group or an institution?
• The term institutional violence suggests the
  latter and allows us to consider the possibility
  of a school inflicting violence on its pupils,
  because of certain actions or policies.

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BULLYING more consensus on definition

• Generally agreed that bullying is a subset of
  aggression namely aggression that involves
• repetition, and
• imbalance of power

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Definitions of bullying

• Repeated aggressive acts against someone who
  cannot easily defend themselves
• Farrington (1993) Bullying is repeated
  oppression of a less powerful person, physical or
  psychological, by a more powerful person.
• Smith Sharp (1994) The systematic abuse of
  power.
• Rigby (2002) Bullying involves a desire to hurt
  a harmful action a power imbalance
  (typically) repetition an unjust use of power
  evident enjoyment by the aggressor and generally
  a sense of being oppressed on the part of the
  victim.

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Issues of threshold

• We need to decide at what level something becomes
  violence, or bullying.
• How serious does the harm have to be? Every day
  most of us experience minor hurts.
• Should violence be limited to describing quite
  serious blows, or insults or social provocations?
  
• Or can it include what French researchers have
  called micro-violence or incivilities,
  relatively minor impolitenesses and infringements
  of rules (Debarbieux, Blaya and Vidal, 2003)?
  These might not count as violence by most
  definitions, but they may still be vital in
  understanding the origins of more serious school
  violence, and tackling it.

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Types of violence and bullying

• Direct physical attack
• Indirect physical attack e.g. on belongings,
  property
• Direct verbal attack oral, letter, text, email
• Indirect verbal attack spread rumours
• Social exclusion from normal group activities
• these last two being relational
• Institutional aggression/manipulation
• e.g. setting totally unrealistic goals

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Spreading nasty rumours
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Social exclusion
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Numbers

• Violence and bullying can be
• One-to-one
• By a small group or gang against one, or against
  another group or gang
• By a whole class or school wang-ta and jun-ta in
  Korean schools
• and beyond the school setting -
• By a large group crowd, mob village
• By organisations Greg Dyke the BBC
  was bullied by the Government
• By a state or nation or alliance of nations

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Sex differences Age trends

• Males relatively do more physical kinds of
  attacks
• Females relatively do more relational kinds of
  attacks
• usual findings
• Frequency tends to increase then decrease with
  age, but dependent on type and mode
• Physical aggression peaks earlier than verbal,
  relational, institutional

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ASSESSING How do we find out about violence and
bullying in schools?

• Adult (teacher and parent) reports
• limited value as adults only aware of a fraction
  of what is going on
• Self-reports
• widely used in anonymous questionnaire, e.g.
  Olweus
• Peer nominations
• maybe most reliable method for class based work
• Direct observations
• avoid reporting bias but difficult and
  time-consuming
• Other methods in-depth interviews, focus groups,
  incident reports, etc

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Correlations for victimization across methods
Card, 2003
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INCIDENCE of Violence and Bullying Issues

• Besides the assessment method used, and the
  nature of the sample, we need to consider
• Intensity issues e.g. how frequent, in
  self-report data what proportion of peer
  nominations
• Duration of reporting period e.g. ever, last
  year, last month
• Translation of terms, for non-English data.

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INCIDENCE of Violence and Bullying Example 1 -
TURKEY

• Alikasifoglu et al. (2004) survey of over 4,000
  students in grades 9 to 11. Self-report
  questionnaire on experiences of
• Fighting in last 12 months 42
• Injured in physical fight in last 12 months 7
• Being bullied at school last term 30
• Bullied others at school last term 19
• Carrying weapon on school grounds last term 8

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INCIDENCE of Violence and Bullying Example 2 -
KOREA

• Kim et al. (2004) survey of over 1,700 middle
  school students, grades 7 and 8. Used Korean
  Peer Nomination Inventory for bullies and
  victims. Nominated by more than one classmate as
• Perpetrator Boys 17.4 Girls 16.0
• Victim Boys 16.2 Girls 12.0
• Victim-Perpetrator Boys 10. Girls 7.8
• Not involved Boys 56.3 Girls 64.2

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INCIDENCE of Violence and Bullying Example 3 -
USA

• Nansel et al. (2001) survey of over 15,000
  students in grades 6 to 10. Self-report data on
  frequency of being bullied/ bullying others, in
  last term.

None 1 or 2 times Sometimes Weekly
Being bullied 58.9 24.2 8.5 8.4
Bullying others 55.7 25.0 10.6 8.8
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INCIDENCE of Violence and Bullying Example 4
cross-national study

• Morita et al. (2001) report to Monbusho on
  cross-national study of bullying (or ijime) using
  same self-report questionnaire, on 10 to 14 year
  olds in Japan, England, Netherlands and Norway.
• Samples of several thousand in each country.

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Percentages of pupils who reported being bullied,
more than just once or twice in the last 6 months
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SUMMARY

• Violence several issues around definition
• Bullying more agreement on definition
• Different types of violence and bullying
• Main ways of assessing violence and bullying
  not perfect agreement
• Issues on prevalence and some statistics

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References

• Card, N.A. (2003). Victims of peer aggression A
  meta-analytic review. Presented at Society for
  Research in Child Development biennial meeting,
  Tampa, USA, April.
• Debarbieux, E., Blaya, C. Vidal, D. (2003).
  Tackling violence in schools A report from
  France. In P.K. Smith (ed.), Violence in
  schools The response in Europe (pp.17-32).
  London New York RoutledgeFalmer.
• Encarta World English Dictionary (1999). London
  Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Falikasifoglu, M., Erginoz, E., Ercan, O., Uysal,
  O., Kaymak, D.A. Iiter, O. (2004). Violent
  behaviour among Turkish high school students and
  correlates of physical fighting. European Journal
  of Public Health, 14.
• Farrington, D. (1993). Understanding and
  preventing bullying. In M Tonry (ed.), Crime and
  Justice A review of research, vol. 17
  (pp.381-458). Chicago University of Chicago
  Press.
• Kim, Y.S., Koh, Y-J. Leventhal, B.L. (2004).
  Prevalence of school bullying in Korean middle
  school students. Arch. Pediatr. Adolesc. Med.,
  158, 737-741.
• Morita, Y. (2001). Ijime no kokusai hikaku kenkyu
  Cross-national comparative study of bullying.
  Japan Kaneko Shobo.
• Nansel, T.R., Overpeck, M.D., Pilla, R.S., Ruan,
  W.J., Simons-Morton, B. Scheidt, P.C. (2001).
  Bullying behaviors among US youth Prevalence and
  association with psychosocial adjustment. Journal
  of the American Medical Association, 285,
  2094-2100.
• Olweus, D. (1999). Sweden. In P.K. Smith, Y.
  Morita, J. Junger-Tas, D. Olweus, R. Catalano
  P. Slee (eds.), The nature of school bullying A
  cross-national perspective, London New York,
  Routledge, pp. 2-27.
• Rigby, K. (2002). New perspectives on bullying.
  London Philadelphia Jessica Kingsley.
• Smith, P.K. (ed.) (2003). Violence in schools
  The response in Europe, London New York,
  RoutledgeFalmer.
• Smith, P. K., Cowie, H., Olafsson, R.
  Liefooghe, A. (2002). Definitions of bullying a
  comparison of terms used, and age and sex
  differences, in a 14-country international
  comparison. Child Development, 73, 1119-1133.
• Smith, P.K. Sharp, S. (eds.) (1994). School
  bullying Insights and perspectives. London
  Routledge.
• World Health Organisation. See fi-006
  www.health.fi/connect