research paper topic bullying

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

Participants

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

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

Study outcome

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

Primary exposure

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

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

Statistical analyses

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

Prevalence of bullying at school and mental health problems

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

Associations between bullying at school and mental health problems

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

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

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

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

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

Strengths and limitations

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

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

Availability of data and materials

Data requests will be considered on a case-by-case basis; please email the corresponding author.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

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

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

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Principal factor analysis description.

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

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

Chapter: 1 introduction, 1 introduction.

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

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

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

STUDY CHARGE

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

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

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

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

CONTEXT FOR THE STUDY

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

Historical Context

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

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

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

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

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

Federal Efforts to Address Bullying and Related Topics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The above are examples of federal initiatives aimed at promoting the

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

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

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

Definitional Context

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE COMMITTEE’S APPROACH

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

Information Gathering

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

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

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

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

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

Terminology

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

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

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

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

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

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

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A Systematic Review of Bullying and Victimization Among Adolescents in India

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• Published: 07 September 2020
• Volume 3 , pages 253–269, ( 2021 )

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• Niharika Thakkar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8754-6708 1 ,
• Mitch van Geel 1 &
• Paul Vedder 1  

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This study provides a systematic review of literature from India on traditional bullying and victimization among school-going adolescents. A search of bibliographic electronic databases PsycINFO, MEDLINE, ERIC, Web of Science, and PubMed was performed in May 2020. Thirty-seven studies were included in the review. For each study included, the following specifics were examined: (a) methodological characteristics, (b) prevalence estimates of bullying behavior, (c) forms of bullying, (d) risk factors, and (e) consequences of bullying. It was found that bullying happens in India, and some risk factors for bullying and victimization in India are typical to the Indian context. In addition, bullying in India is associated with adverse consequences for both the aggressor and the victim. Many studies on bullying from India should be interpreted cautiously because of problems with data collection processes, instrumentation, and presentation of the findings. Cross-cultural comparisons for prevalence estimates, and longitudinal studies to examine the direction of possible influence between bullying and its correlates need to be conducted, to cater to the large adolescent population of India.

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Bullying is an intentional and repetitive act of physical or psychological aggression, where the aggressor is more powerful than the victim (Olweus 1993 ). Meta-analytic studies have confirmed the marked prevalence of and risk factors associated with bullying perpetration and victimization among children and adolescents in school (Modecki et al. 2014 ). In a recent survey conducted in 79 countries with over 300,000 participants, 30% of the adolescent respondents reported that they had been victims of bullying in the past 30 days (Elgar et al. 2015 ). In India, research on bullying is scarce, certainly in proportion to its population size, as well as socio-cultural diversity (Milfont and Fischer 2010 ; Smith et al. 2018 ). The vast adolescent population provides ample opportunity and resources to further our understanding in the field of bullying. The disparities seen in India in terms of socio-cultural factors such as SES, religion, caste, gender, and color, which have been recognized as typical to the Indian context (Panda and Gupta 2004 ), may aid in breeding an imbalance of power, an underlying element of bullying (Olweus 1993 ). Moreover, given the diverse socio-cultural context of India, and its structural incongruence with western cultures (Charak and Koot 2015 ), literature from western countries may not be generalizable to the Indian population, thus requiring scientific attention to examine the role of these factors specifically in India (Smith et al. 2018 ).

Through the current review, we aim to provide researchers a notion of challenges that need to be addressed in future studies on bullying and victimization in India. Systematic reviews are of importance, because they closely follow a scientific and step-by-step approach, with an aim of limiting systematic errors or bias, and particularly seek to identify, evaluate, and synthesize all relevant studies to elucidate knowledge and advanced understanding of the topic at hand (Petticrew and Roberts 2008 ). The present systematic review focuses on traditional bullying and victimization among adolescents in schools in India, highlighting the following specifics: (a) methodological characteristics of included studies, (b) prevalence estimates of bullying behavior, (c) forms of bullying, (d) risk factors, and (e) consequences of bullying. Specifically, we examine the psychometric properties of the instruments adopted in the included studies from India, as well as methodological characteristics including design and data collection, sample size and sampling procedures of the included studies, and characteristics of bullying behavior distinctive to the Indian context.

Guidelines provided by Arksey and O’Malley ( 2005 ) for conducting systematic reviews were followed in the present study. A systematic search of bibliographic electronic databases PsycINFO, MEDLINE, ERIC, Web of Science, and PubMed was performed in May 2020. The following terms formed the basis of the search strategy: “bullying” OR “peer victim*” OR “bullied” OR “bully” OR “school harassment*” OR “ragging” OR “school violence*” AND “India” OR “Indian” OR “Hindi”. No date limit was set for the search. Our search was not limited to published articles; book chapters, dissertations, unpublished articles, and posters were also eligible. A flow diagram of the search results is provided in Fig. 1 . Only studies that focused on bullying by peers and the resulting victimization at school were included. Articles on online bullying or cyberbullying were excluded. There were too few studies on cyberbullying in India to provide a meaningful analysis, especially when such an analysis should also deal with recent concerns about cyberbullying studies (e.g., Wolke et al. 2017 ). Non-empirical studies that did not include quantifiable data (for instance, book reviews) were excluded as we focus on only empirical research in the current review. Six studies used interviews to gather data; for instance, Kshirsagar et al. ( 2007 ) used Olweus’s ( 1996 ) pre-tested semi-structure interview to collect data on bullying and victimization in their study. The answers to these interviews were quantified and used in statistical analyses, and therefore, we included the articles in the current review. Studies on Indian children who live outside of India were excluded. Because we focused on adolescents in school, the age of students in included studies should range between 10 and 19 years. For studies on students whose ages only partly overlapped with this intended range, we applied the rule that the average age should fall within the intended range and the lowest and highest age should be within 2 years of the intended age limits. Two studies did not provide a definitive age range of the participants included in their study (Patel et al. 2017 ; Schäfer et al. 2018 ); however, the studies indicate that the participants were from grade 8 to 10 (who are typically 12 to 15 years old), thereby qualifying for inclusion in the present review. Three studies did not provide the mean age of the participants in their study though they specify the age range of the participants (Kshirsagar et al. 2007 ; Malik and Mehta 2016 ; Ramya and Kulkarni 2011 ), and because the lower limit or higher limit of the provided age range in these three study fell within 2 years of 11–19 years old, we have included them in the present review. Eventually, 37 studies were included in the final review.

Search results for the systematic review

Methodological Characteristics of Included Studies

Design and data collection.

Of the 37 studies that were included, two were longitudinal studies (Nguyen et al. 2017 ; Thakkar et al. 2020 ), two were experimental studies with pre- and post-test intervention designs (Sharma et al. 2020 ; Shinde et al. 2018 , 2020 ), whereas the others were cross-sectional studies. Seven of the 37 studies used peer-reports, 21 studies used self-reports, two studies used both self- and peer-reports (Chakrabartty and Gupta 2016 ; Thakkar et al. 2020 ), whereas six studies used structured or semi-structured interviews and open-ended questions to collect data on bullying and victimization (Kshirsagar et al. 2007 ; Malhi et al. 2014 , 2015 ; Malik and Mehta 2016 ; Munni and Malhi 2006 ; Ramya and Kulkarni 2011 ). One study used a photo-story method (Skrzypiec et al. 2015 ), where participants were invited to use a photograph or picture to illustrate their opinions or experiences of bullying.

Psychometric Properties

Psychometric properties of the scales or interviewing approaches used in the studies have been reported in 22 of the 37 studies. Four studies reported the reliability and validity of the original scale (Malik and Mehta 2016 ; Menon and Hannah-Fisher 2019 ; Patel et al. 2017 ; Samanta et al. 2012 ), but did not report psychometric properties based on the Indian sample, while five studies reported neither the psychometric properties of the original scale nor its generalizability to the Indian sample (Kshirsagar et al. 2007 ; Maji et al. 2016 ; Sarkhel et al. 2006 ; Sharma et al. 2017 ; Sethi et al. 2019 ). Two studies used a scale developed by the authors of the study; however, psychometric properties were not reported (Kelly et al. 2016 ; Prakash et al. 2017 ). Four studies did not provide a clear description of the method of data collection, and the validity of the approach was not defined (Malhi et al. 2014 , 2015 ; Munni and Malhi 2006 ; Ramya and Kulkarni 2011 ). Seven studies specified that the instrument used to assess bullying behavior was an English language questionnaire, while 10 studies used either existing translations or translations created by the authors of the study, of English scales into Indian regional languages. Two studies used English instruments and orally explained the translation in Punjabi (Lee et al. 2018 ) or translated the difficult words to Hindi (Malik and Mehta 2016 ), and one study used English and Hindi language translations of the scales (Thakkar et al. 2020 ).

Of the 37 studies, 25 studies used a convenience or purposive sampling approach to recruit participants. One study used a proportionate random sampling approach to recruit participants (Kelly et al. 2016 ); one study used a two-stage cluster sampling approach (Swain et al. 2014 ); one used a multi-stage sampling design (Chakrabartty and Gupta 2016 ); six studies reported using a random sampling method for selecting either schools or participants (Kshirsagar et al. 2007 ; Maji et al. 2016 ; Malik and Mehta 2016 ; Nguyen et al. 2017 ; Ramya and Kulkarni 2011 ; Sarkhel et al. 2006 ), but only one of them reported how the school sample was randomized (by draw of lots; Sethi et al. 2019 ). Two studies used a randomized control design to allocate participants to experimental or control groups, where Prakash et al. ( 2017 ) used a cluster randomized control design, and the intervention study by Shinde et al. ( 2018 ) used randomized and masked groups for each of three study groups. One study used a quasi-experimental design, where of the two participating schools, one was randomly assigned to the intervention group, and the other was assigned to the control group (Sharma et al. 2020 ). Of the 37 studies included in the review, 17 studies had a sample size of less than 300 participants, nine studies had a sample size of between 300 and 500 participants, whereas 11 studies had a sample size larger than 500 participants.

The articles widely differed in their statistical reporting practices, and therefore, the amount of statistical information provided in the below sections and Table 1 varies per reported study. Time frames of bullying and victimization prevalence estimates are reported in the below sections if they were specified in the included studies. Percentages are rounded off without decimals.

Prevalence Studies

Eight studies focused on the prevalence of bullying in India, while 14 others provided descriptive statistics or percentages for sample participants that qualified as bullies or victims in their study. Of these, five studies provided the participants with a definition of bullying for peer nomination estimates of bullying and victimization in their research (Goossens et al. 2018 ; Khatri 1996 ; Lee et al. 2018 ; Skrzypiec et al. 2018a ; Thakkar et al. 2020 ). Studies from the same city or region in India were scarce, and reports inconsistent. We found that bullying perpetration estimates ranged from 7% (Thakkar et al. 2020 ) to 31% (Kshirsagar et al. 2007 ), and bullying victimization ranged from 9% (Thakkar et al. 2020 ) to 80% (Maji et al. 2016 ), across studies. For instance, Maji et al. ( 2016 ) found that only 38 of 273 adolescents were not bullied, resulting in a dominant 80% students qualifying as victims of bullying. Next to region differences in prevalence, estimates may be related to the reporter used. Kshirsagar et al. ( 2007 ) found higher prevalence rates for bullying for self-reports than for parent or guardian interviews, whereas Thakkar et al. ( 2020 ) found higher prevalence estimates for bullying and victimization for peer reports than for self-reports. Findings as regards prevalence and other findings or aspects reviewed of each study are reported in Table 1 .

Forms of Bullying

It was observed that name-calling or using bad words were common forms of bullying observed among adolescents next to physical bullying. For instance, Kshirsagar et al. ( 2007 ) reported that the most common types of bullying were teasing and giving discriminatory or offensive labels and nick names to others. Similarly, Malhi et al. ( 2014 ) reported that 16% of their sample were victims of direct bullying or physical bullying and 34% were victims of name-calling. Skrzypiec et al. ( 2015 ) showed that caste-based bullying was reported by students and that for females, sexual harassment or “eve-teasing” was a common occurrence.

Risk Factors for Bullying and Victimization

Thirteen studies from India focus on the risk factors and correlates of bullying and victimization. Risk factors refer to variables that have the potential to increase or decrease the likelihood of bullying behaviors occurring (Olweus 1996 ), whereas correlates of bullying behaviors focus on factors that are significantly associated with, and co-occur with, bullying behaviors. Risk factors for bullying and victimization identified through the review were body weight (Patel et al. 2017 ), religion (Thakkar et al. 2020 ), and age (Malhi et al. 2015 ; Ramya and Kulkarni 2011 ), and factors that were found to be significantly correlated to bullying behaviors were personality traits (neuroticism; Donat et al. 2012 ), academic performance (Patel et al. 2017 ), urban/rural setting (Nguyen et al. 2017 ; Samanta et al. 2012 ), and father’s education level (Sethi et al. 2019 ). Factors that were found to be risks or correlates of bullying behavior in various studies included in the review were caste-system of India (Kelly et al. 2016 ; Sethi et al. 2019 ; Thakkar et al. 2020 ), socio-economic status (Malhi et al. 2015 ; Sethi et al. 2019 ), and gender differences.

Studies focusing on the caste system of India reported contradictory findings ranging from “General” caste students experiencing lower harassment (Kelly et al. 2016 ), “General” caste students experiencing more victimization (Thakkar et al. 2020 ), to no differences between castes (Khatri  1996 ). As regards the role of religion, Thakkar et al. ( 2020 ) reported that non-Hindu children were significantly more likely to classify as victims than Hindu children. For SES, Malhi et al. ( 2015 ) found a significant relationship between SES and victimization, with low SES students scoring higher on physical victimization, whereas high SES students scored higher on relational victimization. For gender comparison, although not fully consistent, most studies within India reported that boys scored higher than girls on bullying perpetration and bullying victimization (Narayanan and Betts 2014 ; Nguyen et al. 2017 ; Patel et al. 2017 ; Pronk et al. 2017 ; Ramya and Kulkarni 2011 ; Sethi et al. 2019 ; Sharma et al. 2017 ; Swain et al. 2014 ). Age was also found to have some, though inconsistent, relationship with bullying behavior in school (Malhi et al. 2015 ; Patel et al. 2017 ; Ramya and Kulkarni 2011 ).

Consequences of Bullying

Being bullied was found to be associated with anxiety, depression, and preferring to stay alone (Kshirsagar et al. 2007 ). Also, bullied children were more likely to report symptoms such as school phobia, vomiting, catastrophizing, self-blaming, and sleep disturbances (Kshirsagar et al. 2007 ; Maji et al. 2016 ). Bully-victims had higher risk of conduct problems, hyperactivity, and academic difficulties, and while bullies were found to be better at academics, they had high self-esteem, and higher risk of hyperactivity and conduct problems (Malhi et al. 2014 ; Sarkhel et al. 2006 ).

Based on the syntheses of studies included in our review, we draw the following conclusions: (a) limitations in methodological characteristics of studies were identified with regard to sampling, instrumentation, data collection processes, and presentation of findings, and thus, conclusions from the included studies must be considered cautiously; (b) bullying happens in India, as it does internationally, though the range of prevalence estimates varies widely across studies; (c) name-calling, using bad words and other forms of relational and social bullying are common in India, and physical bullying is also prevalent; (d) risk factors for bullying and victimization in India show some factors that are typical to the Indian context, for example, caste; and (e) bullying is associated with adverse consequences for both, the aggressor and the victim, in India.

The current review notes that bullying is widely spread in India. However, available prevalence estimates vary largely across India, for bullying perpetration and for victimization. India is a geographically vast country, with enormous differences in regional socio-demographics (Charak and Koot 2015 ), thereby constraining prevalence estimates to stratified regions. Scholars have noted that homogeneity within culture in India, like in many other countries, cannot be assumed (Panda and Gupta 2004 ). Thus, generalizing regional prevalence estimates to be representative across India is questionable, calling attention to the need to conduct cross-regional and cross-cultural comparative studies of bullying behavior within the country.

Furthermore, the type of instruments and their psychometric properties impact the findings of a study (Milfont and Fischer 2010 ), thereby not only making prevalence estimates from studies in the present review questionable but also warranting caution to conclusions. Also, conclusions about similarities or differences between the Indian and Western contexts require that metric invariance first be established to allow cross-ethnic and cross-cultural comparisons (Milfont and Fischer 2010 ). Of the 37 studies included in the present review, 22 studies provided descriptions of the psychometric properties of the instruments used, while 15 studies did not report the properties of instruments in their study raising concerns about comparability across studies in terms of instruments used. Furthermore, most studies on bullying in India adopted a quantitative method of data collection, where only 6 out of the included 37 in the present review used a qualitative approach to collect data for their research. The concerns about validity are increased by the over reliance on self-reports; we found that only 7 of the 37 studies used peer-reports, and 2 studies used self- as well as informant reports. In self-rating procedures, pupils tend to underestimate their aggressive behavior and emphasize prosocial behavior on account of social desirability (Salmivalli et al. 1996 ). There is an urgent need to validate and standardize instruments, with special attention to peer reports that assess bullying behaviors and establish their generalizability to Indian samples, to attain unbiased reports of bullying behavior in India (Sousa and Rojjanasrirat 2011 ).

Furthermore, only few studies included a sample that is sizable enough to provide firm, stable conclusions (Naing et al. 2006 ), and thus, the basis for the generalizability of the reports on the prevalence is very narrow. Ioannidis ( 2005 ) asserted that the smaller the sample sizes in a study, the smaller the power of the study, and consequently the higher the likelihood of the research findings to be affected by bias. Thus, we emphasize the need to conduct more studies across India, with proportional sample sizes for objective, less biased conclusions regarding bullying behavior. Also, the purposive selection of participants in 25 of the 37 included studies poses a potential threat to the validity of findings. In future studies, random sampling approaches should be used to study bullying in India.

Furthermore, we observe that there are only two longitudinal studies from India (Nguyen et al. 2019 ; Thakkar et al. 2020 ). Longitudinal studies help disentangle antecedents and consequents, to estimate the inter-individual variability in intra-individual (or within-person) patterns of change (Curran et al. 2010 ), allowing investigations of the sequence of occurrence of bullying with its risks and outcomes. Additionally, several studies in the present review report the adverse effects of bullying; however, the magnitude of these effects remains unclear. Only two of the 37 included studies were experimental studies with pre- and post-test intervention designs (Sharma et al. 2020 ; Shinde et al. 2018 , 2020 ), which also underlines the urgent need to conduct fundamental indigenous research on the topic of bullying behaviors so that future research focusing on effective and tailor-cut interventions can be modeled for the Indian context. Also, given that most studies included were cross-sectional, cause and effect reasoning for bullying behavior remains elusive in India, and warrants further attention.

Lastly, we emphasize that risk factors of bullying need to be studied in light of the Indian culture to understand its meaning and relevance in the culture (Smith et al. 2018 ). In western literature as well, several recent studies have indicated a growing need to study bullying in relation to its broader socio-cultural context (Graham 2016 ). This is imperative in the Indian context given the contextual-development perspective (Chen and French 2008 ), which suggests that in collectivistic countries like India, context is more likely to affect evaluations of socially acceptable behavior and experiences, rather than individual attributes. Given the diversity and population density of India, considerable disparities and inequalities co-exist between cultures and also within the sub-groups of particular cultures (Panda and Gupta 2004 ). For instance, factors such as caste, dissimilarities between urban and rural youth, and the range of SES as observed in India can help in better, more deeply understanding bullying.

Conclusions and Implications for Future Research

This review contributes valuable findings in the field of bullying and victimization in India. However, it has been noted that conducting research in India comes with its own set of logistical and contextual challenges (Smith et al. 2018 ), and thus, the conclusions drawn through the review must be considered with due caution given methodological limitations of the included studies. The quality of research conducted in India has scope of improvement in terms of methodological rigor, data collection processes, instrumentation, and presentation of the findings.

The present study is limited in capacity as it does not include a report on cyberbullying, and thus, future research on the topic of cyberbullying is necessitated within the Indian context. Furthermore, terms such as “aggression” and “discrimination” were not used as search terms in the current study. However, bullying is a form of aggression, and discrimination could be, in some cases, strongly tied to bullying (Verkuyten and Thijs 2002 ). Future studies should pay more attention to the relations between bullying and discrimination.

In contrast to the large body of research on bullying from western countries where findings have been reproduced with a delimited adolescent population insistently, data from India is scanty. India accommodates the largest adolescent population in the world, providing a potential reservoir of relatively untapped resources that could provide in-depth knowledge of causes and consequences of bullying and victimization. Given its special cultural context, there is considerable scope to scrutinize cultural contexts of bullying behavior in India that could assist in revealing novel insights, such as the role of socio-economic distance between different sects of society in low to middle income countries. Such insights might facilitate the conception of dynamic intervention designs for not only the Indian population but also for western populations. Future studies that compare how bullying happens in the western and Indian context would also help shed further light on this topic.

Study 3 (Correia et al. 2009 ) and 4 (Donat et al. 2012 ) have the same Indian sample in their studies. However, the variables examining correlates and consequences of bullying are different in the studies, and thus for the purpose of our review, we include both studies.

Study 8 by Khatri and Kupersmidt ( 2003 ) is based on a dissertation thesis submitted to University of North Carolina by the first author in 1996. For the purpose of our review, we consider the dissertation and the journal article as one inclusion since the participants as well as bullying reports are the same for both.

Study 19 (Nguyen et al. 2017 ) and 20 (Nguyen et al. 2019 ) have the same Indian sample in their studies. However, the former paper focuses on prevalence and forms of bullying and victimization, whereas the latter one examines psychosocial outcomes of victimization, and thus, we include both studies separately in the present review.

Study 32 includes reports from two articles (Shinde et al. 2018 ; Shinde et al. 2020 ). The studies use an intervention design with the same sample, and include reports after 12-month follow-up and 17-month follow-up of the design, both of which have been reported in point 32 in the present review.

Study 35 (Suresh and Tipandjan 2012 ) uses a retrospective bullying questionnaire with undergraduate college students. As the study focuses on bullying behavior in school retrospectively with adolescents, we included the study in the present review.

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Thakkar, N., van Geel, M. & Vedder, P. A Systematic Review of Bullying and Victimization Among Adolescents in India. Int Journal of Bullying Prevention 3 , 253–269 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42380-020-00081-4

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154 Bullying Topics & Bullying Essay Examples

Looking for an exciting research topic about bullying? This problem is very controversial, sensitive, and definitely worth studying

🏆 Top 10 Bullying Topics for Research Papers

📃 bullying essay: writing tips, 🏆 best bullying topics to write about, ⚡ most shocking bullying topics to write about, ✅ simple & easy shocking bullying essay titles, ✍️ bullying essay topics for college, ❓ research questions about bullying.

Examples of bullying can be found everywhere: in schools, workplaces, and even on the Internet (in the form of cyberbullying).

In this article, we’ve collected top bullying research paper topics and questions, as well as bullying essay samples and writing tips. Get inspired with us!

• Direct and indirect bullying: compare & contrast
• The causes of bullying
• Classroom bullying and its effects
• Social isolation as a form of bullying
• Bullying and academic performance
• Passive and active victims of bullying: compare and contrast
• The role of social agencies in bullying prevention
• Public policy for bullying and aggression
• Bullying behavior and psychological health
• Aggressive children and their family background

A bullying essay is a popular assignment in various subjects, including psychology, sociology, and education. Writing an excellent paper on the matter requires more than just in-depth research and planning. Don’t worry; there are some tips that will make writing an essay on bullying much easier:

• Choose a topic that allows analyzing and interpreting the problem. Instead of merely describing what bullying is, try to dig deeper into its causes, consequences, and solutions. If your professor didn’t suggest any topics, you may research bullying essay topics online and select one that would be exciting for you to explore.
• Read sample articles and papers online to see how other students approached the subject. Notice the bits that work and don’t work, and write them out to make the process of creating your essay easier. If you’re struggling with finding enough examples online, you may want to expand your search to discrimination essay topics and materials.
• Research what scholars say about bullying. Articles in scholarly journals are an excellent source of information because they are usually trustworthy. If you’re still in school, your ability to navigate the library or online databases will also impress your tutor. As you start researching, you will find that there is a great variety of studies, and it’s challenging to find the relevant ones. Narrowing down your search would help you to do that. For instance, if you are writing a cyber bullying essay, try searching for social media bullying or online anti-bullying services.
• Include real-life experiences where relevant. Unfortunately, bullying is a common problem in many institutions, and if you haven’t experienced it, your friends or family members probably have. If your tutor allows personal input, explore real-life experiences with bullying. Note the effects, preventive measures that worked or didn’t work, and what a person used to cope with bullying. If personal input is not allowed, you could ask your friends or relatives for ideas and then find high-quality sources that discuss similar problems.
• If you can, be creative about it! A powerful bullying essay example draws from a variety of sources to present material in a creative way and engage readers. Hence, this might be an excellent opportunity for you to include images or graphs in your paper. For example, anti-bullying posters could complement the sections of your work that talks about solutions to the problem. Quotes about bullying coming from famous persons would also be influential, especially if you include them at the beginning of your piece. If you like drawing or painting, you could try to put some of your ideas in graphic form – this will definitely earn you some extra marks! Just make sure to check with your tutor to see whether or not creative input is allowed.
• Structure your paper well to avoid gaps or inconsistencies. It would be beneficial to create a detailed bullying essay outline before you start working. A typical essay should include an introduction, two to three main paragraphs, and a conclusion. The first paragraph of your work should consist of some background information, whereas the last one should restate the points and close up the paper. A good bullying essay introduction should also feature a thesis statement that shows what the piece is about.

These tips will help you to write top-notch essays on bullying, as well as on related subjects. Don’t forget to browse our blog some more to find other helpful materials, including essay titles!

• The Problem of Bullying and Possible Solutions In general, bullying is a critical and complex issue prevailing among children; thus, it is essential to adopt different solutions to tackle it.
• Cyber Bullying Issue Therefore, the goal of this paper is to analyse who the victims of cyber bullying are and the influence it has on them.
• Bullying and Its Effects in Society Secondary research is critical in the development of a background to the research, which helps in determining the validity of the problem and suggested research methodologies.
• Bullying and Child Development Bullying is one of the common vices in schools that influences a lot of growth and development of children. Bullying also affects the ability of children to concentrate in school because they are always on […]
• Social Influence on Bullying in Schools The theory helps us to understand why the stronger members of the school population are likely to “rule” over the weaker members of the school as described in the social hierarchy concept in the theory.
• School Bullying and Moral Development The middle childhood is marked by the development of basic literacy skills and understanding of other people’s behavior that would be crucial in creating effective later social cognitions. Therefore, addressing bullying in schools requires strategies […]
• Bullying on Social Media Platforms It is consistent and repeating, taking advantage of the Internet’s anonymity with the main goal to anger, scare, or shame a victim.
• The Impact of Workplace Bullying The negative impacts of bullying in the workplace develop as a result of ignorance among employees regarding the vice, unreported cases, as well as the negligence of organizational leaders.
• Cyber Bullying and Positivist Theory of Crime Learning theory approaches to the explanation of criminal behavior have been associated with one of the major sociological theories of crime, the differential association theory.
• Is Cyber Bullying Against Teenagers More Detrimental Than Face-To-Face Bullying? Social networking has also contributed greatly to the issue of cyber bullying especially in making it more harmful as compared to face-to-face bullying.
• Verbal Bullying at School: How It Should Be Stopped This paper highlights some of the best practices that can be used by teachers in order to address this problem. So, this information can be of great benefit to them.
• Cyber-Bullying Is a Crime: Discussion It is easy to see the effects of cyber-bullying but it is hard to find out who is the bully making it hard for authorities to pin the blame on the perpetrator of a crime […]
• School Bullying: Causes and Police Prevention It is for this reason that there has been need for the intervention of the community and the government to address the issue of bullying schools lest the school environment becomes the worst place to […]
• Moral Development and Bullying in Children The understanding of moral development following the theories of Kohlberg and Gilligan can provide useful solutions to eliminating bullying in American schools.
• Nature of Bullying In this paper, central focus is going to be on the nature of bullying of children in my hometown, Orlando Florida, how it can be solved, and most importantly; establishing the importance of having knowledge […]
• Bullying and Cyberbullying in Modern Society Cyberbullying among adolescents and teenagers is defined as the purposeful and repetitive harm done by one or more peers in cyberspace as a result of using digital devices and social media platforms.
• Cyber Bullying Prevention in Learning Institutions: Systematic Approach To start with, the students are provided with ways of reporting their concern to the educational institution, and when the staff members of the institution receive the report, they evaluate the information together with the […]
• School Bullying: Methods for Managing the Problem The investigation of relevant studies on the methods for stopping school bullying reveals that the most effective ways of eliminating this type of behavior include providing training for teachers, encouraging students to participate in the […]
• Problem of Childhood Bullying in Modern Society To begin with, the family which is the basic and the most important unit in the society as well as the primary socializing agent plays a major role in shaping behavior of children include bullying.
• The Effects of Cyber-Bullying and Cyber-Stalking on the Society In particular, one should focus on such issues as the disrespect for a person’s autonomy, the growing intensity of domestic violence and deteriorating mental health in the country.
• Behaviour Management: Bullying The typical behaviors which I saw in the child who got bullied are: The victim of this bullying is physically weak and a soft-natured one.
• Social Psychological Concepts of Bullying and Its Types Some of the factors that contribute to bullying include poor parenting, economic challenges, lack of mentorship, and jealousy among others. One of the main concepts used to explain bullying is that of parenting roles and […]
• Bullying Through Social Media: Research Proposal The hypothesis of the study is as follows: the role of adolescents in a cyberbullying situation is interconnected with their psychological characteristics.
• The Issue of Bullying in the Schools It gives me joy to know that the issue of bullying is now a pubic affair since bullying stories were unheard of when I was growing up.
• The ABC Model of Crisis: Bullying at School The next step is the identification of the nature of the crisis, and thus questions are as follows: Who is bullying you?
• Fights and Bullying Among Middle School Learners Alongside the positivist philosophy, the research adopted the survey strategy that involved the use of self-administered questionnaires to collect from the participants.
• Bullying as a Relational Aggression This resistance has been one of the obstacles to eliminating the cyber bullying in the schools. Schools and districts have been involved in the Challenge Day activities where children are advised on how to handle […]
• Bullying in School Face-to-face bullying is an interesting area of study because it clearly demonstrates bullying in school. Students consider bullying as a school culture even though it is contrary to the school rules and regulations of schools.
• Racist Bullying Among Black Students in US Universities This research focuses on the impact of bullying and racism among African American students in the country. What are the impacts of bullying and racism among Black students in U.S.universities?
• The Essence of Bullying: Healthy Societal Relations The aggressor frequently abuses the victim’s lower social standing to gain control of the situation and cause harm, which is another characteristic of the phenomenon.
• Bullying: Violence in Children and Adolescents Bullying is one of the most common manifestations of peer violence in children and adolescents. Prevention of bullying, cyberbullying included, has to occur in accordance with the IBSE Standards of social and emotional learning.
• Bullying, Its Forms, and Counteractions In addition, it is necessary to support those at the center of this bullying, as this can protect them from harmful effects and consequences.
• Incivility, Violence, and Bullying in the Healthcare Workplace The following step is to gather the team and communicate the necessity of change, assigning some individuals for the positions related to the change, in other terms, a support team.
• Effective Ways to Deal With Bullying in US Schools Teachers should ensure the bully is aware of the improper behavior, why it is improper, and the repercussions of the behavior.
• The Gay Teen Suicide & Bullying The article explains that the ones who survive may have access to extensive facilities, support, and status beyond their world of bullies, which sounds reasonable for me.
• Network Bullying: School Policy Framework The first step is to have a careful conversation with the student and an assessment by the school psychologist to ensure that there is a fright.
• How to Reduce Bullying in Senior Facilities One of the main reasons an individual may commit suicide due to bullying is because it may make an individual develop a negative self-image after the bullying incident. Some of the major bullying incidences that […]
• Active Shooter and Nursing Bullying Nurses should lock all doors and use tables and other objects to reinforce them to prevent any possibility of the active shooter getting to the patients’ room.
• Bullying and Autism Spectrum Disorder In fact, bullying as a social phenomenon can be characterized as a social and interaction issue; therefore, it is possible to analyze the connection between autism and acts of bullying and inappropriate behavior.
• Eliminating the Problem of Online Bullying Eliminating the problem of online bullying is vital for improving the mental health of adolescents and young adults and allowing them to build their lives free of adverse external influences. It is possible to see […]
• Sexual Bullying in Schools and Its Influence The author states the difference in the mental and physical maturation of girls and boys as one of the core roots of the issue.
• Bullying and Harassment in the Healthcare Workplace This paper is written to explore the origins of discrimination and harassment in the healthcare workplace. Bullying begins early in medical college and residencies; it has been referred to as an element of the learning […]
• Bullying in Healthcare and Its Consequences Nancy was big and the manager used that to tease her every opportunity she got. It was important to confront the bully and support the victim.
• Queer (LGBT) Teenage Bullying at School The importance of this source to the research is associated with the significant role that youth organizations have to play towards minimizing bullying among LGBT students.
• Bullying of Children: Misconceptions and Preventive Measures As a result, the density of shows and articles devoted to bullying creates an illusion that this event appears more often than it does in reality.
• Bullying Behavior and Impact of Hegemonic Masculinity Rosen and Nofziger applied a quantitative research design to explore the relationships between students’ bullying experiences and race, age, and socioeconomic status and identify the frequency of bullying.
• Bullying and Incivility in Clinical Setting The problem of bullying and incivility in a clinical setting can negatively affect the quality of care provided, so it needs to be managed.
• Bullying and Its Influences on a Person It is common for victims of bullying to develop mental health issues, as they were placed in stressful situations and had a constant fear along with depression in some cases. Making friends is one of […]
• Overview of the Problem of Bullying Undoubtedly, there is no way each person would be able to share and divide their opinion with everyone else because people are not identical, and they tend to have various perspectives.
• “Bullying in Schools”: The Aspects of Bullying In their article, Menesini and Salmivalli examine the current state of knowledge on the topic and thoroughly discuss all of the aspects of bullying.
• Analysis of Bullying and Parenting Style Since the given topic usually refers to children and adolescents, it is evident that their parents hold a portion of responsibility because the adults affect the growth and development of young individuals.
• Hate Crimes – Bullying More than two-thirds of children and adolescents experience bullying and more than one-fourth of them report extreme forms of coercion.
• Bullying Management: Mass Awareness Program Bulletin.”Teachers, trained to help to rebuild trust, confidence, growth, and commitment through mass awareness to arrest bullying in high schools”. The proposed mass action program is meant to promote awareness on the need to stop […]
• An Anti-Bullying Program Integrated With PRAISE by Ackerman I chose to describe bullying because of the importance of the topic and due to my personal interest in it. Education will eliminate most of the reasons for bullying and provide students with the E […]
• Bullying Through Social Media: Methods An Informed Consent Document will be provided to participants prior to the research, explaining the purpose of the study and promising to protect their identity.
• Bullying Through Social Media In particular, inequality in the position of the persecutor and the victim is evident – the aggressor can be anonymous, and there can be many of them.
• Bullying of Nurses During the COVID-19 Pandemic Then, the principles of adult learning will be used to develop and implement an information product to improve the nursing workforce’s bullying awareness and the knowledge of healthy conflict resolution in the workplace.
• Bullying in Healthcare Organizations: Impact on Nursing Practice Bullying in business entities is a common phenomenon, but the extent of its influence on the “production process” in healthcare and medicine institutions is only beginning to be recognized.
• Workplace Bullying Among Nurses in the Acute Setting Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the frequency of conflicts between nurses and their colleagues and managers has increased significantly in my workplace.
• Bullying Perpetration Among School-Aged Children Mucherah et al.examined how the school climate and teachers’ sanctions against bullying relate to the risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of bullying.
• Programming for a Year 5 Class on Bullying As a result, in Lesson 6, they will offer their project addressing bullying behaviour and present it to their class, which is the main aim of the Unit Plan.
• Injury and Violence Prevention: – Bullying The aim of preventing injury and violence from bullying is to enable the student to have a healthy social and physical life that will enable them to perform well in their studies and live healthily.
• Cyber-Bullying vs. Traditional Bullying: Its Psychological Effects The researchers presented the recent statistics in order to illustrate the negative social and psychological effects of cyber-bullying in contrast to the traditional bullying in schools.
• Bullying in the Workplace Old Nurse to New Nurse This unvoiced scourge in nursing is characteristically encouraged by the need of bullies to have a total control of a person. Resignation of nurses due to bullying can lead to shortage of nurses in hospitals.
• Bullying and Peer Abuse Especially at work, targets fear coming to work and this will have an adverse result in the efficiency of the staff in the hospital.
• Bullying in the Nursing Workplace Bullying in the nursing workplace, in this case, causes the one bullied to have a feeling of defenselessness and takes away the nurses’ right to dignity at his or her workplace.
• Cyberbullying and Bullying: Similarities While deciding on fitting and balanced sanctions, it is vital to reflect on the ways in which cyberbullying events differ in effect in comparison to other forms of bullying.
• Protection From Bullying: Methods That Work Because of this, it is vital that parents, teachers, and guardians educate themselves on the nature of bullying and work together to develop effective methods and strategies that would help to overcome the problem.
• Psychology: Social Media and Bullying The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of social media and bullying and express the author’s opinion on the matter.
• Bullying of LGBTQ Students in American Schools The chosen article focuses on the issue of bullying of LGBTQ students in American schools and its legal repercussions. The author shows that students who are openly gay or bi, as well as those who […]
• Workplace Bullying and Its Impact on People and Society The paper follows a traditional structure with the introduction and body paragraphs that provide essential information devoted to the problem, and improve the understanding of the concept of bullying.
• “Bullying Behavior Among Radiation Therapists” by Johnson and Trad The literature review encompassed a considerable number of sources pertinent to the study and recent enough to be relevant; all the publications were dated within the last fifteen years.
• Human Rights Issues in Australia: Bullying Among School-Going Age and Young People The focus of the topic of the day is on bullying. It is used to prevent or avoid the occurrence of a bullying experience.
• Bullying and Worker’s Harassment in Western Australia In most of the armed services in Australia, new recruits and women are commonly the victims of bullying and harassment despite the fact that it is unacceptable.
• Aggression and Bullying in the Workplace Investigation Aggression, the effects of which are often equated with the death wish, is an instinct like any other and in natural conditions, it helps just as much as any other to ensure the survival of […]
• Bullying: History and Mechanisms for Prevention Students are encouraged to not participate in bullying and to help prevent bullying of others through positive social reactions to incidences of bullying” and Sharing of Scenarios: “Each group will give feedback and share other […]
• Conflict Resolution Tactics and Bullying This study is interesting to the extent that it shows how the social environment impacts the development of a child and how it shapes his or her conflict resolution techniques.
• School Bullying: Case Analysis Even today there is no generally accepted definition of bullying but it is thought that when an individual is for a long period of time is exposed to repeat negative actions and behavior by one […]
• Bullying in the Workplace as a Psychological Harassment Another form of bullying in the workplace is physical assault in the sense that if the workers are not at ease with each other and when the rules and regulations are not at all observed, […]
• “Adolescents’ Perception of Bullying” by Frisen et al. The second and the third aims of the study were “to describe how adolescents perceive bullies” and “to describe what adolescents believe to be important in order to stop bullying”, respectively.
• The Long Term Effects of Bullying in Elementary School Wolke and Lereya argue that the problem is that the majority of studies on bullying are cross-sectional and only use follow-ups after a short period of time.
• Anti-Bullying and Work Quality Improvement Initiative Given the specifics of the work of nurses, conflicts of this kind negatively affect both the whole process of work and the health of patients in particular.
• Workplace Bullying, Salivary Cortisol and Long-Term Sickness Absence The purpose of this cohort-based study was to investigate the extent to which cortisol levels were associated with sickness absence and the relationships between workplace bullying and sickness absence through the prism of cortisol use.
• Workplace Bullying in Australia It is possible to offer several recommendations that can reduce the risk of bullying in organisations. In this case, more attention should be paid to the absence of mechanisms that can protect the victims of […]
• Domestic Violence and Bullying in Schools It also states the major variables related to bullying in schools. They will confirm that social-economic status, gender, and race can contribute to bullying in schools.
• Staff Training as a Solution to Workplace Bullying Furthermore, it has an appeal to logos as the writer has facts about the prevalence of workplace bullying in the USA.
• The “Bully-Free” Initiative: Bullying in Education The students need to have a clear idea that bullying goes against the rules of the school and which actions may be considered bullying.
• Free Speech vs. Bullying Laws One of the topical aspects of modern democracy is the freedom of speech expressed in an ability to come up with personal ideas and the lack of restrictions on the right of expression through publicity.
• Gender and Bullying Issues in Nursing A lack of tolerance for workplace harassment and bullying is likely to lead to the deterioration of the situation and further misunderstanding and tension in an organization.
• Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Peers They are facing the dilemma of how to react, whether they have to fight a superior force of the enemy or to complain to teachers and parents, undermining their reputation.
• Bullying in Schools and Its Major Reasons As of now, the most important goal in research studies covering the topic of bullying in schools is to understand the mechanisms behind bullying promotion and prevention.
• Bullying in Schools: Worldwide Study and Survey The parents were asked to rate the frequency of the bullying that their children experience and to describe the experience of bullying that their children went through.
• Bullying Prevention Programs Some teachers and professors claim that their students cannot show their potential in their hobbies due to the limitations they experience because of bullies around them. As it is mentioned above, educators do not control […]
• Bullying and Its Impact Thus, the current paper is dedicated to the issue of bullying and its effects as well as anti-bullying practices as related to peer victimization.
• Dealing With Workplace Bullying According to the report presented by the University of Louisville, workplace bullying is a repeated action of one employee or a group of employees towards another individual or group. Dealing with bullying in the workplace […]
• Bullying Policies in Walton School District and Georgia University The sample bullying policy language in Walton School District is very similar to the language in the policy of the University of Georgia.
• Amanda Todd’s Bullying and Suicide Story She was fifteen years old, and her story created a major uproar in the press, as it showed the true nature of bullying and the effects it has on the person.
• Bullying in America: Causes and Prevention That is why it is important to pay attention to the reasons why bullying occurs and ways in which it can be reduced.
• Bullying, Facts and Countermeasures Whether it is the bully or the bullied, the parents will need to do a lot to see to it that their children are brought up in the best of the behaviors.
• Bullying as Social and Criminal Deviance The most important step in the student’s guide to research that I would need to analyze bullying is defining the topic.
• Bullying and Legislation in Australian Workplace According to the authors of the article, workplace bullying can be characterized as internal violence. According to the authors of the article, bullying is a widespread phenomenon and is a common attribute of many organizations.
• Bullying at Australian School: Causes and Solution The technological breakthrough that was witnessed in the late 90s and the early 2000s also contributed to the development of the phenomenon, sparking the concepts such as cyberbullying and online bullying.
• Workplace Bullying in The Playground Never Ends The primary reason for becoming a bully is primarily seen in fear to lose authority or formal positions in an organization and have more institutional power than that of the targets.
• Bullying and Suicide in High Schools The main limitation of this research is that the scholars surveyed the victims more often. The victims of cyberbullying also had a tendency to be depressed and contemplate suicide.
• School-Aged Children’ Bullying Behaviors It is due to this that the work of Janssen et al.sought to show just how potentially damaging this behavior could be and the potential psychological repercussions it could have on young children due to […]
• College Students: Suicide and Bullying-Methods The analysts used this tool to report the mood of the participants by posting quizzes, which the students answered while filling the questionnaire.
• Childhood Bullying and Adulthood Suicide Connection In this regard, the seriousness of the issue is depicted in research results that indicate that at least 50% of children and youth in the US have experienced bullying situations as either bullies or victims […]
• Girl-To-Girl Bullying and Mean Stinks Program The positive results can be achieved by the implementation of the multiple educational programs, the increase in public awareness, and promotion of the values of the healthy relationships.”Mean Stinks” is exactly the program with the […]
• Association of Parenting Factors With Bullying The lack of the parental support is the main cause of students’ deviant behaviors at school, including the cases of bullying, and those parents who pay much attention to developing their career cannot provide the […]
• Workplace Bullying and Its Impact on Performance Workplace bullying refers to a deliberate, repeated, and continuous mistreatment of a worker or a group of workers by one or more colleagues in the workplace.
• The Problem of Workplace Bullying In particular, this paper will include the discussion of the research articles, reports and case studies that describe the causes of workplace bullying and the strategies used by companies in an effort to overcome it.
• College Students: Suicide and Bullying The misconception that bullying is a minor issue among college students has contributed to the high number of students who suffer because of bullying.
• Homosexual Students and Bullying Specifically, the section addresses the prevalence of bullying in schools and the level of bullying in bisexuals, gay males, and lesbians.
• Social Psychology of Violence and Bullying in Schools Bullying is a common phenomenon in schools and it is reported that it results in violence in learning institutions in the end.
• Bullying and Suicide: The Correlation Between Bullying and Suicide Nonetheless, the extensive research shows that the correlation exists and bullying is one of the risk factors for development of suicidal ideas in adolescents.
• Cyber Bullying Reduction Program Table of Activities Activity Significance Assembling parents/guardians, students and teachers to announce and explain the program in the institution To enlighten parents/guardians, students and teachers about the rules and regulation enacted due to the threat […]
• Discouraging and Eliminating Cyber Bullying Resources Role of the resource/input Statement forms To facilitate information transfer to the staff Counseling Personnel To arm students against the problem Bullying report system To create efficient internet enhance report system Regulation implementation documents […]
• High School Bullying Effective Responses Emphasis will also be made on the kind of audience to read this article because the contents of this study need to be at par with other similar articles in the journal to be selected.
• Bullying and Suicide Among Teenagers Specific objectives Analyze the causes of bullying among teenagers in the country Analyze the effects of bullying among victims, perpetrators and by-standers Analyze the relationship between bullying in school and suicide among teenagers in the […]
• Bullying in the Workplace Organizational leaders have an ethical obligation to ensure that they deal with cases of bullying within the workplace in a professional manner that demonstrates equality, honesty, and high sensitivity to the needs of others.
• Social Bullying in Jeff Cohen’s “Monster Culture” It is clear that his part of character is mostly dominant in the childhood stages, as children are not able to develop a sense of morality and predict the consequences of their actions.
• Cyber Bullying and Its Forms The difference between the conventional way of bullying and cyber bullying is that in conventional bullying, there is contact between the bully and the victim.
• Problem of Workplace Bullying Authority intervention should occur when the employees fail to respond to awareness intervention, and thus decide to continue with their behaviors.
• Problem of the Managing Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace Employees in an organization have a specific role that they are supposed to play and this means that there might be shortcomings which should not lead to bullying.
• Cyber Bullying as a Virtual Menace The use of information and communication technologies to support a deliberate and most of the time repeated hostile behavior by an individual or groups of people with the sole intention of harming others, one is […]
• Does Bullying Cause Emotional Problems? However, the current study was relevant because of this design, for the scope of the study covered as well as the results were accurate, and the conclusions drawn were correct.
• Ban High School Bullying A number of stakeholders contribute to the high prevalence of bullying in American schools. Schools that ignore bullying are a big part of the problem and they need to be held accountable.
• The Problem of Bullying While most states in the United States of America have laws to protect people from bullying, the federal government is yet to enact an anti-bullying law.
• Ethical Case: Facebook Gossip or Cyberbullying? The best option to Paige is to apologize publicly and withdraw her comments. The final stage is to act and reflect the outcome of the choice made.
• Bullying on the Rise: Should Federal Government Enact Federal-Bullying Laws? This paper will thus use both primary and secondary data to discuss the prevalence of bullying in schools and whether the federal govern should enact federal laws to curb the social vice at school.
• Character Traits of Bullying Despite the fact that such characteristics may differ from child to child, it is the common feature of difference that makes the target children get noticed by the bullies.
• Bullying in the Schools Furthermore, the law states that training should be done to the teachers as well as the other members of staff on how to deal with bullying and the law also needs the schools to report […]
• Troubled Adolescent due to Bullying His lowered self-esteem would make him to observe the common behaviours of the older boys quietly and accept the situation as a cultural practice.
• Workplace bullying: does it exist?
• What are the three key elements of bullying?
• How does bullying affect those who observe it?
• Direct and indirect bullying: what is the difference?
• What families do bullies typically come from?
• Aggressive children: what is their future?
• How to prevent bullying in schools?
• School bullying and domestic violence: is there a connection?
• Cyberbullying: how to prevent it?
• What can parents do to prevent their children from bullying?
• Children’s Rights Research Ideas
• Equality Topics
• Homophobia Topics
• School Violence Ideas
• Respect Essay Topics
• Social Inequality Paper Topics
• Suicide Topics
• Youth Violence Research Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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165 Bullying Research Topics: Qualitative & Quantitative

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

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

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

⚠️ Types of Bullying

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

🚀 Bullying Research Paper Outline

🔗 references, 🔝 top 12 bullying research topics.

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

❓ Top 12 Bullying Research Questions

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

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

💡 Qualitative Bullying Topics for Research Papers

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

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

📊 Quantitative Bullying Research Paper Topics

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

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

🖥️ Bullying Research Topics: Cyberbullying

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

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

🕵️ Bullying Research Titles: Crime and Law

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

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

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

Bullying Research Paper Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bullying Thesis Statement: How to Write

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

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

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

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

Main Body & Topic Sentences for Bullying Research Paper

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

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

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

📌 Create a logical structure for your argument.

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

Bullying Conclusion Paragraph: Writing Tips

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

🎯 Finish by connecting the last paragraph to the first.

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

🎯 End with a sentence that summarizes your main points.

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

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

Further reading:

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

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

James o’higgins norman.

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

Defining and Contextualising Bullying

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

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

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

• Intentionality
• Repetitiveness
• Power imbalance
• Negative effects

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

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

Similarly, cyberbullying is defined as:

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

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

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

(UNESCO 2019 )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bullying Research

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

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

What assumptions have we been making about childhood?

How best to undertake research on childhood?

What do we do about it now?

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

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

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

Recent Influence of the New Sociology of Childhood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Modular, scalable hardware architecture for a quantum computer

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Quantum computers hold the promise of being able to quickly solve extremely complex problems that might take the world’s most powerful supercomputer decades to crack.

But achieving that performance involves building a system with millions of interconnected building blocks called qubits. Making and controlling so many qubits in a hardware architecture is an enormous challenge that scientists around the world are striving to meet.

Toward this goal, researchers at MIT and MITRE have demonstrated a scalable, modular hardware platform that integrates thousands of interconnected qubits onto a customized integrated circuit. This “quantum-system-on-chip” (QSoC) architecture enables the researchers to precisely tune and control a dense array of qubits. Multiple chips could be connected using optical networking to create a large-scale quantum communication network.

By tuning qubits across 11 frequency channels, this QSoC architecture allows for a new proposed protocol of “entanglement multiplexing” for large-scale quantum computing.

The team spent years perfecting an intricate process for manufacturing two-dimensional arrays of atom-sized qubit microchiplets and transferring thousands of them onto a carefully prepared complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. This transfer can be performed in a single step.

“We will need a large number of qubits, and great control over them, to really leverage the power of a quantum system and make it useful. We are proposing a brand new architecture and a fabrication technology that can support the scalability requirements of a hardware system for a quantum computer,” says Linsen Li, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and lead author of a paper on this architecture.

Li’s co-authors include Ruonan Han, an associate professor in EECS, leader of the Terahertz Integrated Electronics Group, and member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE); senior author Dirk Englund, professor of EECS, principal investigator of the Quantum Photonics and Artificial Intelligence Group and of RLE; as well as others at MIT, Cornell University, the Delft Institute of Technology, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, and the MITRE Corporation. The paper appears today in Nature .

Diamond microchiplets

While there are many types of qubits, the researchers chose to use diamond color centers because of their scalability advantages. They previously used such qubits to produce integrated quantum chips with photonic circuitry.

Qubits made from diamond color centers are “artificial atoms” that carry quantum information. Because diamond color centers are solid-state systems, the qubit manufacturing is compatible with modern semiconductor fabrication processes. They are also compact and have relatively long coherence times, which refers to the amount of time a qubit’s state remains stable, due to the clean environment provided by the diamond material.

In addition, diamond color centers have photonic interfaces which allows them to be remotely entangled, or connected, with other qubits that aren’t adjacent to them.

“The conventional assumption in the field is that the inhomogeneity of the diamond color center is a drawback compared to identical quantum memory like ions and neutral atoms. However, we turn this challenge into an advantage by embracing the diversity of the artificial atoms: Each atom has its own spectral frequency. This allows us to communicate with individual atoms by voltage tuning them into resonance with a laser, much like tuning the dial on a tiny radio,” says Englund.

This is especially difficult because the researchers must achieve this at a large scale to compensate for the qubit inhomogeneity in a large system.

To communicate across qubits, they need to have multiple such “quantum radios” dialed into the same channel. Achieving this condition becomes near-certain when scaling to thousands of qubits. To this end, the researchers surmounted that challenge by integrating a large array of diamond color center qubits onto a CMOS chip which provides the control dials. The chip can be incorporated with built-in digital logic that rapidly and automatically reconfigures the voltages, enabling the qubits to reach full connectivity.

“This compensates for the in-homogenous nature of the system. With the CMOS platform, we can quickly and dynamically tune all the qubit frequencies,” Li explains.

Lock-and-release fabrication

To build this QSoC, the researchers developed a fabrication process to transfer diamond color center “microchiplets” onto a CMOS backplane at a large scale.

They started by fabricating an array of diamond color center microchiplets from a solid block of diamond. They also designed and fabricated nanoscale optical antennas that enable more efficient collection of the photons emitted by these color center qubits in free space.

Then, they designed and mapped out the chip from the semiconductor foundry. Working in the MIT.nano cleanroom, they post-processed a CMOS chip to add microscale sockets that match up with the diamond microchiplet array.

They built an in-house transfer setup in the lab and applied a lock-and-release process to integrate the two layers by locking the diamond microchiplets into the sockets on the CMOS chip. Since the diamond microchiplets are weakly bonded to the diamond surface, when they release the bulk diamond horizontally, the microchiplets stay in the sockets.

“Because we can control the fabrication of both the diamond and the CMOS chip, we can make a complementary pattern. In this way, we can transfer thousands of diamond chiplets into their corresponding sockets all at the same time,” Li says.

The researchers demonstrated a 500-micron by 500-micron area transfer for an array with 1,024 diamond nanoantennas, but they could use larger diamond arrays and a larger CMOS chip to further scale up the system. In fact, they found that with more qubits, tuning the frequencies actually requires less voltage for this architecture.

“In this case, if you have more qubits, our architecture will work even better,” Li says.

The team tested many nanostructures before they determined the ideal microchiplet array for the lock-and-release process. However, making quantum microchiplets is no easy task, and the process took years to perfect.

“We have iterated and developed the recipe to fabricate these diamond nanostructures in MIT cleanroom, but it is a very complicated process. It took 19 steps of nanofabrication to get the diamond quantum microchiplets, and the steps were not straightforward,” he adds.

Alongside their QSoC, the researchers developed an approach to characterize the system and measure its performance on a large scale. To do this, they built a custom cryo-optical metrology setup.

Using this technique, they demonstrated an entire chip with over 4,000 qubits that could be tuned to the same frequency while maintaining their spin and optical properties. They also built a digital twin simulation that connects the experiment with digitized modeling, which helps them understand the root causes of the observed phenomenon and determine how to efficiently implement the architecture.

In the future, the researchers could boost the performance of their system by refining the materials they used to make qubits or developing more precise control processes. They could also apply this architecture to other solid-state quantum systems.

This work was supported by the MITRE Corporation Quantum Moonshot Program, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Office, the Center for Quantum Networks, and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program.

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Why do Dyeing poison frogs tap dance?

The toe tapping behavior of various amphibians has long attracted attention from researchers and pet owners. Despite being widely documented, the underlying functional role is poorly understood. In a new paper, researchers demonstrate that Dyeing poison frogs modulate their taps based on specific stimuli.

Dyeing poison frogs, Dendrobates tinctorius , have been shown to tap their posterior toes in response to a range of prey sizes, from small fruit flies to large crickets. In the present study, the researchers hypothesized that if the tapping has a role in feeding, the frogs would adjust their behavior in response to different environmental cues.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers recorded the frogs under varying conditions. "I used the slow-motion camera on my iPhone to take minute-long videos of the frogs tapping. Afterwards, I went back to each video and counted the number of taps on each foot and how long they were visible since they were often hidden behind a leaf or the frog itself. I used those two numbers to get a "taps per minute" on each foot and added them up," said Thomas Parrish, a former undergraduate student in the Fischer lab (GNDP), and the first author on the paper.

The researchers first tested whether the frogs tapped their toes more when they were feeding. To do so, the researchers fed the terrariums with half a teaspoon of fruit flies and recorded their hunting.

"We already knew the answer to this, but it was great to see that the tapping increased in the presence of the prey," said Eva Fischer, an assistant professor of integrative biology. "We wanted to ask 'Why?' and we wondered whether it had a function in prey capture or it was just a excitatory response like how dogs wag their tails because they are excited."

The researchers then used different surfaces to see whether the tapping behavior changed when the frogs could see the prey but not feed on it. They placed the fruit flies in small, clear Petri dishes in the frogs' home and measured the rate of toe tapping. They found that the frogs had an average of 50 taps/minute when they couldn't access the flies compared to 166 taps/minute when they fed on free-moving flies.

"The idea was that if they're excited, we might see something different based on whether they can catch the flies," Fisher said. "These results suggested that since they kept trying to eat in both cases, the tapping was not just out of excitement."

The researchers wondered, then, whether the toe taps were a form of vibrational signaling where the frogs used it as a way to startle or distract the prey before they fed. They used four different surfaces to test this question: soil, leaf surfaces, gel, and glass.

"Soil and leaves are natural substances, but soil is not very responsive while leaves are. On the other hand, gels are responsive and glass is not, but they are both unnatural surfaces to frogs," Fischer said.

They found that while the tap rate differed depending on the surface, with leaves being the highest at 255 taps/minute and glass the lowest at 64 taps/minute, there was no difference in the total number of feeding attempts or success.

"Although we saw that the frogs ate in every context, it was exciting to see that they changed their behavior based on what they're standing on," Fischer said. "We were surprised, however, that we didn't see a difference in how successful they were at eating. It's possible that the experiment is like sending them to a buffet instead of what happens in the forest where the tapping may help in stirring the prey."

The researchers are now hoping to understand what other stimuli might trigger this behavior. "Although we've conclusively shown that it is important in feeding, it could also be important in other contexts. For example, we have seen that the frogs tap more when there are other frogs nearby, so there may be a social aspect to it," Fischer said.

They are also interested in studying the underlying biomechanical aspects of the muscles. "It would be cool to look at the anatomy and see how the muscles work," Fischer said. "Ultimately, we could ask whether all frogs can tap their toes if they have the right muscles or whether there's something special about the anatomy of poison frogs."

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign . Original written by Ananya Sen. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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• Toe tapping behavior in poison frogs

Journal Reference :

• Thomas Q. Parrish, Eva K. Fischer. Tap dancing frogs: Posterior toe tapping and feeding in Dendrobates tinctorius . Ethology , 2024; DOI: 10.1111/eth.13465

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