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PEER HARASSMENT IN SCHOOL
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Peer Harassment
in School
JAANA JUVONEN
SANDRA GRAHAM
vii
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Contributors
Contributors
ix
x Contributors
Kirsten Madsen, PhD, Earlscourt Child and Family Centre, Toronto, On-
tario, Canada
Dan Olweus, PhD, Research Center for Health Promotion (HEMIL), Uni-
versity of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Ken Rigby, PhD, Division of Education, Arts and Social Science, University
of South Australia, Underdale, Australia
Christina Salmivalli, PhD, Department of Psychology, Academy of Finland,
University of Turku, Turku, Finland
Beate Schuster, PhD, Institute for Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Univer-
sity Munich, Munich, Germany
David Schwartz, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, California
Shu Shu, MPhil, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, University
of London, New Cross, United Kingdom
Rosalyn Shute, PhD, School of Psychology, Flinders University, Adelaide,
South Australia
Lorrie K. Sippola, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatch-
ewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Phillip Slee, PhD, School of Education, Flinders University, Adelaide, South
Australia
Peter K. Smith, PhD, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, Uni-
versity of London, New Cross, United Kingdom
Preface
xiii
xiv Preface
Dan Olweus was the first researcher to systematically study peer victimiza-
tion. There is hardly a published study on the topic that does not cite his pi-
oneering work in Sweden and Norway. It is therefore fitting that the book
begins with an Introduction by Olweus that provides a historical overview
of the evolution of peer harassment research, as well as insights into the
contrasting approaches of European and North American researchers. This
introductory retrospective sets the stage for the four broad topics in the
study of peer harassment that constitute the rest of the book.
The first part includes five chapters that focus on conceptual and
methodological issues. Accompanying the emergence of an empirical litera-
ture on peer harassment has been concern about how to conceptualize the
Preface xv
phenomenon and how to measure it. For example, how often and how long
does harassment have to occur before it is perceived as chronic and there-
fore a precursor to adjustment difficulties (Ladd & Ladd)? What concep-
tual frameworks can guide the study of family influences on victim status
(Perry et al.)? How can one integrate self-views and peer reports of victim-
ization at the level of both theory and measurement (Graham & Juvonen;
Juvonen et al.; Pellegrini)? It will be evident that these are complex and in-
terrelated questions, for how one conceptualizes the victimization phenom-
enon largely shapes one’s measurement approach.
Victimization is both a heterogeneous phenomenon and an experience
that manifests itself differently at different stages of development. The sec-
ond part of the book comprises five chapters that highlight the different
subtypes and developmental differences in peer harassment. Whereas some
authors examine changes in the manifestations of harassment across devel-
opment from preschool to adolescence (e.g., Crick et al.; Schwartz et al.),
others focus on particular age groups (Alsaker & Valkanover; Craig et al.;
Owens et al.). These chapters demonstrate the various “faces” of the phe-
nomenon: For example, peer victimization may be more easily recognized
as physical intimidation in kindergarten and the early elementary years, but
more closely resemble sexual harassment or social ostracism during the ad-
olescent years. The more covert types of harassment (relational and indi-
rect) as well as the less recognized behavioral responses of victims (hostile,
aggressive) are highlighted in this section.
The four chapters included in the third part describe the correlates and
consequences of peer victimization. A robust finding in the literature is that
children who are chronically harassed by others also tend to be rejected by
the larger peer group. Chapters in this section by Boivin et al. and Schuster
provide analyses of the theoretical and empirical distinctions between ha-
rassment and rejection as well as areas of overlap. Another well-docu-
mented set of findings focuses on the negative psychological consequences
of victimization. The chapter by Rigby offers insight into the adverse physi-
cal and mental health outcomes that can follow chronic harassment, and
the chapter by Smith et al. highlights the various strategies that children
employ to cope with victim status. Both of these are understudied topics in
the literature on the consequences of peer harassment.
The three chapters that make up the final part of the book also address
a relatively neglected topic in the harassment literature. Although much of
the research portrays peer victimization as a dyadic interaction between
victim and bully, in truth youngsters are often the targets of others’ hostili-
ties in group contexts. The functional meaning of harassment for a group
(Bukowski & Sippola), the role of group members in maintaining and rein-
forcing victimization (Salmivalli), and the effects of social rank on individ-
ual group members’ risk for harassment (Hawker & Boulton) are examined
here in light of theories on group dynamics.
xvi Preface
JAANA JUVONEN
SANDRA GRAHAM
Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION
xvii
xviii Contents
Peer Harassment
DAN OLWEUS
3
4 INTRODUCTION
peared in the United States under the title Aggression in the Schools: Bullies
and Whipping Boys (Olweus, 1978). The primary aim of this research was
to sketch a first outline of the “anatomy” of peer harassment in school and
to seek answers to some of the key questions that had been in focus in the
public Swedish debate.
Looking back, I think it is fair to say that this project and later re-
search (see e.g., Olweus, 1978, 1993a, 1994; Farrington, 1993) have
shown that many of my early concerns were justified. For example, there is
no doubt that students in a class vary markedly in their degree of aggres-
siveness and that these individual differences tend to be quite stable over
time, often over several years (Olweus, 1978, 1979). Similarly, the research
clearly shows that a relatively small number of students in a class are usu-
ally much more actively engaged in peer harassment or bullying than oth-
ers, often the great majority of the students in the class, who are not di-
rectly involved in bullying at all or only in more or less marginal roles. Data
from our new large-scale intervention study in Bergen (below) indicate that
as many as 50% of the victims of bullying are harassed by a small group of
two or three students (Olweus & Solberg, 1998), often with a negative
leader. In addition, a considerable proportion of the victims, some 25%,
even report that they are mainly harassed by a single student (Olweus,
1988; Olweus & Solberg, 1998). Data from researchers in England, Hol-
land, and Japan, participating in the same cross-national project on bully/
victim problems, indicate that this is also largely true in other ethnic con-
texts with (partly) different cultural backgrounds and traditions (Junger-
Tas & Kesteren, 1998; Morita & Soeda, 1998; Smith et al., 1999). Further,
these and other (e.g., Rigby & Slee, 1991) data show that a considerable
proportion of the students in a class have a relatively negative attitude to
the bullying and would like to do, or actually do (according to self-reports),
something to help the victim.
tions on the part of one or more other students. This definition emphasized
negative (aggressive) actions that are carried out repeatedly and over time.
It was further specified that in bullying there is a certain imbalance of
power or strength: The student who is exposed to negative actions has diffi-
culty defending him- or herself (for further details, see, e.g., Olweus 1993a,
1999a).
Although this basic definition of bullying or peer victimization has
been retained unchanged, the “definition” presented to the students in the
Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus, 1996) has been
somewhat expanded. In the latest version of the questionnaire, this (copy-
righted) definition reads as follows:
We say a student is being bullied when another student, or several other stu-
dents
• say mean and hurtful things or make fun of him or her or call him or
her mean and hurtful names
• completely ignore or exclude him or her from their group of friends or
leave him or her out of things on purpose
• hit, kick, push, shove around, or lock him or her inside a room
• tell lies or spread false rumors about him or her or send mean notes
and try to make other students dislike him or her
• and do other hurtful things like that.
When we talk about bullying, these things happen repeatedly, and it
is difficult for the student being bullied to defend himself or herself. We
also call it bullying when a student is teased repeatedly in a mean and
hurtful way.
But we don’t call it bullying when the teasing is done in a friendly
and playful way. Also, it is not bullying when two students of about the
same strength or power argue or fight.
and the social climate more generally, at a school that has conducted the
survey with their students. If the responses about the various forms of bul-
lying and the global question are combined into summative indices, the
questionnaire permits reliable and valid identification of individual victims,
bullies, and bully/victims (e.g., Solberg, Olweus, & Endresen, 2001).
Since the early 1980s a dominant North American approach to the study of
peer relationships has been to measure peer acceptance or status through
positive and negative sociometric peer nominations. Using a special classifi-
cation scheme, researchers sort their subjects into peer status groups of
popular, average, neglected, and rejected children. There has been a special
research interest attached to low peer status or rejection. Much of the re-
search from the 1980s was summarized in an edited volume on peer rejec-
tion, which was published in 1990 (Asher & Coie, 1990).
It is worth emphasizing that this research tradition was not directly
concerned with peer harassment or victimization, but rather with the re-
lated phenomenon of peer rejection. However, because aggressive behavior
was believed (judging from a number of studies; see, e.g., Asher & Coie,
1990) to be the main determinant of peer rejection, at least up to 1988/
1989, the kind of victimization or harassment that could be implicated dif-
fered in important respects from what was in focus in Scandinavia (see the
preceding section).
jected children in these studies were children who were repeatedly victim-
ized, bullied, and harassed by other children. Thus, it was not only aggres-
sive children who might be rejected by peers. Children who were the target
of other children’s aggression and who typically showed a very different
pattern of behavior, one of withdrawal and anxiety, were also particularly
likely to be disliked and rejected. These results agreed quite well with the
findings from my own research on bully/victim problems (Olweus, 1973,
1978, 1984): The habitual victims, of whom I had identified two kinds,
passive and provocative victims, respectively (Olweus, 1973, 1978), were
typically disliked and rejected by their peers (only boys participated in this
early study).
Conversely, my data on boys who bullied other students did not support
the idea that aggressive behavior usually leads to rejection. Overall, the gener-
ally aggressive bullies (a subgroup of aggressive children and youth) were not
unpopular, and they were often supported by two or three other boys in the
class. Similar findings have been reported by some North American research-
ers (e.g., Cairns, Cairns, Neckerman, Gest, & Gariépy, 1988).
In my symposium contribution, I argued that the marked heterogene-
ity of the rejected children—with several more or less distinct subgroups of
such children with very different behavioral characteristics—and the nature
of the rejection variable would lead to problems of prediction, intervention,
and understanding. A brief summary of the main arguments and implica-
tions are outlined in the following section.
PROBLEMS OF PREDICTION,
INTERVENTION, AND UNDERSTANDING
respectively; see Olweus, 1989, for details). Peer ratings of rejection col-
lected both in grade 6 and grade 9 correlated only weakly with registered
criminality, with r values in the .05–.16 range. In marked contrast, parallel
peer ratings of aggressive behavior showed substantial correlations with the
criterion in all four analyses (range of r values = .27–.40).
My main argument here is not that peer rejection can never be a rea-
sonably good predictor of a criterion of adjustment or possibly serve as a
moderator variable for other predictors. There are (a relatively small num-
ber of) studies (see e.g., Parker & Asher, 1987; Coie, Terry, Lennox,
Lochman, & Hyman, 1995) that would contradict such a strong statement.
Rather, my key points are that peer rejection is a very indirect and complex
predictor of later adjustment and that adjustment criteria can usually be
better predicted from behaviors or characteristics with a more direct con-
ceptual link to such criteria. One may add that because of the heterogeneity
of the group of rejected children, predictions based on peer rejection are
likely to be variable and inconsistent, depending on the composition of the
sample in terms of the relative sizes of the various subgroups. This fact may
partly explain why rejection is sometimes a (relatively weak) predictor of
externalizing behavior and sometimes a (relatively weak) predictor of inter-
nalizing problems.
Considering the heterogeneity among the rejected children, it is obvi-
ously very difficult to design adequate and efficacious treatment or inter-
vention programs when the key criterion for selection or targeting is peer
rejection or lack of popularity (which has been the case in several studies).
Clearly, the problems and possible “social skills deficits” characterizing the
aggressive and the victimized children of the rejected group are quite dis-
similar and call for very different intervention approaches. Second, to use
rejected status as a criterion for intervention implicitly assumes that the dif-
ficulties reside mainly with the rejected or low-accepted child. As argued
later, this is likely to be wholly or partly incorrect, and the basic problem
may instead be an aggressive peer environment, particularly in the case of
passive victims. Third, using such a criterion for intervention would have
the unfortunate consequence that many children with obvious social ad-
justment problems would not be targeted for intervention. I am thinking of
the aggressive bullies in particular, the majority of whom are not rejected
by their peers (as discussed earlier) but who create many problems for other
students.
In my symposium contribution, I also questioned the general useful-
ness of peer status variables for the purpose of understanding underlying
mechanisms and establishing causal relationships. This critique was again
based on the fact that rejected children are a very heterogeneous group
composed of distinct subgroups with different behavioral patterns and mo-
tivational dynamics. This fact often means that an average value or a corre-
lation coefficient for a sample as a whole may be fairly meaningless. Such a
10 INTRODUCTION
value may mask very different, even opposing, trends or relationships with-
in the different subgroups.
A final point concerned the practice of standardizing nominations
within classrooms. This procedure is likely to have the unfortunate conse-
quence of eliminating or reducing variation in peer status variables between
classes. This “relativization” is likely to narrow the focus of inquiry to the
individual child at the expense of classroom-related environmental determi-
nants. In my view, it is very important to use measuring techniques and
variables that preserve possible variability among classes. This variation
can then be related to classroom or other higher-level characteristics, such
as the teacher’s leadership style, attitude to discipline, the size of the class,
the students’ average level of academic competence, group processes, and
the like. Such an approach will give a broader, and in my view, more ade-
quate understanding of the factors determining the peer relationship prob-
lems we are interested in studying.
Because of the many problems with the dominant North American ap-
proach to peer relationship problems, in my 1989 presentation I called for
a certain reorientation of the research efforts in this area. More specifically,
I argued for a stronger focus on the behavioral or personality characteris-
tics of the child and, in parallel, on specific reactions by the social environ-
ment. This was certainly not to imply that there are no problems with the
approach I was advocating. For example, it has already been shown that
there are two subgroups of victimized children with partly different charac-
teristics. Furthermore, for some purposes it may also be useful or necessary
to divide aggressive students into various subclasses. Still, I contend that we
are in a much better position to handle such problems if the variables we
use in our research have clear behavioral or personality referents, rather
than being a reflection of the peer group’s general liking or disliking of a
particular student.
The main focus of this book is on peer victimization or harassment,
not on peer rejection. Maybe optimistically, I interpret this as an indication
that a certain reorientation in the desired direction has already occurred, or
perhaps is in the process of taking place, in the North American “peer re-
search community.”
shown (Olweus, 1978) that a large proportion of the (boy) victims, those of
the passive category, were not aggressive or actively provoking (which may
have helped “explain” their victimization or rejection to outside observers
such as teachers, peers, or parents). The pattern of data rather suggested
that many victims simply fell easy prey to aggressive, more powerful bul-
lies.
This interpretation was further strengthened in a prospective follow-
up study of a subgroup of former school victims at age 23 (who had been
almost exclusively of the passive type) and their nonvictimized peers
(Olweus, 1993b). Among other results from this study, it was found that
the former (boy) victims had largely “recovered” or were in the normal
range (like those in the “control” group) on several internalizing dimen-
sions at age 23: They were no longer particularly anxious, inhibited, intro-
verted, or nonassertive in interactions with others, nor were there indica-
tions that they had elevated stress levels (which they had had when
measured at age 16). This pattern of results implies that
At the same time, it should be emphasized that even though the former
victims seemed to function well in a number of respects as young adults,
there were two dimensions on which they clearly differed from their peers:
depressive tendencies and poor self-esteem. In line with the earlier conclu-
sions, the total pattern of the causal–analytic results clearly indicated that
this was a consequence of the earlier persistent victimization by aggressive
peers, which had thus left its scars on their minds.
spondingly larger. See, for example, Alsaker & Valkanover, Chapter 7, this
volume.)
As emphasized by Schwartz and colleagues (Chapter 6, this volume),
more needs to be learned about this group of provocative or aggressive vic-
tims.
FIGURE I.1. The Bullying Circle: Students’ modes of reaction/roles in an acute bul-
lying situation.
valuable for a number of purposes (see, e.g., Olweus, 1978; Perry, Kusel, &
Perry, 1988; Salmivalli et al., 1996), there is some doubt as to what extent
they can capture less visible and more subtle forms of harassment. It remains
an empirical question, however, to what extent self-reports will provide the
kind of information we are interested in obtaining.
At the same time, it is our definite experience that the Bullying Circle
in itself, independent of possible empirical data, is a very useful pedagogical
device for discussions with teachers, parents, and students (Olweus, 1999b)
about bully/victim problems in a class or school. With regard to counter-
acting and preventing bullying, for example, possible “change agents” eas-
ily realize the importance of having more students move toward the right
side of the Bullying Circle. Such insight automatically leads to questions
about how this can be best achieved.
For the past 15 to 20 years I have been heavily involved in work on inter-
vention against peer harassment or bullying in school. The key element of
this work has been my Core Program against Bullying and Antisocial
Behavior (Olweus, 1993a, Part IV, 1999b; Olweus & Limber, 1999). This
program is based on a limited set of principles derived chiefly from research
on the development and modification of the implicated problem behaviors,
16 INTRODUCTION
CONCLUDING WORDS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing of this chapter and parts of the research reported herein were greatly
facilitated through grants from the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Family Af-
fairs (BFD), the National Association of Mental Health (Nasjonalforeningen), and
from the Johann Jacobs Foundation.
18 INTRODUCTION
NOTE
1. This program has recently been selected by a U.S. expert committee as one out of
10 “model” or Blueprint programs (Olweus & Limber, 1999), to be used in a
national violence prevention initiative in the United States supported by the De-
partment of Justice (OJJDP). At present, the core program is being implemented
in a considerable number of schools in various parts of the United States. The
main components of the program are the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Ques-
tionnaire (with a PC program for processing the data), the book Bullying at
School: What We Know and What We Can Do (Blackwell Publishers, phone:
1–800–216–2522), Olweus’ Core Program against Bullying and Antisocial Be-
havior: A Teacher Handbook, and the video Bullying (South Carolina Educational
Television, phone: 1–800–553–7752). Information about ordering the Question-
naire and the Teacher Handbook can be obtained from the author, email:
[email protected], or mail: Vognstolbakken 16, N- 5096 Bergen, Norway.
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20 INTRODUCTION
PA R T I
A major theme in this volume is that the study of peer harassment is differ-
ent from the study of peer aggression. The experiences of victims are quite
disparate from those of bullies, and the organizing themes in the two litera-
tures are also distinct. This is no more evident than in the particular con-
ceptual and methodological challenges that peer harassment researchers
face and that are the focus of this first part of the book.
Chapter 1, by Ladd and Ladd, tackles the issue of the chronicity of
peer harassment. Aggression has been found to be relatively stable across
childhood, but the stability of victimization has been harder to chronicle.
As Ladd and Ladd point out, there is little agreement about how often a
child must be harassed (frequency) and how long the harassment must last
(duration) before the experience is viewed as stable and the individual
achieves chronic victim status. Thus, frequency and duration must both be
considered when linking peer harassment to adjustment difficulties. Ladd
and Ladd pose testable hypotheses about the independent and interactive
effects of these two temporal variables on children’s adjustment and ability
to cope with being the target of others’ hostility. What emerges from their
chapter is a portrayal of the dynamic nature of peer harassment: Many chil-
dren recover from frequent experiences of victimization that are of short
duration, others must cope with incidents that are sporadic but recurrent,
and still other youth have to deal with the isolated event that is intense and
has enduring effects. In other words, there are multiple pathways from ex-
periences with harassment to subsequent (mal)adjustment.
The notion of pathways alerts us to think about process, or the under-
lying mechanisms that mediate the occurrence of victimization and subse-
quent reactions. Graham and Juvonen in the next chapter highlight
attributional processes as one such mediating mechanism. Building on pre-
21
22 Conceptual and Methodological Issues
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