What Children tell us about bullying in schools

Published in Children Australia (1997) 22, 2, 28 - 34.

(References updated)

Author Ken Rigby

University of South Australia

Resume

It is argued that much needed policies and practices to counter bullying in Australian schools should be based upon a realistic appraisal of what is known through research into the nature of the problem. This article provides a review of relevant Australian research between 1991 and 1996 conducted primarily by the author and co-workers, drawing particularly on school children's reports and experiences and their perceptions of what can be done; finally it discusses steps that can be taken to reduce bullying in schools.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the work of fellow researchers with whom I have worked in obtaining empirical data for this paper, especially Dr Phillip Slee from Flinders University, and also my research assistant, Ms Robyn Cunningham, for her valuable contribution.

Dr. Ken Rigby is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Psychology and an Educational Consultant at the University of South Australia. He was previously a school teacher, a lecturer in psychology and latterly Foundation Director of the Institute of Social Research. In 1996 the Australian Council for Educational Research published his book, "Bullying in Schools - and What to do about it", the first major study of the problem in Australia.

What children tell us about bullying in schools

As the problem of bullying in schools has become more generally recognised, there has developed a considerable world-wide literature aimed at conveying an understanding of why bullying occurs and describing what steps can be taken to prevent it (see, for example, Smith and Sharp, 1994; Olweus, 1993; Ross, 1996; Rigby, 1996a). However, relatively little attention has been paid to how children themselves feel about bullying, how they react to it, and how ready they are to take concerted action to counter it in their own community.

Knowledge gained from children is important for two reasons. Firstly, although awareness of the sad consequences for children of continual bullying is certainly increasing, there is still on the part of some schools and some educational authorities a marked reluctance to acknowledge how serious it is; and secondly, if planned and effective action to stop school bullying is going to happen, we need to know what schoolchildren themselves are prepared to do to rid our schools of this persistent problem.

We are fortunate in Australia in that over the last five years or so an extensive body of survey data has been provided by children from both primary and secondary schools, and from this we can estimate not only the incidence of bullying in schools but also how children feel about it, how they typically react towards it and what they are prepared to do about it. More than 26,000 children with ages ranging from 8 to 18 years have completed the so-called Peer Relations Questionnaire or PRQ (Rigby and Slee, 1993a) to provide this information. This paper is based primarily on this source of information. Supplementary information of a qualitative nature has also been obtained from Australian schoolchildren to enable us to examine how children are affected by bullying in more detail.

Defining bullying

Bullying can be usefully defined along lines suggested by Farrington (1993) as repeated oppression, physical or psychological, of a less powerful person by a more powerful person or group. It is not the same thing as conflict, violence or disagreement - although it may involve all these. With bullying there is always a power imbalance which makes the ill-treatment of the victim possible.

The incidence of bullying in Australian schools

As a broad generalisation, about one child in six is bullied in Australian schools on a weekly basis (Rigby, 1996a). This is relatively high by world standards (see Olweus, 1993 and Smith and Sharp, 1994 for comparable results from Norwegian and English sources respectively). As one might expect, there are reliable age and gender differences, with boys reporting being bullied overall more frequently than girls, especially in secondary schools. Primary school children of both sexes are generally bullied more often than students in secondary schools. There is nonetheless a notable increase in reported victimisation when children enter the first year of secondary school (Rigby, 1996b). As the following table shows, different forms of bullying occur with different frequency.

Table 1

Percentages of schoolchildren reporting being bullied by peers in different ways, according to gender and age group

As is the case reported in research conducted overseas, for example in Norway (Olweus, 1993) and in England (Ahmad and Smith, 1994), the most commonly reported form of bullying in Australia is that of verbal harassment such as cruel teasing and name calling. This is experienced by boys and girls about equally. Unlike physical bullying which tends to reduce with age, verbal forms of harassment show comparatively little change. The main contrast between the genders is that boys are more often bullied physically and threatened by their peers whereas girls report being more commonly the victims of indirect bullying, e.g, exclusion (see Tulloch, 1995; Owens, 1996; Rigby, 1996a).

How children react to being bullied

Children react to being bullied in different ways. In part, the differences can be attributed to the frequency or intensity with which the bullying is experienced and also the age and gender of the victim, as is evident from the results presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Percentages of schoolchildren reporting kinds of (i) emotional reactions and (ii) self perceptions after being bullied by their peers, according to gender and age-group

(i) Emotional Reactions

Table 2 (continued)

(ii) self perceptions of students after being bullied by their peers, according to gender and age-group

Some children appear to be particularly resilient and are able to act in a nonchalant way. Here are some things children wrote when we asked them to describe their reactions when children seek to bully them (Rigby, Slee, Martin and Cunningham,1997).

"I don't listen to them and walk off and make sure I'm not worried so they don't get the better of me"

"I just thought of the kids as little dick-heads and laughed when they called me names"

"Well, if someone tries to bully me, they'll find out that it doesn't work on me"

As the frequency with which children are bullied increases, fewer children say they are "not bothered" by it (Rigby, 1996c). Among children claiming to be bullied frequently, that is at least once a week, two children out of three admit to being "bothered" by it. Boys appear to be more likely to deny being affected. If boys are bothered they were more likely to say that they felt "angry"; girls more likely to say they felt "sad and miserable." However, one interesting feature of these results is a trend among girls who are frequently bullied to report being more angry about it as they become older.

Although a few children (less than 7%) report that they actually feel "better" after being bullied - perhaps having "turned the tables " on the bully - a large proportion of children feel worse about themselves. Loss of self esteem is particularly common among those most frequently victimised, with about 50% of boys and 60% of girls reporting this experience. Here are some statements made by adolescent schoolchildren about how they felt after being bullied:

"Made me feel worse than I could already be"

" It has made me worry and get more headaches"

"Felt kind of sad and need a friend to accompany you and make you feel better"

"I got scared of being alone"

Informing others

A common reaction to being bullied is to seek help from others, particularly if one is bullied frequently. Table 3 provides details of the frequency with which different people are informed about the bullying according to age and gender of the informant.

Table 3:

Percentages of children who have been bullied and have told about it, according to person told, and gender and age group of informant.

From Table 3 we can see that some people are more likely to be informed than others: friends most commonly of all, followed by mother, then father; teachers least of all. Not surprisingly, with more frequent bullying, informing is more common. But it is evident that even among children who are bullied frequently, a substantial proportion do not tell: for example about 40% of boys and 25% of girls who are bullied weekly do not tell their friends; even larger proportions do not tell their mother or their father.

Informing others about the bullying generally decreases with age as children begin to feel that it is somehow shameful to admit to being the sort of person who "dobs" somebody in. An exception to this trend, however, concerns girls who as they grow older are more likely to tell their friends if they are being bullied. By contrast, as boys become older, they are more inclined to conceal the fact that they are being bullied, even from their friends. It should also be added that one reason for not telling someone, is that often it does not improve the situation. Approximately half the students in the sample who had informed someone also reported that the situation had not subsequently improved; among boys in about 9% of cases it got worse (the outcomes were slightly less negative for girls)

Lack of support

Not telling others when one is bullied may also be because there is no-one with whom one can confide. Victimised children tend to have few, if any, friends. Some of our informants have explained that they "couldn't be friends with a wimp." We also know that victimised children are commonly more introverted than others and generally lack social skills (Rigby and Slee, 1993b). This can add to their sense of isolation. It is also clear from research into the health of adolescent children that those who believe they have someone they can count on and discuss serious problems with are less likely to feel badly or unwell as a consequence of being bullied. (Rigby, 1994a). Victimised children who have little or no social support are therefore particularly at risk of physical or psychological damage.

Absenteeism

Some children stay away from school because of bullying, or think of doing so, as Table 4 shows.

Table 4

Reported absenteeism in percentages due to degree of bullying at school, according to gender and age group

Question: " Have you ever stayed away from school due to bullying?"

Not surprisingly absenteeism was much greater among those bullied frequently. Among these, approximately 1 in 5 boys and 1 in 4 girls reported having stayed away from school at least once because of bullying. Many more children (about 30%) reported that they had thought of doing so. The emerging picture is a gloomy one, with approximately half the children who are bullied frequently at school reporting that they had considered staying away from school and at least 20% actually doing so.

Safety in schools

How safe are schools ? Clearly the answer depends on how we define "safety". If we mean "safe from the threat of being bullied", we must accept that for the most vulnerable children, schools are not such safe places. Judgements about safety from bullying appear to depend upon the individual's own sense of vulnerability, as we see in Table 5.

Table 5: Schoolchildren's judgements of the safety of their school for young people who find it hard to defend themselves, according to gender, age group and frequency of being bullied (percentages)

Among those who are bullied at least once a week approximately one out of three children saw their school as "never or hardly ever" a safe place for those children who find it hard to defend themselves. Contrast this estimate with the one given by children who say they are never bullied; their estimate is about one third of this. Yet even among these seemingly invulnerable students, over 70% of them imply by their answers that their school is not entirely safe for those who find it hard to defend themselves.

Health consequences of bullying

Claims from children that they have become unwell as a result of bullying are not infrequent. Here is a sample of statements about the effects of being bullied at school made by secondary school students in a recent survey conducted in South Australia (Rigby, 1998a, 1998b)

"I feel depressed and lonely and getting much more headaches"

" Makes me feel bad about myself"

"Feeling sick every morning about going to school because of bullying"

"I've felt dizzy like I was going to faint or something"

"Just feel sick and worthless"

"I wish I was dead"

"Getting very depressed, staying home, vomiting, attempting suicide"

Statistical evidence of the relation between being bullied at school and relatively poor health has been provided in Australia in a study conducted in South Australian schools (Rigby, 1994). Secondary school students (N = 777) completed the General Health Questionnaire (Goldberg and Williams, 1988) and also provided information about how frequently they had been bullied over the last twelve months. In general, both boys and girls who reported being bullied at least once a week (approximately 15% of this sample) were more likely than others to indicate symptoms of relatively poor mental and physical health, as is apparent in Table 6.

Table 6

Percentages of secondary students indicating worse than usual health in relation to their status as victims (V) or non-victims (NV) of peer bullying at school

The connection between being bullied and poor health has been well demonstrated statistically. But we might question the direction of the causal influence, and ask whether it is that sick children often get bullied or bullying often makes children sick ? In a recent study conducted by Rigby and Slee (as yet unpublished), students were asked whether they believed their health had been adversely affected by the nature of their personal relations with other students at school. Their responses indicated that many adolescents believed that bad personal relations had affected their health. In fact some 13% of boys and 22% of girls informed us that they believe their health has been adversely affected by their relations with peers. Among those who claimed that they had been bullied frequently (at least once a week) the percentages were much higher: boys 29%; girls 50%.

Suicidal tendencies among children involved in bully/victim problems

In a number of countries, including Norway, England and Japan, there have been media reports of children committing suicide allegedly following episodes of severe bullying. Because suicide is multiply determined and difficult to establish through case studies, it has been difficult to evaluate these reports. However, recent work in Australia has shed further light on the question. In a series of three studies undertaken by Rigby and Slee in South Australia between 1993 and 1996 self-reports of adolescent schoolchildren of suicidal ideation and attempts to harm themselves were found to be significantly associated with reports of them being bullied by peers and also bullying others. In the latest of these studies with 1500 adolescents, adverse peer relations at school were found to contribute significantly to suicidal ideation after controlling for negative parental influences and low levels of social support (Rigby and Slee, 1998). When statistical evidence of the potential effects of bullying in school on adolescent suicidality is combined the growing number of accounts of children committing suicide following a history of peer victimisation, it is difficult not to conclude that severe bullying for some children can be devastating.

Why do children bully ?

One question on the Peer Relations Questionnaire asked children to indicate which of seven reasons they would give for bullying someone, if they did engage in this behaviour. Data has become available on this question from 13,936 boys and 9497 girls with ages ranging from 8 to 18 years (Rigby, 1996c). Results have been tabulated below according to age groups and gender.

Table 7

Reasons children give for bullying others according to gender and age-group (percentages).

What is most evident is that students, regardless of age group and gender, tended to choose reasons that would justify their bullying actions, for example "they annoyed me". However, many disclosed far less creditable motives. About one fifth implied that social pressure might well play a part in them bullying someone, ("others were doing it"); some that bullying could be done "for fun" or simply because the victim was a "wimp". Overall, girls and younger students were less inclined to give reasons for bullying someone, arguably because girls bully others less frequently and that older students are more aware of their motives in acting as they do. Nevertheless, if one ranks the reasons endorsed by respondents in terms of frequencies with which they are given as explanations, the order indicated by the various subgroups is precisely the same. In a further analysis results were computed for students who reported that they had, in fact, engaged in bullying others during the current year; approximately one third of the students made this admission. As expected, these self-reported "bullies" were more prone to give reasons than others - but again the order of importance ascribed to the reasons is similar (almost identical) for these two groups. We may conclude that the motivations or justifications for bullying given by children who engage in bullying are not notably different from others.

What stops children from bullying ?

Relatively few children believe they could not bully other children if they wanted to do so. For instance among older boys (ages 16-18 years) only 12% reported that they were less able than most children to do so (Rigby, 1997). Moreover, most students do from time wish to hurt others. According to PRQ results, most students indicate that they sometimes do have the urge to hurt others. For example, among 16-18 year old boys, 77% of them indicated that they sometimes wanted to hurt others; among girls of this age, the percentage was 61%. Neither an incapacity to bully nor being unmotivated to hurt anyone can account for the fact that a high proportion of children are seemingly averse to bullying others and choose not to do so.

An explanation of why so many children who sometimes wish to hurt someone and also have the wherewithal to bully nevertheless do not do so may be found in the reactions of children to questions we asked about what they saw as the consequence of bullying others. In a study conducted in South Australia in 1993, some 5548 students aged 8 to 18 years in 20 schools were asked in an anonymous questionnaire to indicate how likely various outcomes would be for the bully if he or she bullied someone. Although many indicated that bullying could have the positive consequence of preventing one from being bullied by others (33.6% of boys and 25.9 % of girls), a larger percentage of students (42.2 % of boys and 55.1% of girls) indicated that bullying someone would make them feel ashamed of themselves (Rigby, 1997).

The sense of shame as a motivational force to prevent bullying is evidently felt by many students. How this arises is suggested in a study of students' perceptions of their parents' attitudes towards bullying (Rigby, 1997). Most students saw their mothers and fathers as disapproving of bullying behaviour, and, contrary to what is sometimes said about adolescents, most students indicated that they cared very much about what their parents would think about them if they bullied someone. Indeed, on average they cared as much about their parents' judgements as they did their peers'. We also know from earlier studies that adolescents from dysfunctional families in which there is relatively little caring between family members are much more likely than others to engage in bullying at school (see Rigby, 1993, 1994b). Parental attitudes opposing bullying and positive family relations evidently play a significant part in developing in children a propensity not to bully others, arguably because children in such families feel it is wrong.

What children would like to see done about bullying

It is sometimes thought that children, especially boys, are largely amoral and would behave "like savages" if they were not strictly controlled by adults. The novel,"Lord of the Flies," encapsulates this view (Golding, 1955). On Golding's fictional island a group of boys, free of the restraints of adult authority, engage in the most vicious forms of bullying. However, survey results, admittedly from students in schools supervised by adults, do not suggest that children typically admire bullies and seek to disparage children who find it hard to defend themselves. Studies conducted in Australia clearly show that the bulk of students, boys as well as girls, are supportive of victims and would like to see action to stop the bully ( Rigby and Slee, 1993; Tulloch, 1995). For example, in a study of 685 South Australian school children aged 6 to 16 years a large majority of respondents agreed with these statements : "I like it when someone stands up for kids who are bullied"; "It's a good thing to help children who can't defend themselves"; and "It makes me angry when a kid is picked on without reason" (Rigby and Slee, 1993c, p. 123).

The extent to which students say they could use help to counter bullying and are prepared to help others has been examined using the PRQ. The results are given in Table 8.

Table 8

Percentages of students indicating their reactions to bullying, according to gender and age-group

Substantial numbers of boys and girls of all ages, but especially younger children say they could use help to stop others from bullying them: overall, about one in three children say this. Although the responsibility for action tends to be placed more often than not on teachers, a majority of students, both boys and girls, regardless of age, younger and older, evidently believe that students themselves should act so as to stop it. Most students believe that students and teachers should work together on the issue. Nevertheless, most students evidently do not usually try to stop bullying when they have seen it happening. Nor does the majority feel disposed to talk about what can be done about stopping bullying with other students.

These last two findings pose a challenge for members of the school community who wish to involve students in anti-bullying action. How can students become empowered so that they can translate their desire to stop bullying, which they evidently do have, into effective bystander intervention ? How can teachers motivate students so that they will become involved in constructive class discussions with other students on the issue of bullying ? It is noticeable that this is particularly difficult to achieve with students in the 14-16 year age range, especially with boys. During that stage of development a readiness to discuss bullying openly is least forthcoming, with only 23% of boys and 34% of girls expressing an interest in doing so.

In conclusion

It is only by facing the facts about bullying that realistic plans to stop it can be developed. The first and most obvious fact is that bullying is found in all schools and involves a substantial number of students who are harmed by their involvement. Although the majority of children are rarely directly involved in bully/victim problems, a substantial minority of children are periodically involved, with serious consequences for their physical and psychological well-being. We have seen that many children do employ sensible coping practices, especially when teased, whilst others, often the more seriously victimised, become upset and unable to cope, ill, sometimes seriously depressed, even suicidal. The harm is likely to be greater if they feel unsupported by others.

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