Bullying: A Tendency of Peer Victimization at Schools

Bullying: A Tendency of Peer Victimization at Schools

Bullying is defined as repeated oppression, physical or mental, of a less powerful person by a more powerful person or group of persons. It occurs where there is an imbalance in power between people, and it is a persistent or continued unwelcome behaviuor. It is a kind of behaviour characterized by intentionality and hurtfulness. Negative actions can be physical contact (such as hitting or kicking), words (e.g., teasing, and calling names), or obscene gestures or facial expressions. Negative actions also include the intentional exclusion of a student and the spreading of rumours.

There is no universally agreed-upon definition of bullying; however, Dan Olweus, who is considered the "pioneer in bullying research" (Dake, 2003, p. 173) has defined bullying, or peer victimization, in a way that has been generally well-received and widely used. According to Olweus (1994), bullying occurs when a student is "exposed, repeatedly over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other students" (Annotation:Bullying at School:basic Facts and Effects of a School Based Intervention Program, 1994, p. 1173). A negative action is when someone either attempts to, or intentionally inflicts, discomfort or injury on another student. This can be achieved through several means. Negative actions also include the intentional exclusion of a student and the spreading of rumours. In order for behaviour to be described as bullying, there must be an imbalance in power "an asymmetrical power relationship" (Olweus 1174) so that the student exposed to the negative action has difficulty defending him or herself, and is somewhat helpless against the harassment. This way, "bullying cannot apply to a conflict between students of equal physical, mental, or emotional strength" (Dake, 2003, p. 175). Similarly, “Bullying is a form of peer abuse that includes acts of aggression in which one or more students physically and/or psychologically harass a weaker victim" (Hoover, 1992, p. 14). The cause of bullying is only the imbalance of power. It has both physical and psychological effects upon victim.

Bullying is defined in the literature as “a subset of aggressive behaviour, comprising a physical, verbal, or psychological attack by one or more individuals" (Swain 361). In The nature of school bullying: A cross-national perspective, Olweus clearly defines “bullying and violence (or violent behaviour) as two subcategories of aggression" (The Nature of School Bullying: A Cross-national Perspective, 1999, p. 9). Bullying causes violence. Bothe the bullying and violence are aggressive behavior.

With the increasing public concern about school safety, researchers have broadened the definition of school violence to include “any conditions or acts that create a climate in which individual students and teachers feel fear or intimidation in addition to being the victims of assault, theft, or vandalism" (Batsche, 1994, p. 165). For Batsche, bullying creates a fearful climate to students and teachers. Similarly, R.J. Hazler in his article “Bullying breeds violence. You can stop it.” views that bullying in school has devastating effects on students, often leading to “violent and disastrous consequences for both victims and bullies" (Bullying breeds violence. You can stop it!, 1994, p. 39).

P.T. Slee says that victims of bullying suffer from “a loss of self-esteem lasting long into their adult life" (Situational and interpersonal correlates of anxiety associated with peer victimization, 1994, p. 99). Bullying does not effect for the timing. It creates long term effect upon victims. Victims of bullying suffer from a loss of self-esteem into their adult life. According to  Farrington bullies in school are very likely to bully their spouses and children later. He argues that “society is the utmost victim of bullying because bullies in school are very likely to bully their spouses and children later, which perpetuates the cycle of domestic violence and creates new generations of aggressive children" (p. 21). Thus, bullying has long term effect. It creates cycle of domestic violence which can be seen even in new generations.

Bullying and victimization among youth have received increased attention in recent years by researchers and educators internationally. Researchers have found that these phenomena are widespread among school-age children across several countries in Europe (Timmerman, 2003), North America (Pellegrini A. D., 2002), and Oceania (Smith, 2000). However, we are unaware of any published studies on either bullying or victimization of school-age children that have been conducted in Nepal. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to examine bullying, victimization and self-esteem among school-age children in Kathmandu, Nepal.

1.2 Correlates of Bullying and Victimization

Gender predicts bullying, victimization and self-esteem. “Boys in Europe and the United States report more bullying as perpetrators and as victims than do girls" (Almeida, 1999, p. 185). “Generally, boys engage in physical and direct bullying, such as pushing, shoving, or kicking, whereas girls engage in verbal and indirect bullying, such as intentional exclusion from the group, spreading rumors, teasing, or name calling" (Almeida 178). According to Lane, “[b]ullying for boys is more likely to be part of power-based social relationships and for girls affiliation activities are more frequently the source of bullying activities" (p. 213). Such differences seem to originate in early gender socialization. The literature on physical play activity suggests that boys “engage much more often in rough-and-tumble play than girls do in virtually all cultures studied" (Pellegrini & Smith, 1998, p. 578).   Pellegrini and Smith suggested that rough-and-tumble play provides the means “in which boys assess the strength of others for dominance purposes" (589).

In the United States, Bosworth et al. examined the correlates of bullying in a sample of middle school students. They found, as expected, that “boys engaged in higher amounts of bullying than girls did" (1999, p. 352). Similarly, research in Australia conducted by Rigby and Slee (1991) found that "of 685 school children (6-16 years old), 16.8% of boys and 11.4% of girls reported being bullied very often" (621). These findings make it apparent that bullying is widespread in schools. In Nepal, there is currently no reliable data on the prevalence of bullying among school students. This study is therefore a pioneering attempt to investigate the prevalence of the problem view to sensitizing Nepalese researchers to the need for more research in this area. Different researchers have categorized bullying into different types. Björkqvist and Niemelä suggest that "bullying can be categorized into the dichotomies physical versus verbal and direct versus indirect" (14). On another much related research bullying is categorized into three types "direct physical, direct verbal and indirect aggression" (Direct and Indirect Aggression Scales (DIAS), 1992, p. 16). Physical bullying includes such direct behaviors as pushing another, hitting, punching, or kicking. Verbal bullying may take the form of yelling abuse at another, name-calling, using insulting expressions, or make verbal threats. On the other hand, indirect bullying refers to the behavior such as spreading malicious rumors about another, excluding a person from the group, or disclosing another's secrets to a third person.

Similarly, I. Rivers and P.K. Smith in their book Aggressive Behaviour opine about the types of bullying that:

direct and physical (e.g., hitting, pushing, kicking, and damaging property); direct and verbal (e.g., name calling, teasing, being laughed at, and threatening); or indirect (e.g., spreading nasty rumours, purposefully excluding an individual from a social group, sending nasty/rude text messages or emails, and placing information about the victim on the internet) (362)

            Direct forms of bullying can be defined as relatively open attacks on a victim that are carried out face to face. Indirect forms of bullying, as being more subtle and less direct and will include behavior such as social isolation and exclusion from a group. Taking all of this into account, the present study used the physical, verbal and indirect bullying definitions of Björkqvist, Niemelä et al. (1992) as stated above, particularly as these constructs have been "widely used in aggression and bullying research in many countries" (Sex differences in aggression in real-world settings: A meta-analytic review, 2004, p. 298). Having briefly outlined the different forms of aggression and bullying, the discussion will now turn to the associations between gender, age and aggression.

            In explaining sex differences in social behaviour, Eagly (1987) proposed a social role theory, whereby "people behave in a manner that is consistent with their gender roles" (Sex differences in social behavior: A social role interpretation, 1987, p. 28). These roles have arisen from social divisions relating to domestic and work-related roles, such that females primarily carry out domestic and child rearing duties and are more likely to fill positions in the workplace that are communal in nature (e.g., nurse, teacher). Through experiencing and enacting gender roles, males and females develop different skills, attitudes, and expectancies resulting in behavior patterns that differ according to those gender-roles. Consequently, there are "normative expectations that males are more agentic (instrumental, masculine) and females are more communal (expressive, feminine), with these gender norms passed on through socialization processes to future generations" (Eagly & Wood, 1991, p. 317).

            There are numerous studies that have found " males to be more physically and verbally aggressive than females" (Bettencourt & Miller, 1996, p. 435). For example, Owens and MacMullin (1995) used a peer-estimation method with 422 students from grades 2, 6, 9, and 11 (mean ages 7.9, 11.9, 14.7, & 16.6 years, respectively). Results from this study showed that boys were estimated by their peers to show significantly more physical and verbal aggression (against other boys) than girls (against girls) in all year levels. The one exception was in grade 9, with boys and girls not differing significantly in the degree of verbal aggression. Taking the above findings into account and social role theory, the present study predicted that boys would report significantly higher levels of physical and verbal aggression than girls.

            Consequently, it is necessary to review a variety of studies specifically relating to gender differences in indirect aggression in children and young people. There are numerous studies showing that adolescent girls typically exhibit more indirect aggressive behavior than boys. In a large cross-cultural study of aggression in 8-, 11-, and 15-year-old children (N = 2,094), peer-estimations (participants estimate the extent to which peers behave in certain ways) showed that between 41% and 55% of girls’ aggressive behaviors were indirect, whereas the proportion for boys ranged between 20% and 26%  (Österman et al., 1998). The proportions of verbal aggression for girls varied between 31% and 40% (boys 37- 47%), and from 8% to 20% for physical aggression (boys 33-37%). Other studies using peer-nomination (students name peers who display certain behaviors) and peer-ratings (students estimate the frequency that named classmates perform aggressive acts) have also found that girls exhibit more indirect aggressive behavior than boys (e.g., Björkqvist, 1994; Lagerspetz et al., 1988). The above findings correspond with Australian research which used a peer-estimation technique whereby adolescent participants were asked to estimate how often fellow students in their class behaved in specific ways to others (girls to girls and boys to boys). These studies found that girls used significantly more indirect aggression than boys in grades 9 and 11 (Owens, 1996; Owens & MacMullin, 1995). In similar and more recent Australian research described above (Owens et al., 2005), 591 adolescents from Years 8 through 10 provided self-report levels of indirect victimization, with results showing that, whereas boys reported more physical and verbal victimization than girls, girls experienced significantly higher levels of overall indirect victimization.

            Having discussed gender differences in aggression, it now remains to consider the connection between age and aggression. It is difficult to remove gender from the relationship as development trajectories differ as a function of gender, as do social roles and stereotypes (e.g., Cairns et al., 1989; Eagly & Steffen, 1986). To illustrate, Archer asserts that, "although social role theory (Eagly, 1987) makes no specific predictions regarding gender, age, and aggression, social learning theory (Bandura, 1973) provides some clarification"(296). Archer states that the two theories parallel each other such that social learning processes (e.g., observation, modeling) facilitate the acquisition and maintenance of aggressive behaviors in accordance with social roles. Effectively, social learning predicts that "gender differences will initially be minor in childhood and will increase with age due to the cumulative impact of socialization processes" (Archer 297).

Although we are unaware of any published studies on either bullying or victimization of school-age children that have been conducted in Nepal, a researcher Niti Rana from Kathmandu University has raised issue in her dissertation. It seems that research on bullying and victimization among school age children is needed. The current study is part of a large investigation concerning bullying and victimization among school-age children in Nepal.

Works Cited

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