Defining Bullying
As of 2016 in the United States, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had adopted legislation that prohibits bullying in school, on school grounds, and at school functions (Yell, Katsiyannis, Rose, & Houchins, 2016). Additionally, federal civil rights legislation prohibits harassment, or bullying, based on gender (Title IX of the Education Amendments of, 1972), race, color, national origin (Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of, 1964), or disability (Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of, 1973: Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of, 1990; Maag & Katsiyannis, 2012; Yell et al., 2016). While legislative efforts are necessary to enact policies and procedures to respond to bullying, the behaviors that constitute bullying are subject to variability in state definition and interpretation (Casper, Meter, & Card, 2015). In their comprehensive definition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that 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 (Gladden, Vivolo-Kantor, Hamburger, & Lumpkin, 2014, p. 7).
This definition mirrors Olweus’ (2005) conceptualization of bullying, which includes an imbalance of power, intent to cause harm, and repetition. The construct of bullying is grounded in social interactions, and includes direct and indirect forms of pervasive peer aggression, including physical, verbal, relational, and cyber aggression, as well as damage to property (Hong & Espelage, 2012). While these components provide a framework by which to evaluate bullying, it is unclear how these components might be associated with or vary across specific subpopulations of youth, for example, or how such a framework might help guide intervention efforts (Rose, 2017). Toward this concern, the American Educational Research Association Task Force on Bullying suggested that researchers have rarely evaluated bullying through a common lens, resulting in variability in reported prevalence rates, participant profiles, and intervention outcomes (AERA, 2013). Given this variability, the construct of bullying remains subject to continued debated.
Theoretical Understanding
Bullying is a social construct and subject to the intricacies of individual peer and group interactions, as well as how one navigates their social environment (Hong & Espelage, 2012). For example, Rose, Simpson, and Moss (2015) argued that bullying is a dynamic process, where involvement, or lack thereof, is relatively fluid. Bully prevention scholars have adapted Bronfenbrenner’s (1977) Ecological Systems Framework to understand the complex interactions between an individual and the social and environmental contexts or systems that influence bullying involvement (Hong & Espelage, 2012). Specifically, these complex interactions are influenced by individual characteristics, as well as familial factors, peer group associations, teacher–student relationships, school climate and culture, community factors, societal influence, and the passage of time (Nickerson, Aloe, & Werth, 2015). For example, in a cross-sectional study, Rose, Espelage, Monda-Amaya, Shogren, and Aragon (2015) reported that high levels of peer social support predicted lower levels of victimization, bullying, fighting, and anger. However, role stability is based on time and social context, where instead of maintaining static roles (i.e., pure bully, pure victim), youth shift between victimization, neutral bystander, and perpetration as a function of changes in social interactions and environmental circumstances (Gumpel, Zioni-Koren, & Bekerman, 2014; Ryoo, Wang, & Swearer, 2015; Salmivalli, 2010).
It should be noted, however, that bullying is regarded as pervasive peer aggression. Viewing bullying through this lens, allows for the examination of behavioral development. Specifically, behavior is functional, communicative, and lawful (Rose, 2017). According to Bjorkqvist, Osterman, and Kaukiainen (1992), behavioral development follows a distinct pattern, where, over time, students learn, employ, and master physical, verbal, and social skills in a sequential fashion. For example, preschool youth engage in higher rates of physical bullying (Rose, Richman et al., 2016; Son, Parish, & Peterson, 2012), whereas middle- and high-school youth engage in higher rates of social exclusion (Rose, Simpson, et al., 2015). While behavioral development is critical to understanding bullying involvement, Farmer, Lines, and Hamm (2011) argue that adults play a critical role in supporting and shaping the behaviors of youth. Farmer et al. coined the term “invisible hand,” and suggested that teachers impact the peer ecology through
student-teacher relationships, fostering supportive and productive general classroom climates, developing and utilizing knowledge of social dynamics to augment academic instruction and classroom behavior management, and scaffolding the social opportunities and activities of students to correspond with their developmental abilities and needs. (Farmer et al., 2011, p. 252).
This distinction is notable because it suggests that as students develop social skills, adults can establish environmental conditions to support this development, as well as contrive situations to reinforce socially appropriate behaviors that reduce bullying involvement.
Outcomes Related to Bullying
Bullying has received increased attention from educational professionals, legislators, and researchers due to the short- and long-term outcomes associated with those who are victimized, those who engage in bullying, and those identified as bully victims (Swearer & Hymel, 2015). These outcomes drive a general understanding of bullying involvement, as well as highlight predictive and protective factors. By understanding factors that condition youth to bullying, or place students at greater risk of victimization, more appropriate interventions can be implemented within the school environment to reduce the prevalence of involvement.
Outcomes Related to Victimization
Youth who are victimized report higher levels of physical health problems or symptoms (Bogart et al., 2014; Gini & Pozzoli, 2013; van Geel, Goemans, & Vedder, 2015), psychosocial symptoms and internalizing behaviors (Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Rose, Simpson, & Preast, 2016; Ttofi, Farrington, Lösel, & Loeber, 2011), risky behaviors (Reijntjes et al., 2011), decreased academic performance (Espelage, Hong, Rao, & Low, 2013), and higher dropout rates (Cornell, Gregory, Huang, & Fan, 2013) when compared to those who are uninvolved in bullying. Most alarming, however, is that students who experienced victimization by their peers were 2.2 times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and 2.6 times more likely to attempt suicide than students who did not experience victimization from their peers (Gini & Espelage, 2014).
Outcomes Related to Perpetration and Bully Victimization
Youth who engage in bullying also experience negative short- and long-term outcomes related to bullying. Specifically, students who engage in bullying report higher levels of psychosocial symptoms (Gini & Pozzoli, 2009; Rose, Simpson, et al., 2016), poor academic outcomes, low levels of engagement in school, and increased levels of delinquent behavior (Espelage, Hong, et al., 2013) compared to youth who are uninvolved in bullying. Similarly, youth who are both victimized and engage in bullying report comorbid outcomes that are related to both victims and perpetrators (NASEM, 2016), including risk of future poor health, increased risk of drug and tobacco use, and poor relations in the workplace (Sigurdson, Wallander, & Sund, 2014). Given the poor outcomes associated with involvement of any type in bullying, it is critical that resear...