Applying Multiple Indices to Monitor Bullying Longitudinally: A Case of a Japanese Junior High School

IntroductionBullying is generally defined as an intentional aggressive act characterized by repetition of actions and asymmetric power relationships (Olweus, 1999). Three decades of research on bullying around the world, including research on ijime in Japan, considered the most similar concept to bullying in the West and confirmed the extensiveness and diversity of the problem (Smith, Morita, Junger-Tas, Olweus, Catalano, & Slee, 1999). Many studies identified the serious negative consequences of being victimized, of bullying others, and of being a bystander, not only for individuals but also for the climate of classes, year groups and schools in general (Boulton, Trueman, & Murray, 2008; Obermann, 2011; Rivers, Poteat, Noret, & Ashurst, 2009; Sweeting, Young, West, & Der, 2006; Ttofi, Farrington, & Losel, 2011). Whether a child becomes a stable victim may depend on the child's ability to use internal resources to respond to the victimization. Sometimes external assistance is available, though victims often tolerate the mistreatment because of the fear of bullying getting worse or of not having enough support from others (Kanetsuna & Smith, 2002). Recently, attentions of researchers and practitioners have been directed towards bystanders for bullying prevention and intervention, as bullying mostly takes place in the playground, classrooms, or corridors, where other children are likely to be present (Whitney & Smith, 1993; Wiens & Dempsey, 2009). However, Pergolizzi, Richmond, Macario, Gan, Richmond, and Macario (2009) revealed high level of apathy among bystanders, claiming that half of their participating students did nothing when they witnessed others being bullied, and 40 % of them considered the bullying as none of their business.Indices to evaluate antibullying interventionsIn light of these issues, a wide variety of antibullying intervention projects has been developed and implemented worldwide, and a number of meta-analyses have been carried out on the effectiveness of such projects. The outcomes of some earlier metaanalyses suggested that overall effects were minimal. For example, Smith, Schneider, Smith, and Ananiadou (2004) reviewed 14 antibullying intervention studies implemented in 11 different countries, and re-evaluated the intervention effects of each study by using the change on outcome measures between pretest and posttest. They found that the effects of intervention projects fell almost exclusively into the categories of small, negligible, and negative for both victimization and bullying outcomes. Only one condition in one study was categorized as having a medium effect, and none was categorized as large. More recently, Ttofi and Farrington (2011) reviewed 53 different school-based intervention projects and meta-analyzed 44 of these, and revealed more positive outcomes. They found that, on average, the projects reduced bullying by around 20-23 % and victimization by around 17-20 %. They also reported that some individual projects, such as KiVa in Finland, have yielded reductions of around 40-50 %, at least in some age groups.These evaluation studies and meta-analyses are certainly an important source of information for developing future successful bullying prevention and intervention programs. However, it has also been noted that we should not rely too much on a single source of data for outcome measures (Smith et al., 2004), and should consider how to interpret the evaluation data very carefully (Toda, Strohmeier, & Spiel, 2008). Most of these evaluations expect reductions of the number of reported bullying and victimization incidents within the school as a whole. Although the goals of such prevention and interventions are to reduce as much bullying as possible, results can be statistically significant even when the size of the reduction is a few percentage points. Others would regard a project as successful if there is a 50 % reduction, as was reported in the Bergen project in Norway or KiVa in Finland, for instance (Olweus, 1999; Salmivalli, Karna, & Poskiparta, 2011). …