Bullying and Peer Victimization at School: Considerations and Future Directions

This series of articles highlights many important issues that researchers, educators, and clinicians are grappling with in understanding and treating bullying and victimization. For instance, these articles present information on the comorbidities and trajectories of different subgroups of bullies and victims, highlight the important buffering role that positive adults and school personnel can play in preventing the harmful effects of victimization, and emphasize the importance of considering school contexts (e.g., playground, lunchroom, classroom, and hallways) and subtypes of bullying and victimization when considering the form and function of bullying problems. The three articles also provide a clear direction for future research in this burgeoning field. As such, they highlight the need for comprehensive and multifaceted assessments of bullying and victimization, and they speak to the importance of using partnership-based approaches in designing school- and community-based programs to prevent bullying and victimization. In this commentary, I will highlight these points and several additional considerations that these excellent research studies address. In doing so, I hope to help readers better understand the ways in which research can be linked to practice so that research studies in this area can impact school and community prevention efforts to decrease the harmful effects of bullying and victimization among youth. Current Status of Bullying and Victimization Research Our knowledge of bullying and victimization was greatly enhanced by Dan Olweus's pioneering bully prevention efforts in the 1970s and 1980s. Since that time, research has investigated the frequency, characteristics, and comorbidities associated with both bullying and victimization behavior. For instance, research suggests that bullies are often aggressive, oppositional, and hostile towards their peers, while also demonstrating academic difficulties and presenting challenges for their teachers (see Leff, Power, & Goldstein, 2004). Research examining victimization profiles suggest that youth who are frequently victimized by their peers are often more sad, anxious, and withdrawn, and have lower self-esteem than their peers, and they experience increasing school maladjustment and avoidance over time (see Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996). In fact, the research literature often implies that bullies and victims are quite distinct groups of children who uniformly experience a host of negative outcomes. However, the current set of studies in School Psychology Review is significant because these studies move the field forward through their appreciation of the complexity of peer bullying. For instance, the article by Holt, Finkelhor, and Kaufman Kantor (2007) helps readers to better understand the challenges of children who are both frequent bullies and victims (bully-victim subgroup) and the multiple ways in which youth can be victimized both at school and within the broader family and/or community context (Holt et al., 2007). The article by Bradshaw, Sawyer, and O'Brennan (2007) furthers the field by examining the differences between student and staff perceptions and attitudes towards bullying and addresses the implications of these findings for designing and adapting bullying prevention efforts. Finally, Davidson and Demaray (2007) empirically address the way in which different forms of social support may buffer the harmful effects of bullying. Paying particular attention to the ways in which social support from parents, classmates, and school personnel can influence young children's reactions to bullying is an extremely important and needed area of further investigation. Given that a sizable number of youth can be categorized as bully-victims (8% of the sample in the Holt et al., 2007 study), it is important that researchers and educators better appreciate the complex comorbidities and challenges that this group of youth experience. …