POLICE ASSOCIATION OF NOVA SCOTIA 165 Olweus, in his extensive studies over the past twenty years in Norway, has found that about 15 per cent, or one in seven students, are involved in bully/victim problems. Of these, about 9 per cent are victims, and 7 per cent bully others with some regularity (Olweus, 1993). When Dr. Olweus and his colleagues looked at very serious bullyvictim problems, they found that slightly more than 3 per cent of their very large sample were bullied once a week or more, while just less than 2 per cent of students bullied others that frequently. Studies from a number of other countries have confirmed that rates of bullying are the same or higher in England, the United States, Japan, Ireland, Australia, and the Netherlands, among other countries. Another important finding from these research studies is that most students who are bullied either do not report the bullying to adults, or they wait a very long time before doing so. The reasons include feelings of shame, fear of retaliation for reporting, and fear that adults cannot or will not protect the victim in the settings where bullying usually takes place: the playground, the hallway of the school, or on the way to and from school. Olweus and colleagues have found that the percentage of students who report being victims of bullying decreases with age, over grades 2 to 9. In their sample of over 83,000 students in Norway, they found that while between 16 and 17 per cent of students in Grade 2 reported being bullied, by Grade 9, the percentages decreased to 3 per cent of girls and 6.5 per cent of boys (Olweus, 1993). A large proportion of the bullied children in the lower grades reported being bullied by older children. This again underlines the role of power differentials in bullying. In Canada, the studies on bullying have been fewer and much smaller scale, than those in Norway, so there is less information available with regard to patterns over different grade levels. The study by Pepler et al. (1994) does not provide a grade breakdown in incidence of bullying. Another study, which was done by Ryan, Mathews and Banner (1993), provides information about aggression and victimization in a sample of 457 grade 7, 8, and 9 students. Ryan et al. (1993) used a substantially different set of questions compared to the Olweus and the Pepler et al. studies. Therefore, it is not possible to make direct comparisons between these studies, as to the rates of bullying at different grade levels. The students were asked to report whether each type of incident had ever happened to them, with no time period specified. Therefore, students in each grade may have been reporting incidents that happened to them in earlier grades. Also, the students in this study were asked to report on one-time occurrences of violence, rather than on repeated patterns or bullying. The Ryan et al. study found fairly high rates of occurrence of violent incidents, with a wide range of violent incidents being reported, from being threatened to harassed to having lunch money taken, to being threatened with a weapon. Gender Differences in Bullying Patterns of bullying and victimization are very different for boys and girls. Boys are much more likely to report being bullies, and perpetrating violent acts on others than are girls, at each age. Girls are somewhat less likely than boys to be the victims of bullying, although the rates are not as discrepant as the bullying (perpetrator) rates. This suggests that it is important to study whether boys victimize other boys, or both boys and girls, and vice versa. Olweus (1993) reports that one of his studies, conducted with students in grades five to seven, found that 60 per cent of girls who were bullied were bullied only by boys, while another 15-20 per cent were bullied by both boys and girls. The great majority of boys who were bullied (80 per cent) were bullied only by boys. This shows that it is boys who are more likely to be the perpetrators of what Olweus calls "direct" bullying, that is, bullying which involves direct physical or verbal attacks. He has concluded that girls are more likely to use indirect, subtle, social means to harass other girls. He refers to behaviour such as social exclusion, manipulation of friendship relationships, spreading rumours, etc. However, there appear to be few questions in his questionnaires to address this issue. The one question he did include was "How often does it happen that other students don't want to spend recess with you and you end up being alone?" The results indicated that boys and girls were equally likely to have this problem. Olweus sees this as a measure of "indirect" bullying, but an alternative explanation is that this question may address socially rejected children who are not liked, but who are not intentionally bullied either. These may simply be the less popular children. One conclusion about gender differences is that boys are more likely to be both the perpetrators and the victims of aggressive physical and verbal bullying by peers. Another conclusion is that girls are much more often a target of bullying by boys than vice versa. Taken together, these conclusions indicate that interventions should take into account the higher rates of aggressive behaviour by males. A third conclusion is that more study is needed of "indirect" or subtle bullying and of social exclusion, by both girls and boys. continued...
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