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Does
age make a difference?
In 1990, over 6,000
school children in Sheffield provided information about
their experience of bullying. It was found that the number
of children being bullied fell sharply as they grew older.
In junior/middle school, the number of children being bullied
(whether frequently or less often) dropped sharply. In secondary
school the numbers also fell. However, while the rate of
being bullied falls with age, the rate of bullying others
remains more or less the same, with a dip only in the first
two and then the last year of secondary school.
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Article details
I Whitney and P Smith
(1993) 'A Survey of the Nature and Extent of Bullying in
Junior/Middle and Secondary Schools', in 'Educational Research',
Volume 35, Number 1, Spring.
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Author details
 Professor
Peter K Smith is Head of the Unit for School and Family
Studies, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, London.
He has been involved in bullying research for a number of
years and has published widely on this topic.
Peter Smith may be
contacted by email,
and the website of the Unit for School and Family Studies
at Goldsmiths College may be found
here.
Pupils (aged 8 to
18 years) in South Australian schools were asked about their
experiences of bullying. Their answers showed an overall
drop in bullying incidents as the children got older. However,
the answers also suggested that there is an increase in
reports of bullying in the first year of secondary school.
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Article details
K Rigby 'What Children
Tell Us About Bullying in Schools.' View
here or in the publication 'Children Australia' (1997)
22, 2, pp28-34. See also K Rigby (1997) 'Bullying in Schools:
and what to do about it', London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Limited.
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Author details
 Ken
Rigby is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Psychology
and an educational consultant at the University of South
Australia. He has been involved in major studies of bullying
in Australia and has published widely on this topic. For
more information about Dr Rigby and his work see the
bullying pages here. Ken may be contacted by e-mail.
A large study of school
children in Norway in the1980s found that bullying in school
decreases with age. What also came out in the study was
that there was less use of physical bullying in later years.
Another finding was that a great amount of bullying was
carried out by older students rather than pupils in the
same year. Being bullied by an older student was particularly
common for the youngest victims in the study (8 and 9 years
old). More than half of these had been bullied by older
children.
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Article details
D Olweus (1999) 'Norway',
in P K Smith et al (editor) 'The Nature of School Bullying:
a cross-national perspective', London: Routledge.
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Graph
details
'Percentage of students
in different grades who reported being bullied (being exposed
to direct bullying) (n for boys = 42,390; n for girls =
40,940)' from Olweus article above, figure 2.1, page 33.
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Author details
Professor Dan Olweus
was the first person to carry out a thorough research project
on  bullying.
This large, long term study which began in Sweden in 1970,
was to provide the inspiration for many who felt that bullying
in schools should be challenged rather than accepted. Since
the 1970s, his work in this area had continued with force.
Indeed, in 1997-99, he led a group in a large project which
introduced the widely respected Olweus (anti-bullying) programme
to schools in Norway. Professor Olweus is based at the Research
Centre for Health Promotion, University of Bergen in Norway
and can be contacted by email.
A survey of school
children in Strathclyde (in Scotland), showed differences
between bullying in primary and secondary school. Twice
as many primary as secondary school pupils were affected
by bullying. When asked how often bullying occurred, more
primary pupils reported that they were bullied often, daily
and over years. Anxiety about break time was also higher
in primary, with only one in two primary pupils saying they
had no concern about breaks. More primary pupils also said
that they had been put off their work as a result of bullying.
Despite this, more primary than secondary pupils said that
they were satisfied with the way their school handled bullying.
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Article details
A McLean (1997) 'Bullyproofing
Our School: what do the pupils think?', Topic 2, Issue 17,
National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER). This
article can be viewed here.
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 Author
details
At the time of this
study, Alan McLean was Principal Psychologist based at the
Education Department Psychological Service in the former
Strathclyde Regional Council. His particular interests in
the area of bullying include: links between bullying and
motivation; the thinking processes and self-esteem of the
bully.
He can be contacted
at by email.
A study of over 2,000
school children (aged 10 - 14 years) in England found that
the way children react to bullying changes with age. For
all of the children who had been bullied, the most common
reaction was to attempt to ignore the bully. It was also
found that as they grew older, children were less likely
to react by crying or running away.
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Article details
P K Smith and Shu
Shu (2000), 'What Good Schools Can Do About Bullying: findings
from a survey in English schools after a decade of research
and action', in 'Childhood', Volume 7 (2).
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Author details
Professor
Peter K Smith is Head of the Unit for School and Family
Studies, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, London.
He has been involved in bullying research for a number of
years and has published widely on this topic.
Peter Smith may be
contacted by email,
and the website of the Unit for School and Family Studies
at Goldsmiths College may be found
here.
An English study looked
at four possible reasons why bullying seems to decrease
with age. Using information from this study and earlier
ones, it was suggested that two reasons in particular helped
to explain this drop. The first of these two considered
whether the fall in reports of bullying might be due to
the fact that younger children have more older children
around who might bully them. The study found that this did
go some way towards explaining the drop, particularly in
the primary school. According to the study, the other main
reason why bullying levels decrease with age, is that the
social skills of possible victims improve as they get older,
and this helps them to discourage or to deal with bullying
behaviour. The remaining two reasons were found to have
their impact mainly at particular ages. One of the explanations
was that younger children do not yet understand that bullying
is wrong. However many studies found that it was not until
after 15 years that reports of bullying others drops. So
this explanation has little impact until the later secondary
years. The other explanation was that younger children have
a much broader definition of bullying, including a much
wider range of aggressive behaviour. It was found that this
was particularly true of children in the lower primary years.
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Article details
P K Smith, K C Madsen
and J C Moody (1999), 'What Causes the Age Decline in Reports
of Being Bullied at School? Towards a Developmental Analysis
of Risks of Being Bullied', in 'Educational Research', Volume
41, Number 3, Winter.
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Author details
Professor
Peter K Smith is Head of the Unit for School and Family
Studies, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College, London.
He has been involved in bullying research for a number of
years and has published widely on this topic.
Peter Smith may be
contacted by email,
and the website of the Unit for School and Family Studies
at Goldsmiths College may be found
here.
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