Data and Bullying: How to Break Down the Problem

Published January 18, 2024 on District Administration

In K-12 districts across the U.S., where empowering student success is paramount, the prevalence of bullying continues to be a significant concern. Approximately one in five 12- to 18-year-olds experience bullying. In 2021, The Journal of Research on Adolescence published an article stating, “Bullying is a pervasive global problem that has attracted researchers’ attention for five decades,” and it remains a challenge today.

Defined by the American Psychological Association as aggressive behavior where someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another injury or discomfort, bullying has evolved and expanded to include cyberbullying (threats via technology like social media or texting). And, as the use of digital communications devices has increased, cyberbullying among high schoolers has doubled over the past decade.

A social phenomenon, research has shown that bullying often takes place in front of several witnesses, and is associated with negative outcomes for everyone involved.

The most effective response to bullying

Children selected assertiveness as the most effective response in a study of their perceptions of bullying strategies in a 2005 study. Despite their selection, children still reported a desire for witness retaliation on their behalf, but research reveals that bystander intervention is unlikely and even rare.

Many reasons explain avoidant behavior, including a lack of self-efficacy. Proponents of resilience and self-efficacy programs argue for the need for “skills-based approaches to teach students to solve problems” they’ll encounter throughout their lifetime.

While self-efficacy is an intrapersonal construct, evidence suggests that school and classroom norms play a crucial role in shaping perceptions of self-efficacy and the likelihood of bystander intervention. Adolescents may be particularly responsive to highly influential peers’ norm-setting behavior due to neural activation at this developmental stage. Recent research on social influence and bullying found classroom characteristics were less influential on cyber- versus traditional bullying.

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