Definitions of Bullying: A Comparison of Terms Used, and Age and Gender Differences, in a Fourteen–Country International Comparison

Abstract

The study of school bullying has recently assumed an international dimension, but is faced with difficulties in finding terms in different languages to correspond to the English word bullying. To investigate the meanings given to various terms, a set of 25 stick-figure cartoons was devised, covering a range of social situations between peers. These cartoons were shown to samples of 8- and 14-year-old pupils (N = 1,245; n = 604 at 8 years, n = 641 at 14 years) in schools in 14 different countries, who judged whether various native terms cognate to bullying, applied to them. Terms from 10 Indo-European languages and three Asian languages were sampled. Multidimensional scaling showed that 8-year-olds primarily discriminated nonaggressive and aggressive cartoon situations; however, 14-year-olds discriminated fighting from physical bullying, and also discriminated verbal bullying and social exclusion. Gender differences were less appreciable than age differences. Based on the 14-year-old data, profiles of 67 words were then constructed across the five major cartoon clusters. The main types of terms used fell into six groups: bullying (of all kinds), verbal plus physical bullying, solely verbal bullying, social exclusion, solely physical aggression, and mainly physical aggression. The findings are discussed in relation to developmental trends in how children understand bullying, the inferences that can be made from cross-national studies, and the design of such studies.

The Forms of Bullying Scale (FBS): Validity and reliability estimates for a measure of bullying victimization and perpetration in adolescence.

“…It has been questioned by others, primarily as labeling the behavior may lead to under-reporting (Greif & Furlong, 2006;Kert, Codding, Tryon, & Shiyko, 2010) as well as reporting based on different individual understandings of the term (Smith et al, 2002). Providing a definition aims to ensure some degree of common understanding of the phenomenon and increase the comparability of responses (Griffin & Gross, 2004;Solberg & Olweus, 2003).…”

Bullying in schoolchildren – its relationship to dental appearance and psychosocial implications: an update for GDPs

“…3 Negative actions can be classified as direct or indirect forms of aggression that cause harm to the victim. 4 The definition of bullying has been reported to vary according to the age of the child, 5 between teachers and adolescents 6,7 and due to variations Bullying in school-aged children is a global phenomenon. The effects of bullying can be both short-and long-term, resulting in both physiological and psychological symptoms.…”

Workers' perception of workplace bullying: A cross-cultural study

“…Branch, 2008;Saunders, Huynh, & Goodman-Delahunty, 2007). In that sense, some studies have stressed how employees may have different conceptualizations of workplace bullying to those of the researchers (Escartı´n, Rodrı´guez-Carballeira, Porru´a, & Martı´n-Pen˜a, 2008;Escartı´n, Rodrı´guez-Carballeira, Zapf, Porru´a, & Martı´n-Pen˜a, 2009;Liefooghe & MacKenzie-Davey, 2003), which has also been pointed out by Smith, Cowie, Olafsson, andLiefooghe (2002, p. 1131): ''This imperfect correspondence between popular and scientific definition of terms such as bullying is an issue that the researcher must remain aware of.'' Therefore, different authors have emphasized the necessity for employing different qualitative research methodologies to explore the meaning of different social phenomena as experienced by individuals themselves (Strandmark & Hallberg, 2007).…”