Knowledge about the risks of bullying involvement during any year of high school is an important element of interventions for changing the likelihood of being bullied. Three cohorts of Australian students (n = 1,382) were tracked from 7th to 11th grade. The study showed that some students have continued involvement in bullying, whilst in addition, new bullies and new victims emerge during each high school year. The findings indicated that the risk of bullying involvement ranged from 16% (as a bully) to 36% (as a victim), increasing to 54.5%, and 56.3% respectively, if a student was a bully or a victim in 7 th grade.The risk to students of becoming victims, bullies, or bully-victims in each year of high school suggests that bullying prevention initiatives should be designed to suit students at different stages of adolescent development.Keywords: survival analysis; bullies, victims-bully-victims; bullying prevention
IntroductionInvolvement in bullying may be as a bully, a victim, a bully-victim (Haynie et al., 2001; Veenstra et al., 2005). Bullying occurs in most schools, with reported prevalence rates varying from nine per cent in Sweden to 54 per cent in Lithuania (Nansel, Craig, Overpeck, Saluja, & Ruan, 2004). Negative psycho-social outcomes are associated with such repeated, intentional and systematic abuse of power (Beaty & Alexeyev, 2008;Skrzypiec, Slee, Askell-Williams, & Lawson , 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 Skrzypiec, Grace; Askell-Williams, Helen; Slee, Phillip T.; Lawson, Michael J. School of Education, Flinders University 2 2012; Smith, Cowie, Olafsson, & Liefooghe, 2002; Turner, Finkelhor, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2012).International studies of the prevalence of bullying show a peak in frequency of bullying around the end of primary (elementary) school and the beginning of high school (e.g., Eslea & Rees, 2001; Nansel et al., 2001). It has been suggested that the frequency of bullying in the later years of high school diminishes as students' growing social competencies enable the use of more prosocial strategies (Semrud-Clikeman, 2007). However, this does not mean that bullying will not be present at all in the later high school years. Some studies indicate that bullying and being a victim of bullying are roles that remain relatively stable for students as they transition from primary to middle school (Camodeca, Goossens, Terwogt, & Schuengel, 2002; Hanish & Guerra, 2004;Paul & Cillessen, 2003;Pellegrini & Bartini, 2000). Sourander, Helstela, Helenius and Piha (2000) concluded from their eight-year longitudinal study that bullying, and being a victim of bullying were persistent behaviours. Furthermore, being a victim was found to be the more persistent of the two (and strongly associated with emotional and behavioural problems).However, other studies have reported mixed results. F...