good research title about bullying

124 Bullying Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on bullying, ✍️ bullying essay topics for college, 👍 good bullying research topics & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting bullying research titles, ❓ bullying research questions.

• School Bullying: Causes and Effects
• Bullying in Schools: Essay Example
• Bullying at School and Impact on Mental Health
• The Problem of Bullying in School
• Chronicles of Bullying: An Editorial Article
• Bullying in Schools: Anti-Bullying Programs
• Bullying: A Serious Social Problem
• Bullying Behavior and Its Negative Effects on Children Bullying behavior is a severe issue among school-age children. This essay addresses the negative effects of bullying on children and the ways of overcoming the problem.
• School Bullying and Student’s Development Bullying is one of the major social issues facing youth in schools today. This work entails research that was carried out on a student to studying the level of bullying in school.
• Negative Bullying Outcomes: A Persuasive Speech Bullying has adverse effects on both victims and perpetrators. Bullying should be prevented, or should it occur, reported, and taken care of as soon as possible.
• Workplace Bullying and Its Implications on Organizations Discrimination is one of the major challenges that organizational leaders face within the workplace. Workplace bullying refers to any acts intended to intimidate a colleague.
• The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy on Victims of Bullying This paper will be able to ascertain that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is a very effective therapy that defies the ugly trend of bullying in schools.
• Prevention of Bullying in Schools School bullying is a relevant and critical global issue, and while it affects all children, some groups may experience various disparities and increased exposure to bullying.
• School Bullying and Legal Responsibility The following paper will discuss and cover the rate of school bullies’ legally unregulated actions and the detriment that they constantly cause to other children who surround them.
• Why Bullying Is Wrong and Methods of Resolving Disputes Without Violence Such methods of conflict resolution as mediation, communication, and listening may eliminate the harmful impact of such behavior without violence.
• Teenagers’ Contemporary Issues: Bullying at School Bullying can be caused by differences between students, and the existing assessment and support options contribute to improving the situation.
• Bullying Effects on Health and Life Quality When children are subject to bullying by their peers, it affects their feelings and evokes negative emotions in the first place.
• Bullying in the Modern Society: Review Bullying is one of the major concerns of modern society. Following the statistics, about 40% of all individuals have experienced being bullied at least once.
• The Issue of Cyber-Bullying in Education Field Bullying has been recognized as a pervasive and a severe problem as well as a significant concern, mostly in the educational field.
• Online Bullying Takes Over the World In the context of a rapidly and highly digitized global environment, online bullying, otherwise known as cyberbullying, has become a prevalent issue.
• Bullying and Sexual Harassment at Work Place According to Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention, workplace bullying occurs when an individual direct irrational actions repeatedly towards their fellow worker.
• Reducing Bullying in Schools by Involving Stakeholders Schools should raise awareness among educators, instructors, and community members about their roles and responsibilities in the battle against bullying.
• Bullying Problem in School Bullying is caused by genetic predisposition, relations with peers, and as a reaction to the situation in school or at home.
• The Problem of Workplace Bullying: Literature Review The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the relevant literature on the topic of workplace bullying.
• School Bullying and Problems in Adult Life Bullying is aggressive behavior that can be seen in different children, teenagers, and adults. In this paper, the causes of bullying and the effects of it will be presented and discussed.
• Bullying and Parenting Styles There are many positive and negative outcomes of parenting on children. This paper aims at investigating the connection between several types of parenting and bullying behaviors.
• Cyber-Bullying and Ways to Solve the Problem The primary goal of the given study is the investigation of cyber-bullying, which is nowadays one of the integral parts of social media and the Internet.
• The Consequences of High School Bullying This annotated bibliography includes summaries of four academic studies that explore the effects of bullying on high school students.
• Bullying of Learners with Disabilities The problem of bullying remains one of the predicaments learners with disabilities encounter in their learning environments.
• Bullying and Work-Related Stress in the Irish Workplace One of the best analyses of relationships between workplace stress and bullying has been done in the research study called “Bullying and Work-Related Stress in the Irish Workplace.”
• Workplace Bullying and Its Impact on People’s Mental Health Workplace bullying turns out to be a serious theme for discussion because of a variety of reasons, and one of them is its impact on people’s mental health.
• Cyber-Bullying and Cyber-Stalking as Crimes Cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking are relatively close in meaning, but there is a slight difference in the definition of these terms.
• Addressing Bullying in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms The study mainly focuses on teachers’ lack of knowledge on how to deal with the issue of bullying in the classroom in an effective manner.
• Bullying at Pre-School and Preventive Measures This paper provides five tips for pre-school bullying prevention, the first of which is to give opportunities for children to show kindness and respect.
• The Social Problem of Bullying and the School System The present paper focuses on the connection between the social problem of bullying and the school system, describing each of these concepts.
• Anti Bullying Prevention Program The standards for anti-bullying program aims to prevent not only the behavior of bullying but also behavior representing the full spectrum of inter-student cruelty.
• Bullying in Poverty and Child Development Context The aim of the present paper is to investigate how Bullying, as a factor associated with poverty, affects child development.
• Bullying Among Adolescents Problem Studying the problem of bullying, its factors of influence, and the application of developmental theories are critical for finding ways to combat it effectively.
• Deterring Juvenile Crime. Bullying and Delinquency Delinquency can be defined as a crime committed by a minor; in the recent few years, cases of juvenile delinquency have been on the rise.
• Parenting Style and Bullying Among Children The investigation of parenting styles is highly essential to understand how they affect the bullying behavior of children to prevent it.
• Organization Conflicts and Bullying Workplace bullying is a serious problem with huge costs attached to it in terms of loss of working days. The topic requires academic attention to ascertain the factors that induce such behavior.
• Harsher Laws for Cyber Bullying The number of people using social networks is growing but they do not see the danger in remote communication and are subjected to cyberbullying.
• Bullying: A Guide for the Parents The first way for parents to assist the kid in coming up with bullies is to teach them a set of responses, which they can use in case someone is picking on them.
• Bullying and School Drop Out Rate Relationship Analysis Bullying is rife in schools where physical and verbal abuse occurs among pupils/students. There is “a close relationship between bullying, school involvement, and literacy”.
• The Meaning of Cyber Bullying The work reveals the meaning and purpose of cyberbullying, what signs characterize it and the solution to cyberbullying.
• Exploring Workplace Bullying in Nursing This paper critiques Etienne’s 2013 study of workplace bullying in nursing and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the research.
• Causes of Bullying in Nursing The relationship between medical staff is an important aspect that determines the quality of work in a particular institution and the healthcare system as a whole.
• High School Bullying: Psychological Aspects The study discusses the psychology behind bullying, the effects of bullying on all the involved parties, and emergent patterns.
• The Workplace Bullying Prevention Policy The problem of bullying creates a severe issue for the atmosphere of the workplace environment, the mental health of workers, and their performance.
• The Issue of High School Bullying Bullying cases among high school students have been on the rise in modern society. High school bullying is mainly caused by media exposure.
• Bullying and Methods of Solving This Problem The article is devoted to the causes of bullying which develops in almost any closed community among children and adolescents.
• Bullying During Orientations in the Universities In order to address the issue related to bullying during orientations, only the most empathetic senior students should be allowed to participate in orientations.
• The Relation Between the Teen Suicide and Bullying During the teenage years, bullying and harassment represent cases of social animosity that make suicide an option.
• Cyber Bullying Messages in Communication Networks Bullying can come in different forms, but it always causes injury or even worse. Bullying victims may carry the psychological wounds of their ordeal for the rest of their life.
• Problem Scenario: Workplace Bullying in Teaching When the word “bullying” is used in the context of education, one often presumes the situation in which one student systematically mistreats another.
• Bullying and Patient Safety in Clinical Settings Besides damaging the atmosphere in clinical settings and negatively affecting the personnel, bullying can lower the quality of healthcare services and harm patient safety.
• The Long-Term Consequences of Being Bullied or Bullying Others in Childhood This study attempts to discuss the main consequences on the mental and physical health of victims, bully-victims, and bullies themselves, and comment on the prevalent patterns.
• Bullying as Managerial Issue in Nursing Sector Bullying is a significant nursing issue due to the negative impact caused on the performance level among the employees.
• Problem of Bullying Overview and Analysis Bullying can have harmful impacts on everyone involved, including bullies, the bullied, and bystanders. It can be prevented through the use of selective preventive programs.
• Nurse Bullying: Unprofessional Conduct Bullying can be exhibited in the form of physical and verbal threats, social seclusion, aggressive behaviors, and suppression of applicable care information.
• Bullying: A Concern for Modern Communities and Educational Establishments Parents can educate their children to create safe environment for healthy development, both physical and mental, guaranteeing the absence of abusive behavior or victimization.
• Bullying and Its Impact on My Life In this essay, the author talks about the impact of bullying on his life and how he managed to cope with the problem.
• “Nurse Exposure to Physical and Nonphysical Violence, Bullying…” by Spector This paper is a critique of the article titled “Nurse Exposure to Physical and Nonphysical Violence, Bullying, and Sexual Harassment: A Quantitative Review”.
• Anti-bullying Practices in Criminal Prosecution Anti-bullying practices have proceeded past only encouraging an individual to avoid ill-treatment of their peers to the establishment of laws.
• Workplace Bullying: Dealing With the Office Bully The psychological stress caused by bullying can be so severe that in the worst case, it can lead to depression and quitting.
• The Dumfries and Galloway Council’s Policy Against Bullying This paper discusses the analysis of the bullying in general and its understanding in the works of Dumfries and Galloway Council.
• Workplace Bullying in the Nursing Areas The paper is aimed to tell about the importance of overcoming workplace bullying in the example of a nursing collective.
• Bullying Among Nursing Staff The bullying in health care is still present, and health practitioners’ mental health, motivation, and ability to uphold precision and self-composure are compromised.
• Nurse Bullying and Legal Interventions Nurse bullying has to be addressed by healthcare establishments and national agencies to ensure proper work culture and adequate environment for patient care.
• Horizontal Violence and Bullying in Nursing There is a direct correlation between horizontal violence and job satisfaction among nurses, which affects the efforts of individuals who choose this profession.
• Fear Appeal in the Stop Bullying Public Campaign In the video “Stop bullying,” the subject matter is presented shockingly. The 47-second clip shows a high school girl receiving an aggressive text message from her peers.
• Bullying and Laws in American Schools Researchers distinguish two major kinds of bullying that take place in the academic setting: direct and indirect.
• School Bullying and Teacher Professional Development
• Bullying and Its Effect on Our American Society
• Physical, Emotional, and Social Bullying
• The Government Should Put Laws in Place To Prevent Bullying
• Childhood Bullying and Social Relationships
• Bullying and Its Effects on Individual’s Education
• The Emotional and Physical Aspects of Bullying
• Bullying and Its Effects on the Person Who Is Being Hurt
• Childhood Bullying and Its Effects on Children
• Cyber Bullying Affects People‘s Lives More Than One Might Think
• Managing Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace
• Bullying Affects the Social Learning Theory
• How Has Bullying Changed Our Modern World?
• Bullying and the Workplace and Affect Morale
• The Bible Belt and Its Beliefs on the Problem of Bullying
• Cyber-bullying Through Anonymous Social Media
• The Difference Between Bullying and Harassment
• Racial Bullying and Its Effects on the Middle of the Twenty
• Bullying Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Social Media Bullying and Cyberbullying
• Bullying Prevention and School Safety
• Physical and Verbal Bullying in Schools
• What Are Schools and Parents Doing for Bullying Prevention?
• What Are the Effects of Bullying in Public Schools?
• What Strategies Might You Employ to Encourage Pupils to Prevent Bullying?
• How to Talk to Your Children About Bullying?
• What Are the Six Types of Bullying Parents Should Know About?
• Which American State Has the Toughest Bullying Laws?
• Who Started and Invented Anti-Bullying Day?
• What Countries Have Anti-Bullying Laws?
• Which American State Is the Only One to Not Have an Anti-Bullying Law?
• What Is the Meaning of Anti-Bullying Law?
• What Is the Number One Determinant of Bullying Will Occur?
• When Was the First Anti-Bullying Law Passed?
• Is Bullying a Social Determinant of Health?
• What Should Be in an Anti-Bullying Policy?
• Why Is the Anti-Bullying Policy Important?
• Why Should We Be Aware of the Anti-Bullying Act of 2013?
• What Is the Meaning of Emotional Bullying?
• What Is the Punishment for Anti-Bullying Act?
• Is Bullying a Social Phenomena?
• Who Is the Father of Bullying Research?
• What Is a Good Slogan for Stop Bullying?
• Why Do the Bullying Programs not Work?
• Why Students Engage in Bullying?
• Why Are Workplace Bullying and Violence Important Issues for Organizations?
• Why Should Bullying Not Be Harsh?
• What Is the Most Important Strategy for Bullying Prevention?
• Why Do We Need to Conduct a Study About Bullying?
• Are Bullying Prevention Programs Effective?
• Who Should Universities Have the Ability to Punish Students for Cyber Bullying?
• Are Neoliberalist Behaviours Reflective of Bullying?

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These essay examples and topics on Bullying were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on December 27, 2023 .

154 Bullying Topics & Bullying Essay Examples

Looking for an exciting research topic about bullying? This problem is very controversial, sensitive, and definitely worth studying

🏆 Top 10 Bullying Topics for Research Papers

📃 bullying essay: writing tips, 🏆 best bullying topics to write about, ⚡ most shocking bullying topics to write about, ✅ simple & easy shocking bullying essay titles, ✍️ bullying essay topics for college, ❓ research questions about bullying.

Examples of bullying can be found everywhere: in schools, workplaces, and even on the Internet (in the form of cyberbullying).

In this article, we’ve collected top bullying research paper topics and questions, as well as bullying essay samples and writing tips. Get inspired with us!

• Direct and indirect bullying: compare & contrast
• The causes of bullying
• Classroom bullying and its effects
• Social isolation as a form of bullying
• Bullying and academic performance
• Passive and active victims of bullying: compare and contrast
• The role of social agencies in bullying prevention
• Public policy for bullying and aggression
• Bullying behavior and psychological health
• Aggressive children and their family background

A bullying essay is a popular assignment in various subjects, including psychology, sociology, and education. Writing an excellent paper on the matter requires more than just in-depth research and planning. Don’t worry; there are some tips that will make writing an essay on bullying much easier:

• Choose a topic that allows analyzing and interpreting the problem. Instead of merely describing what bullying is, try to dig deeper into its causes, consequences, and solutions. If your professor didn’t suggest any topics, you may research bullying essay topics online and select one that would be exciting for you to explore.
• Read sample articles and papers online to see how other students approached the subject. Notice the bits that work and don’t work, and write them out to make the process of creating your essay easier. If you’re struggling with finding enough examples online, you may want to expand your search to discrimination essay topics and materials.
• Research what scholars say about bullying. Articles in scholarly journals are an excellent source of information because they are usually trustworthy. If you’re still in school, your ability to navigate the library or online databases will also impress your tutor. As you start researching, you will find that there is a great variety of studies, and it’s challenging to find the relevant ones. Narrowing down your search would help you to do that. For instance, if you are writing a cyber bullying essay, try searching for social media bullying or online anti-bullying services.
• Include real-life experiences where relevant. Unfortunately, bullying is a common problem in many institutions, and if you haven’t experienced it, your friends or family members probably have. If your tutor allows personal input, explore real-life experiences with bullying. Note the effects, preventive measures that worked or didn’t work, and what a person used to cope with bullying. If personal input is not allowed, you could ask your friends or relatives for ideas and then find high-quality sources that discuss similar problems.
• If you can, be creative about it! A powerful bullying essay example draws from a variety of sources to present material in a creative way and engage readers. Hence, this might be an excellent opportunity for you to include images or graphs in your paper. For example, anti-bullying posters could complement the sections of your work that talks about solutions to the problem. Quotes about bullying coming from famous persons would also be influential, especially if you include them at the beginning of your piece. If you like drawing or painting, you could try to put some of your ideas in graphic form – this will definitely earn you some extra marks! Just make sure to check with your tutor to see whether or not creative input is allowed.
• Structure your paper well to avoid gaps or inconsistencies. It would be beneficial to create a detailed bullying essay outline before you start working. A typical essay should include an introduction, two to three main paragraphs, and a conclusion. The first paragraph of your work should consist of some background information, whereas the last one should restate the points and close up the paper. A good bullying essay introduction should also feature a thesis statement that shows what the piece is about.

These tips will help you to write top-notch essays on bullying, as well as on related subjects. Don’t forget to browse our blog some more to find other helpful materials, including essay titles!

• The Problem of Bullying and Possible Solutions In general, bullying is a critical and complex issue prevailing among children; thus, it is essential to adopt different solutions to tackle it.
• Cyber Bullying Issue Therefore, the goal of this paper is to analyse who the victims of cyber bullying are and the influence it has on them.
• Bullying and Its Effects in Society Secondary research is critical in the development of a background to the research, which helps in determining the validity of the problem and suggested research methodologies.
• Social Influence on Bullying in Schools The theory helps us to understand why the stronger members of the school population are likely to “rule” over the weaker members of the school as described in the social hierarchy concept in the theory.
• Bullying and Child Development Bullying is one of the common vices in schools that influences a lot of growth and development of children. Bullying also affects the ability of children to concentrate in school because they are always on […]
• School Bullying and Moral Development The middle childhood is marked by the development of basic literacy skills and understanding of other people’s behavior that would be crucial in creating effective later social cognitions. Therefore, addressing bullying in schools requires strategies […]
• Workplace Bullying and Its Impact on People and Society The paper follows a traditional structure with the introduction and body paragraphs that provide essential information devoted to the problem, and improve the understanding of the concept of bullying.
• The Impact of Workplace Bullying The negative impacts of bullying in the workplace develop as a result of ignorance among employees regarding the vice, unreported cases, as well as the negligence of organizational leaders.
• Bullying on Social Media Platforms It is consistent and repeating, taking advantage of the Internet’s anonymity with the main goal to anger, scare, or shame a victim.
• Cyber Bullying and Positivist Theory of Crime Learning theory approaches to the explanation of criminal behavior have been associated with one of the major sociological theories of crime, the differential association theory.
• Is Cyber Bullying Against Teenagers More Detrimental Than Face-To-Face Bullying? Social networking has also contributed greatly to the issue of cyber bullying especially in making it more harmful as compared to face-to-face bullying.
• Verbal Bullying at School: How It Should Be Stopped This paper highlights some of the best practices that can be used by teachers in order to address this problem. So, this information can be of great benefit to them.
• Moral Development and Bullying in Children The understanding of moral development following the theories of Kohlberg and Gilligan can provide useful solutions to eliminating bullying in American schools.
• Cyber-Bullying Is a Crime: Discussion It is easy to see the effects of cyber-bullying but it is hard to find out who is the bully making it hard for authorities to pin the blame on the perpetrator of a crime […]
• Nature of Bullying In this paper, central focus is going to be on the nature of bullying of children in my hometown, Orlando Florida, how it can be solved, and most importantly; establishing the importance of having knowledge […]
• Workplace Bullying and Its Impact on Performance Workplace bullying refers to a deliberate, repeated, and continuous mistreatment of a worker or a group of workers by one or more colleagues in the workplace.
• Bullying and Cyberbullying in Modern Society Cyberbullying among adolescents and teenagers is defined as the purposeful and repetitive harm done by one or more peers in cyberspace as a result of using digital devices and social media platforms.
• Cyber Bullying Prevention in Learning Institutions: Systematic Approach To start with, the students are provided with ways of reporting their concern to the educational institution, and when the staff members of the institution receive the report, they evaluate the information together with the […]
• School Bullying: Methods for Managing the Problem The investigation of relevant studies on the methods for stopping school bullying reveals that the most effective ways of eliminating this type of behavior include providing training for teachers, encouraging students to participate in the […]
• Problem of Childhood Bullying in Modern Society To begin with, the family which is the basic and the most important unit in the society as well as the primary socializing agent plays a major role in shaping behavior of children include bullying.
• School Bullying: Causes and Police Prevention It is for this reason that there has been need for the intervention of the community and the government to address the issue of bullying schools lest the school environment becomes the worst place to […]
• The Effects of Cyber-Bullying and Cyber-Stalking on the Society In particular, one should focus on such issues as the disrespect for a person’s autonomy, the growing intensity of domestic violence and deteriorating mental health in the country.
• Behaviour Management: Bullying The typical behaviors which I saw in the child who got bullied are: The victim of this bullying is physically weak and a soft-natured one.
• Social Psychological Concepts of Bullying and Its Types Some of the factors that contribute to bullying include poor parenting, economic challenges, lack of mentorship, and jealousy among others. One of the main concepts used to explain bullying is that of parenting roles and […]
• Bullying in the Schools Furthermore, the law states that training should be done to the teachers as well as the other members of staff on how to deal with bullying and the law also needs the schools to report […]
• Bullying Through Social Media: Research Proposal The hypothesis of the study is as follows: the role of adolescents in a cyberbullying situation is interconnected with their psychological characteristics.
• The Issue of Bullying in the Schools It gives me joy to know that the issue of bullying is now a pubic affair since bullying stories were unheard of when I was growing up.
• The ABC Model of Crisis: Bullying at School The next step is the identification of the nature of the crisis, and thus questions are as follows: Who is bullying you?
• Fights and Bullying Among Middle School Learners Alongside the positivist philosophy, the research adopted the survey strategy that involved the use of self-administered questionnaires to collect from the participants.
• Bullying in School Face-to-face bullying is an interesting area of study because it clearly demonstrates bullying in school. Students consider bullying as a school culture even though it is contrary to the school rules and regulations of schools.
• Bullying: Violence in Children and Adolescents Bullying is one of the most common manifestations of peer violence in children and adolescents. Prevention of bullying, cyberbullying included, has to occur in accordance with the IBSE Standards of social and emotional learning.
• Bullying, Its Forms, and Counteractions In addition, it is necessary to support those at the center of this bullying, as this can protect them from harmful effects and consequences.
• Incivility, Violence, and Bullying in the Healthcare Workplace The following step is to gather the team and communicate the necessity of change, assigning some individuals for the positions related to the change, in other terms, a support team.
• Effective Ways to Deal With Bullying in US Schools Teachers should ensure the bully is aware of the improper behavior, why it is improper, and the repercussions of the behavior.
• Network Bullying: School Policy Framework The first step is to have a careful conversation with the student and an assessment by the school psychologist to ensure that there is a fright.
• How to Reduce Bullying in Senior Facilities One of the main reasons an individual may commit suicide due to bullying is because it may make an individual develop a negative self-image after the bullying incident. Some of the major bullying incidences that […]
• Active Shooter and Nursing Bullying Nurses should lock all doors and use tables and other objects to reinforce them to prevent any possibility of the active shooter getting to the patients’ room.
• Racist Bullying Among Black Students in US Universities This research focuses on the impact of bullying and racism among African American students in the country. What are the impacts of bullying and racism among Black students in U.S.universities?
• Bullying and Autism Spectrum Disorder In fact, bullying as a social phenomenon can be characterized as a social and interaction issue; therefore, it is possible to analyze the connection between autism and acts of bullying and inappropriate behavior.
• Eliminating the Problem of Online Bullying Eliminating the problem of online bullying is vital for improving the mental health of adolescents and young adults and allowing them to build their lives free of adverse external influences. It is possible to see […]
• Sexual Bullying in Schools and Its Influence The author states the difference in the mental and physical maturation of girls and boys as one of the core roots of the issue.
• Bullying and Harassment in the Healthcare Workplace This paper is written to explore the origins of discrimination and harassment in the healthcare workplace. Bullying begins early in medical college and residencies; it has been referred to as an element of the learning […]
• Queer (LGBT) Teenage Bullying at School The importance of this source to the research is associated with the significant role that youth organizations have to play towards minimizing bullying among LGBT students.
• Bullying of Children: Misconceptions and Preventive Measures As a result, the density of shows and articles devoted to bullying creates an illusion that this event appears more often than it does in reality.
• Bullying Behavior and Impact of Hegemonic Masculinity Rosen and Nofziger applied a quantitative research design to explore the relationships between students’ bullying experiences and race, age, and socioeconomic status and identify the frequency of bullying.
• Bullying and Incivility in Clinical Setting The problem of bullying and incivility in a clinical setting can negatively affect the quality of care provided, so it needs to be managed.
• Bullying and Its Influences on a Person It is common for victims of bullying to develop mental health issues, as they were placed in stressful situations and had a constant fear along with depression in some cases. Making friends is one of […]
• “Bullying in Schools”: The Aspects of Bullying In their article, Menesini and Salmivalli examine the current state of knowledge on the topic and thoroughly discuss all of the aspects of bullying.
• Analysis of Bullying and Parenting Style Since the given topic usually refers to children and adolescents, it is evident that their parents hold a portion of responsibility because the adults affect the growth and development of young individuals.
• Hate Crimes – Bullying More than two-thirds of children and adolescents experience bullying and more than one-fourth of them report extreme forms of coercion.
• Bullying Management: Mass Awareness Program Bulletin.”Teachers, trained to help to rebuild trust, confidence, growth, and commitment through mass awareness to arrest bullying in high schools”. The proposed mass action program is meant to promote awareness on the need to stop […]
• An Anti-Bullying Program Integrated With PRAISE by Ackerman I chose to describe bullying because of the importance of the topic and due to my personal interest in it. Education will eliminate most of the reasons for bullying and provide students with the E […]
• Bullying Through Social Media: Methods An Informed Consent Document will be provided to participants prior to the research, explaining the purpose of the study and promising to protect their identity.
• Bullying Through Social Media In particular, inequality in the position of the persecutor and the victim is evident – the aggressor can be anonymous, and there can be many of them.
• Bullying of Nurses During the COVID-19 Pandemic Then, the principles of adult learning will be used to develop and implement an information product to improve the nursing workforce’s bullying awareness and the knowledge of healthy conflict resolution in the workplace.
• Bullying in Healthcare Organizations: Impact on Nursing Practice Bullying in business entities is a common phenomenon, but the extent of its influence on the “production process” in healthcare and medicine institutions is only beginning to be recognized.
• Workplace Bullying Among Nurses in the Acute Setting Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the frequency of conflicts between nurses and their colleagues and managers has increased significantly in my workplace.
• Bullying Perpetration Among School-Aged Children Mucherah et al.examined how the school climate and teachers’ sanctions against bullying relate to the risk of becoming a victim or perpetrator of bullying.
• Programming for a Year 5 Class on Bullying As a result, in Lesson 6, they will offer their project addressing bullying behaviour and present it to their class, which is the main aim of the Unit Plan.
• Injury and Violence Prevention: – Bullying The aim of preventing injury and violence from bullying is to enable the student to have a healthy social and physical life that will enable them to perform well in their studies and live healthily.
• Cyber-Bullying vs. Traditional Bullying: Its Psychological Effects The researchers presented the recent statistics in order to illustrate the negative social and psychological effects of cyber-bullying in contrast to the traditional bullying in schools.
• Bullying in the Workplace Old Nurse to New Nurse This unvoiced scourge in nursing is characteristically encouraged by the need of bullies to have a total control of a person. Resignation of nurses due to bullying can lead to shortage of nurses in hospitals.
• Bullying and Peer Abuse Especially at work, targets fear coming to work and this will have an adverse result in the efficiency of the staff in the hospital.
• Bullying in the Nursing Workplace Bullying in the nursing workplace, in this case, causes the one bullied to have a feeling of defenselessness and takes away the nurses’ right to dignity at his or her workplace.
• Cyberbullying and Bullying: Similarities While deciding on fitting and balanced sanctions, it is vital to reflect on the ways in which cyberbullying events differ in effect in comparison to other forms of bullying.
• Protection From Bullying: Methods That Work Because of this, it is vital that parents, teachers, and guardians educate themselves on the nature of bullying and work together to develop effective methods and strategies that would help to overcome the problem.
• Psychology: Social Media and Bullying The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of social media and bullying and express the author’s opinion on the matter.
• “Bullying Behavior Among Radiation Therapists” by Johnson and Trad The literature review encompassed a considerable number of sources pertinent to the study and recent enough to be relevant; all the publications were dated within the last fifteen years.
• Human Rights Issues in Australia: Bullying Among School-Going Age and Young People The focus of the topic of the day is on bullying. It is used to prevent or avoid the occurrence of a bullying experience.
• Bullying and Worker’s Harassment in Western Australia In most of the armed services in Australia, new recruits and women are commonly the victims of bullying and harassment despite the fact that it is unacceptable.
• Aggression and Bullying in the Workplace Investigation Aggression, the effects of which are often equated with the death wish, is an instinct like any other and in natural conditions, it helps just as much as any other to ensure the survival of […]
• Bullying: History and Mechanisms for Prevention Students are encouraged to not participate in bullying and to help prevent bullying of others through positive social reactions to incidences of bullying” and Sharing of Scenarios: “Each group will give feedback and share other […]
• Conflict Resolution Tactics and Bullying This study is interesting to the extent that it shows how the social environment impacts the development of a child and how it shapes his or her conflict resolution techniques.
• School Bullying: Case Analysis Even today there is no generally accepted definition of bullying but it is thought that when an individual is for a long period of time is exposed to repeat negative actions and behavior by one […]
• Bullying in the Workplace as a Psychological Harassment Another form of bullying in the workplace is physical assault in the sense that if the workers are not at ease with each other and when the rules and regulations are not at all observed, […]
• “Adolescents’ Perception of Bullying” by Frisen et al. The second and the third aims of the study were “to describe how adolescents perceive bullies” and “to describe what adolescents believe to be important in order to stop bullying”, respectively.
• The Long Term Effects of Bullying in Elementary School Wolke and Lereya argue that the problem is that the majority of studies on bullying are cross-sectional and only use follow-ups after a short period of time.
• Anti-Bullying and Work Quality Improvement Initiative Given the specifics of the work of nurses, conflicts of this kind negatively affect both the whole process of work and the health of patients in particular.
• Workplace Bullying, Salivary Cortisol and Long-Term Sickness Absence The purpose of this cohort-based study was to investigate the extent to which cortisol levels were associated with sickness absence and the relationships between workplace bullying and sickness absence through the prism of cortisol use.
• Workplace Bullying in Australia It is possible to offer several recommendations that can reduce the risk of bullying in organisations. In this case, more attention should be paid to the absence of mechanisms that can protect the victims of […]
• Domestic Violence and Bullying in Schools It also states the major variables related to bullying in schools. They will confirm that social-economic status, gender, and race can contribute to bullying in schools.
• Staff Training as a Solution to Workplace Bullying Furthermore, it has an appeal to logos as the writer has facts about the prevalence of workplace bullying in the USA.
• The “Bully-Free” Initiative: Bullying in Education The students need to have a clear idea that bullying goes against the rules of the school and which actions may be considered bullying.
• Free Speech vs. Bullying Laws One of the topical aspects of modern democracy is the freedom of speech expressed in an ability to come up with personal ideas and the lack of restrictions on the right of expression through publicity.
• Gender and Bullying Issues in Nursing A lack of tolerance for workplace harassment and bullying is likely to lead to the deterioration of the situation and further misunderstanding and tension in an organization.
• Bullying and Cyberbullying Among Peers They are facing the dilemma of how to react, whether they have to fight a superior force of the enemy or to complain to teachers and parents, undermining their reputation.
• Bullying in Schools and Its Major Reasons As of now, the most important goal in research studies covering the topic of bullying in schools is to understand the mechanisms behind bullying promotion and prevention.
• Bullying in Schools: Worldwide Study and Survey The parents were asked to rate the frequency of the bullying that their children experience and to describe the experience of bullying that their children went through.
• Bullying Prevention Programs Some teachers and professors claim that their students cannot show their potential in their hobbies due to the limitations they experience because of bullies around them. As it is mentioned above, educators do not control […]
• Bullying and Its Impact Thus, the current paper is dedicated to the issue of bullying and its effects as well as anti-bullying practices as related to peer victimization.
• Dealing With Workplace Bullying According to the report presented by the University of Louisville, workplace bullying is a repeated action of one employee or a group of employees towards another individual or group. Dealing with bullying in the workplace […]
• Bullying Policies in Walton School District and Georgia University The sample bullying policy language in Walton School District is very similar to the language in the policy of the University of Georgia.
• Amanda Todd’s Bullying and Suicide Story She was fifteen years old, and her story created a major uproar in the press, as it showed the true nature of bullying and the effects it has on the person.
• Bullying in America: Causes and Prevention That is why it is important to pay attention to the reasons why bullying occurs and ways in which it can be reduced.
• Bullying, Facts and Countermeasures Whether it is the bully or the bullied, the parents will need to do a lot to see to it that their children are brought up in the best of the behaviors.
• Bullying as Social and Criminal Deviance The most important step in the student’s guide to research that I would need to analyze bullying is defining the topic.
• Bullying and Legislation in Australian Workplace According to the authors of the article, workplace bullying can be characterized as internal violence. According to the authors of the article, bullying is a widespread phenomenon and is a common attribute of many organizations.
• Bullying at Australian School: Causes and Solution The technological breakthrough that was witnessed in the late 90s and the early 2000s also contributed to the development of the phenomenon, sparking the concepts such as cyberbullying and online bullying.
• Workplace Bullying in The Playground Never Ends The primary reason for becoming a bully is primarily seen in fear to lose authority or formal positions in an organization and have more institutional power than that of the targets.
• Bullying and Suicide in High Schools The main limitation of this research is that the scholars surveyed the victims more often. The victims of cyberbullying also had a tendency to be depressed and contemplate suicide.
• School-Aged Children’ Bullying Behaviors It is due to this that the work of Janssen et al.sought to show just how potentially damaging this behavior could be and the potential psychological repercussions it could have on young children due to […]
• College Students: Suicide and Bullying-Methods The analysts used this tool to report the mood of the participants by posting quizzes, which the students answered while filling the questionnaire.
• Childhood Bullying and Adulthood Suicide Connection In this regard, the seriousness of the issue is depicted in research results that indicate that at least 50% of children and youth in the US have experienced bullying situations as either bullies or victims […]
• Girl-To-Girl Bullying and Mean Stinks Program The positive results can be achieved by the implementation of the multiple educational programs, the increase in public awareness, and promotion of the values of the healthy relationships.”Mean Stinks” is exactly the program with the […]
• Association of Parenting Factors With Bullying The lack of the parental support is the main cause of students’ deviant behaviors at school, including the cases of bullying, and those parents who pay much attention to developing their career cannot provide the […]
• The Problem of Workplace Bullying In particular, this paper will include the discussion of the research articles, reports and case studies that describe the causes of workplace bullying and the strategies used by companies in an effort to overcome it.
• College Students: Suicide and Bullying The misconception that bullying is a minor issue among college students has contributed to the high number of students who suffer because of bullying.
• Homosexual Students and Bullying Specifically, the section addresses the prevalence of bullying in schools and the level of bullying in bisexuals, gay males, and lesbians.
• Social Psychology of Violence and Bullying in Schools Bullying is a common phenomenon in schools and it is reported that it results in violence in learning institutions in the end.
• Bullying and Suicide: The Correlation Between Bullying and Suicide Nonetheless, the extensive research shows that the correlation exists and bullying is one of the risk factors for development of suicidal ideas in adolescents.
• Cyber Bullying Reduction Program Table of Activities Activity Significance Assembling parents/guardians, students and teachers to announce and explain the program in the institution To enlighten parents/guardians, students and teachers about the rules and regulation enacted due to the threat […]
• Discouraging and Eliminating Cyber Bullying Resources Role of the resource/input Statement forms To facilitate information transfer to the staff Counseling Personnel To arm students against the problem Bullying report system To create efficient internet enhance report system Regulation implementation documents […]
• High School Bullying Effective Responses Emphasis will also be made on the kind of audience to read this article because the contents of this study need to be at par with other similar articles in the journal to be selected.
• Bullying and Suicide Among Teenagers Specific objectives Analyze the causes of bullying among teenagers in the country Analyze the effects of bullying among victims, perpetrators and by-standers Analyze the relationship between bullying in school and suicide among teenagers in the […]
• Bullying as a Relational Aggression This resistance has been one of the obstacles to eliminating the cyber bullying in the schools. Schools and districts have been involved in the Challenge Day activities where children are advised on how to handle […]
• Bullying in the Workplace Organizational leaders have an ethical obligation to ensure that they deal with cases of bullying within the workplace in a professional manner that demonstrates equality, honesty, and high sensitivity to the needs of others.
• Social Bullying in Jeff Cohen’s “Monster Culture” It is clear that his part of character is mostly dominant in the childhood stages, as children are not able to develop a sense of morality and predict the consequences of their actions.
• Cyber Bullying and Its Forms The difference between the conventional way of bullying and cyber bullying is that in conventional bullying, there is contact between the bully and the victim.
• Problem of Workplace Bullying Authority intervention should occur when the employees fail to respond to awareness intervention, and thus decide to continue with their behaviors.
• Problem of the Managing Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace Employees in an organization have a specific role that they are supposed to play and this means that there might be shortcomings which should not lead to bullying.
• Cyber Bullying as a Virtual Menace The use of information and communication technologies to support a deliberate and most of the time repeated hostile behavior by an individual or groups of people with the sole intention of harming others, one is […]
• Does Bullying Cause Emotional Problems? However, the current study was relevant because of this design, for the scope of the study covered as well as the results were accurate, and the conclusions drawn were correct.
• Ban High School Bullying A number of stakeholders contribute to the high prevalence of bullying in American schools. Schools that ignore bullying are a big part of the problem and they need to be held accountable.
• The Problem of Bullying While most states in the United States of America have laws to protect people from bullying, the federal government is yet to enact an anti-bullying law.
• Ethical Case: Facebook Gossip or Cyberbullying? The best option to Paige is to apologize publicly and withdraw her comments. The final stage is to act and reflect the outcome of the choice made.
• Bullying on the Rise: Should Federal Government Enact Federal-Bullying Laws? This paper will thus use both primary and secondary data to discuss the prevalence of bullying in schools and whether the federal govern should enact federal laws to curb the social vice at school.
• Character Traits of Bullying Despite the fact that such characteristics may differ from child to child, it is the common feature of difference that makes the target children get noticed by the bullies.
• Troubled Adolescent due to Bullying His lowered self-esteem would make him to observe the common behaviours of the older boys quietly and accept the situation as a cultural practice.
• Workplace bullying: does it exist?
• What are the three key elements of bullying?
• How does bullying affect those who observe it?
• Direct and indirect bullying: what is the difference?
• What families do bullies typically come from?
• Aggressive children: what is their future?
• How to prevent bullying in schools?
• School bullying and domestic violence: is there a connection?
• Cyberbullying: how to prevent it?
• What can parents do to prevent their children from bullying?
• Children’s Rights Research Ideas
• Equality Topics
• Homophobia Topics
• School Violence Ideas
• Respect Essay Topics
• Social Inequality Paper Topics
• Suicide Topics
• Youth Violence Research Topics
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• Chicago (N-B)

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Bullying Prevention in Adolescence: Solutions and New Challenges from the Past Decade

Christina salmivalli.

1 University of Turku

Lydia Laninga‐Wijnen

Sarah t. malamut.

2 Radboud University

Claire F. Garandeau

Bullying among youth at school continues to be a global challenge. Being exposed to bullying may be especially hurtful in adolescence, a vulnerable period during which both peer group belonging and status become key concerns. In the current review, we first summarize the effectiveness of the solutions that were offered a decade ago in the form of anti‐bullying programs. We proceed by highlighting some intriguing challenges concomitant to, or emerging from these solutions, focusing especially on their relevance during adolescence. These challenges are related to (1) the relatively weak, and highly variable effects of anti‐bullying programs, (2) the complex associations among bullying, victimization, and social status, (3) the questions raised regarding the beneficial (or possibly iatrogenic) effects of peer defending, and (4) the healthy context paradox , that is, the phenomenon of remaining or emerging victims being worse off in contexts where the average levels of victimization decrease. We end by providing some suggestions for the next decade of research in the area of bullying prevention among adolescents.

Bullying is a pervasive global problem that has attracted researchers’ attention for five decades. It is typically defined as repeated, intentional hurting of a person who is weaker or less powerful than the perpetrator(s) (e.g., Olweus, 1978 ; Salmivalli & Peets, 2018 ). Bullying can be direct, such as physical or verbal attacks, indirect (also referred to as relational bullying), such as social exclusion and rumor‐spreading, or it can happen online.

Although systematic bullying of selected peers already exists at a young age (e.g., Perren & Alsaker, 2006 ), adolescence is a period when the importance of peers—in terms of both belonging and prominence in the peer group—is pronounced (LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010 ; Newman & Newman, 2001 ). It is also a period of elevated risk for the onset of anxiety and depression, and peer victimization is predictive of both (Stapinski, Araya, Heron, Montgomery, & Stallard, 2015 ). Being bullied affects the development of personal identity as well (van Hoof, Raaijmakers, van Beek, Hale, & Aleva, 2008 )—a key developmental task of adolescence. Victimization can be even directed at one’s (ethnic, sexual, etc.) identity: bias‐based bullying targeted at youth with marginalized identities is common (Galán, Stokes, Szoko, Abebe, & Culyba, 2021 ). Peer‐victimized adolescents have often experienced victimization for a long time (Troop‐Gordon, 2017 ), are less likely than younger children to tell adults about it (Blomqvist, Saarento, & Salmivalli, 2020 ), and have little trust in adults’ capability to help solve the problem (Elledge et al., 2013 ). Aggressors tend to become more popular (Cillessen & Borch, 2006 ; Cillessen & Mayeux, 2004 ) and peer group norms are increasingly approving of bullying (Salmivalli & Voeten, 2004 ) in (pre)adolescence. Peer‐victimized adolescents’ plight certainly deserves attention.

The present review focuses on bullying and victimization among (pre)adolescents in the school context , with an eye to prevention and intervention . Rather than systematically reviewing research from the past decade and ending with implications for interventions, we start the current paper with a summary of the effectiveness of the solutions that were offered a decade ago (i.e., implementing school‐based anti‐bullying programs) and then selectively focus on a few timely topics that represent either enduring challenges in the field of bullying prevention, or new challenges raised by the solutions that have been developed and implemented. Although research on cyberbullying has grown exponentially, we chose to exclude it from the current review, due to the massive amount of research and reviews recently published on the topic (including a “mapping review of systematic reviews” (Kwan et al., 2020 ). Also, aggression and victimization in the romantic/dating context (Wincentak, Connolly, & Card, 2017 ) are beyond the scope of the present article. Finally, the decade ended with the covid‐19 pandemic, which affected many aspects of adolescents’ lives, including schooling and social contacts overall. This bears consequences for peer relations, including bullying and victimization. Studies have only started to emerge around this topic, and it is not the time to review them, yet.

The decade started with (at least modest) optimism regarding bullying prevention, which was soon mitigated by findings showing that not all youth benefited from school‐based prevention and intervention. First, adolescents , in particular , did not respond to interventions in the hoped‐for manner . Second, interventions continue to face challenges in reducing bullying in part related to the associations among bullying perpetration , victimization , and peer status that are not fully understood. Third, some interventions were based on elements involving unforeseen complexities; in our review, we ask whether peer defending , an important component of many anti‐bullying programs , might have some iatrogenic effects —either for the defenders themselves or for the victimized students they defend. Fourth, we review evidence regarding the healthy context paradox : even in the context of successful interventions, youth who remain victimized (or become new victims) might be even worse off than victimized students in contexts where the overall level of victimization remains high.

Our review concerns bullying prevention, rather than the prevention of aggression in general. When we refer to studies that looked at aggression more generally, we explicitly say this.

PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION

With respect to bullying prevention, the past decade started with good news. The largest‐so‐far meta‐analysis on the effects of school‐based anti‐bullying programs was published (Ttofi & Farrington, 2011 ; based on Farrington & Ttofi, 2009 ) and concluded that such programs are, on average, effective. The programs led to significant average reductions in the proportion of students who were bullied, as well as those bullying others. Other reviews and meta‐analyses echoed this finding (Fraguas et al., 2021 ; Jimenes‐Barbero, Ruiz‐Hernández, Llor‐Zaragoza, Pérez‐García, & Llor‐Esteban, 2016 ; Lee, Kim, & Kim, 2015 ; Ng, Chua, & Shorey, 2020 ). Some of them included—in addition to the prevalence of perpetrators and victimized youth—outcomes such as attitudes about bullying, school climate, and mental health problems (Fraguas et al., 2021 ; Jimenez‐Barbero et al., 2016 ) or bystander intervention (Polanin, Espelage, & Pigott, 2012 ). The positive effects were welcome, as previous reviews (Ferguson et al. 2007 ; Merrell, Gueldner, Ross, & Isava, 2008 ) had made more pessimistic conclusions regarding the effectiveness of anti‐bullying programs.

The good news were, however, accompanied with bad news: the average effects were disappointingly modest and there was large variation in effects across studies and programs. Both conclusions are still valid today. The updated meta‐analysis by Gaffney, Ttofi, and Farrington ( 2019 ), now including 100 program evaluations—almost twice as much as in the original work by Farrington and Ttofi—showed that the average reduction in the prevalence of bullying perpetrators and victims was 19–20% and 15–16%, respectively. These prevalence changes are slightly smaller than the ones reported 10 years earlier (20–23% and 17–20% for bullying and victimization, respectively). For adolescents, the conclusions might be even more pessimistic.

Effects of School‐Based Prevention and Intervention among Adolescents

An important debate from the past decade concerned the effects of anti‐bullying programs on adolescents versus younger children. Based on theoretical considerations and empirical findings, Smith ( 2010 ) argued that adolescents are more difficult to influence with school‐based interventions. More evidence was emerging; for instance, the KiVa anti‐bullying program was evaluated in all grade levels in Finnish elementary and middle schools (age range of 7–15 years), not only once but twice: in a massive randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving almost 30 000 students (Kärnä et al., 2013 ; Kärnä, Voeten, Little, Poskiparta, Kaljonen, et al., 2011 ) and during the first year of nationwide implementation using a cohort‐longitudinal design (Kärnä, Voeten, Little, Poskiparta, Alanen, et al., 2011 ). The findings consistently showed the weakest effects among 13‐ to 15‐year‐old middle school students.

In light of the above, it was somewhat surprising that the first Ttofi and Farrington meta‐analysis (2011) found larger effects among older (>11 years) students, suggesting that programs work better among adolescents than among younger children. The age effect found in another meta‐analysis, including only RCTs (Jiménez‐Barbero et al., 2016 ) was opposite to that of Ttofi and Farrington ( 2011 ): the interventions had a significantly greater impact on bullying perpetration among children younger than 10   years .

Yeager, Fong, Lee, and Espelage ( 2015 ) pointed out that previous analyses comparing program effects across age groups were all between‐study (and thus, between‐program) tests of moderation. A more correct strategy would be to analyze within‐study moderation of efficacy by age (comparing the effects of the same programs in various age groups) to estimate age trends in responsiveness to interventions. Their multilevel meta‐analysis using this approach showed that bullying behavior was effectively reduced in youth younger than 14 years, after which the effect sizes dropped sharply.

Besides testing the effects of school‐based multi‐component programs, some studies looked specifically into indicated interventions targeting students who had been directly involved in bullying (i.e., teachers or other school adults addressing the bullying case by discussions with students). The first study comparing the effects of such discussions across school levels (Garandeau, Poskiparta, & Salmivalli, 2014 ) found them equally effective in elementary and middle schools and across different forms of bullying. In this study, however, success (whether bullying had stopped) was reported to school adults in a follow‐up discussion 2 weeks after the intervention. Based on a large data set collected with anonymous annual questionnaires over6 years in more than 1,200 schools implementing the KiVa program in Finland, Johander, Turunen, Garandeau, and Salmivalli ( 2020 ) found that the success rate of intervention discussions—a component of the program—was higher in elementary school grades (students with 10–12 years of age) than in middle schools (students with 13–15 years of age). This effect was consistently present, whether success was reported by the teachers doing the intervention or the students who had been victimized. Another study (E. Johander, T. Turunen, J. Trach, C. Garandeau & C. Salmivalli, unpublished data) found that being in a higher grade did in and of itself make it less likely that bullying stopped after an intervention, regardless of how long it had lasted. This time, the finding was confirmed by both victim and perpetrator reports.

Program Components Contributing to Effects: “What Works?”

In the past 10 years, researchers started to pay attention to disentangling the “effective ingredients” of anti‐bullying programs from less effective (or even iatrogenic) ones. Ttofi and Farrington ( 2009 ) took an important first step in this direction. They coded the whole‐school anti‐bullying programs involved in their meta‐analysis with respect to whether or not they included 20 components, and investigated the association between program effects and the presence of each component. These efforts were followed by other meta‐analyses focusing on effective components (Huang et al., 2019 ; Jimenez‐Narbero et al., 2016 ; Ng et al., 2020 ).

The most recent work in this area, also including the largest number of studies, is the updated meta‐analysis by Gaffney, Ttofi, and Farrington ( 2021 ). The findings indicated that two components were effective in reducing the prevalence of bullying as well as victimization: information provided for parents, and informal peer involvement. In addition, several components were effective in reducing bullying perpetration only: whole‐school approach, anti‐bullying policies, classroom rules, and work with victims. There was no association between the effectiveness of a program and the number of intervention components included in it, contrary to what was found in the 2011 analysis.

With respect to the role of parental involvement, Gaffney et al. ( 2021 ) concluded that providing information for parents is more effective than involving parents in meetings and discussions. However, another recent meta‐analysis by Huang et al. ( 2019 ) synthesized evidence regarding the effects of bullying prevention programs involving a parental component (e.g., information meetings, workshops for parents, or communication sent home). They found that these programs were overall effective in reducing bullying and victimization, and their effects were not moderated neither by the degree of parental involvement nor by school level. It is worth noting that the programs included many other components besides parental involvement, and the authors did not compare the effects with those of programs not involving parents (as in Gaffney et al., 2021 ).

“Work with peers”, which had originally been found counterproductive (Ttofi & Farrington, 2011 ), was in the more recent analysis by Gaffney et al. ( 2021 ) divided into three components which were coded as present or absent in the programs. These were “informal peer involvement” (small group or whole‐class discussions and activities related to bullying experiences and attitudes, thus targeting bystanders indirectly rather than directly), “formal peer involvement” (such as peer‐led anti‐bullying activities, peer‐mentoring schemes, or training students to provide active support to participants experiencing bullying), and “encouraging bystanders”. The findings now suggested that informal peer involvement was the only of the three components that contributed significantly to reductions in both bullying perpetration and victimization. It is not completely clear, however, when a component was coded as “informal peer involvement” versus “encouraging bystanders”. The names of the categories may be misleading, as many anti‐bullying programs aim at mobilizing bystanders to behave constructively when witnessing bullying (not reinforcing bullying but rather supporting the peers who are victimized) exactly by whole‐class discussions and activities around this topic, that is, through informal peer involvement.

It is not surprising that the findings of the 2011 and 2021 meta‐analyses were somewhat different; the more recent one included a theoretically better justified, more precise coding and a substantially larger number of studies. The differences in results, as well as discrepancies in the findings from other meta‐analytic studies (e.g., Huang et al., 2019 ; Jimenez‐Narbero et al., 2016 ; Ng et al., 2020 ) show, however, that the search for the most effective components is still at an early stage and clear policy implications may not yet be warranted.

Overall, although analyses on effective components are an important step toward understanding “what works”, it involves several pitfalls. First, analyses are correlational, and thus inferring causality is a stretch. Experimental work testing the effects of different components is needed, but also very costly. Second, researchers are coding components that are included in program manuals, rather than components that were actually implemented by schools. Some components may not have been implemented at all, or perhaps were being implemented in rare cases (e.g., “disciplinary methods” targeted at very few identified bullies; anti‐bullying lessons delivered in a limited number of classrooms) or implemented differently than recommended (Johander et al., 2020 ). Third, some components may only work, or work better, in the presence of other component(s), and the examination of unique contributions of components might hide such interactive effects. Fourth, and most relevant for the present article, findings regarding the components associated with larger effect sizes may radically change when the effects of different components are examined in various subgroups, for instance, young children versus adolescent samples.

Altogether different strategies might be needed when preventing and intervening in bullying among adolescents, as compared with younger children. For instance, bullying is likely to be increasingly driven by the need to gain or demonstrate peer status in adolescence; yet, many prevention programs focus on factors, such as social‐emotional learning or theory of mind skills, which may not play a major role in bullying during this developmental period (Yeager et al., 2015 ). In addition, the effects of parental and peer involvement in bullying prevention might well be age specific. It is conceivable that while parental involvement is a key in early and middle childhood, involvement of peers turns out more effective among adolescents, due to the role of peer bystanders in bullying (Pouwels, Lansu, & Cillessen, 2016 ), adolescents’ heightened sensitivity to peer feedback (Albert, Chein, & Steinberg, 2013 ), as well as their tendency to mimic the aggressive behavior of their popular peers (Juvonen & Ho, 2008 ). So far, effective components have not been studied separately in different age groups, and the decisions regarding relevant components to include have not been developmentally informed.

What (Might) Work Among Adolescents

Thus far, most of the available evidence seems to support the view that adolescents are less responsive to school‐based interventions (whether preventive programs as a whole or their specific, targeted components) than younger students. There are both developmental and contextual factors that might explain this trend.

Developmental changes include puberty‐related hormonal changes and maturation of the brain. Increased testosterone levels, for instance, have been associated with a higher activation of the neural systems regulating reward and social motivation (Murray‐Close, 2012 ). Brain areas processing emotional experiences change more rapidly than those mediating cognitive regulation (Albert et al., 2013 ). All these changes may contribute to adolescents’ self‐focus, risk‐taking, and sensitivity to peer feedback, as well as to their status needs and socially dominant behaviors (Albert et al., 2013 ; Murray‐Close, 2012 ).

With respect to contextual changes, adolescents transfer from small elementary schools to larger middle schools. The transition involves re‐shuffling of the peer landscape, which may create increasing concerns about peer relationships and status. Although empirical evidence of the effect of middle school transition on bullying is mixed (Farmer, Hamm, Leung, Lambert, & Gravelle, 2011 ; Pellegrini, 2002 ; Pellegrini et al., 2010 ), and difficult to disentangle from developmental changes, the transition is often assumed to influence the prevalence as well as prevention of bullying. Besides changes in classroom compositions, friendships, and peer group dynamics, the transition brings along a more complex organizational structure and changing role of teachers (who may feel less responsible for anti‐bullying work in middle, as compared with elementary school)—such changes might make the implementation of anti‐bullying programs especially demanding.

Adolescence is also characterized by strains in relationships with adults, especially those in authority positions. Attempts to control youth’s behavior may, therefore, lead to psychological reactance against adult injunctions to think or behave in a certain way, leading even to behaviors opposite to the adult suggestions. Teacher‐led lessons or suggestions to change one’s behavior may indeed be counterproductive among adolescents. Yeager et al. ( 2015 ) suggest using autonomy‐supportive approaches and language, rather than direct injunctions (e.g., “you might” instead of “you should”). They provide an example from smoking prevention: campaigns directly telling youth they should not smoke are less effective than campaigns portraying tobacco companies as the “authority” seeking to manipulate adolescents, and non‐smoking youth as rebellious for standing up to them. Another example, also from smoking prevention, is the ASSIST program, where influential students are identified and trained to act as peer supporters during informal interactions, encouraging their peers not to smoke. The intervention successfully reduced the likelihood of being a smoker among 12‐ to 13‐year‐old adolescents.

The idea of avoiding adult‐imposed rules or injunctions to behave in certain ways has also been applied in the context of preventing conflict, violence, and bullying. One approach is to identify highly influential students who will generate solutions and initiatives, make these solutions visible to others, and take a public stance against problem behaviors (Paluck, Shepherd, & Aronow, 2016 ). Bowes et al. ( 2019 ) utilized students as change‐makers in their schools in the ROOTS Indonesia adolescent bullying intervention, where highly influential students led activities and sessions around themes, such as violence prevention and constructive bystander behaviors. The intervention also included a teacher‐training component. The program was considered feasible, but the effects on bullying and victimization were mixed.

Another example of mobilizing peers in bullying prevention is the Italian NoTrap! program, which has produced promising effects on both traditional and cyberbullying among 14‐ to 15‐year‐old adolescents (Palladino, Nocentini, & Menesini, 2016 ). After an adult‐led phase, trained peer educators lead both online and offline activities around empathy, problem‐solving, and bullying, including positive bystander behaviors. The Meaningful Roles intervention (Ellis, Volk, Gonzalez, & Embry, 2015 ), currently under evaluation in the Netherlands, acknowledges adolescents’ goals for status and attempts to work with, rather than against, such goals in preventing bullying. Students are assigned to roles in which they can fulfill their status goals in prosocial ways, taking social responsibility—this is expected to reduce bullying behaviors, as it provides youth with alternative ways of gaining status.

Moderators of Prevention Effects

Research on moderators of anti‐bullying program effects is scarce in adolescent samples. With respect to gender, a recent meta‐analysis suggested that anti‐bullying programs overall work slightly better among boys than among girls (Kennedy, 2020 ). Among adolescents in particular, there is some indication of stronger anti‐bullying program effects among boys, as well as in classrooms with a larger proportion of boys (Kärnä et al., 2013 ), but also studies that found no gender moderation of effects between (pre‐)adolescent boys and girls (Gradinger, Yanagida, Strohmeier, & Spiel, 2015 ; Palladino et al., 2016 ). Research on other moderators consists of single studies (mostly done in middle school/preadolescent samples) that await replication. They have looked, for instance, at environmental sensitivity (Nocentini, Menesini, & Pluess, 2018 ), temperament (Nocentini, Palladino, & Menesini, 2019 ), and popularity among peers (Garandeau, Poskiparta, et al., 2014 ).

Building on the frameworks of differential susceptibility and vantage sensitivity tested whether individual differences in environmental sensitivity moderated the effects of a bullying prevention program. The study was conducted in the context of a large (> 2000 fourth and sixth graders) RCT of the KiVa program in Italy. The findings provided some evidence that highly sensitive children (especially boys) benefited more from the intervention, showing larger decreases in victimization. In a sample of sixth graders (12‐year‐old early adolescents) from the same trial, Nocentini et al. ( 2019 ) examined whether temperament moderated the effects of the program on bullying perpetration and victimization. Both effortful control and negative emotionality moderated the effects of the KiVa program on bullying perpetration: effects were only seen among youth with high effortful control and those with low and medium levels of negative emotionality. Positive emotionality, on the other hand, strengthened the intervention effects on victimization.

Garandeau, Lee, and Salmivalli ( 2014 ) categorized 10‐ to 12‐year‐old preadolescents into three groups (low, moderate, and high) on the basis of their perceived popularity among classmates. They found that popularity moderated the effect of the KiVa program on students’ peer‐reported bullying behavior, such that intervention effects were only found among low‐ and medium‐popular, but not among the highly popular students. This finding might be particularly relevant among adolescents, as bullying is believed to be increasingly driven by status needs in this developmental period. Whereas the Meaningful Roles intervention described above assumes that popular students (or the ones aiming for high popularity) will decrease bullying when they gain popularity by other means (Ellis et al., 2015 ), the finding by Garandeau, Lee, et al. ( 2014 ) suggests that popular students’ bullying behavior is especially hard to change. Rather than refraining from aggression, these adolescents may end up using both prosocial and aggressive strategies to maximize their status (Hawley, 2003 ; Laninga‐Wijnen et al., 2020 ).

Intervention trials targeted at adolescents should carefully consider the role of peer status, as well as goals, and investigate moderation of intervention effects by these factors. Also other, developmentally relevant factors such as psychological reactance have not yet been assessed in the context of anti‐bullying interventions. There are also potential contextual moderators of intervention effects, such as school climate (see Low & van Ryzin, 2014 , for a study in elementary schools). From the developmental perspective, the most relevant contextual moderators of intervention effects in adolescence might have to do with peer group norms. Peer dynamics may be difficult to change in classrooms where bullying is rewarded by popularity (Dijkstra & Gest, 2015 ) or by encouraging gestures from bystanders (Pouwels, van Noorden, Lansu, & Cillessen, 2018 ).

THE ROLE OF STATUS IN BULLYING AND VICTIMIZATION

A challenge to anti‐bullying programs (particularly in adolescence) is that bullies may be rewarded with high status, which is increasingly important to adolescents (e.g., LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010 ). Given the importance of peer relationships and peer status (e.g., popularity, peer acceptance/rejection) in adolescence, a substantial amount of studies have examined the associations between bullying, victimization, and status among youth. One of the key contributions of this research has been a shift in the conceptualization of bullying perpetrators from maladjusted and socially isolated to socially adept and skilled. Through this lens, research in the last decade has increasingly recognized bullying as a strategic, goal‐directed behavior (e.g., Hawley, 2015 ; Volk, Dane, & Marini, 2014 ), and has led to important advances in the field. In this section, we review three key questions related to bullying and status: 1. how bullying and status are related to one another over time, 2. how youth’s status cognitions and goals are related to bullying, and 3. whether high status is always a protective factor against victimization. We primarily consider two forms of status: popularity (i.e., social visibility, prestige, and/or dominance) and peer acceptance/rejection (i.e., the extent to which adolescents are (dis)liked by peers).

Longitudinal Associations between Bullying and Status

Numerous studies have demonstrated a positive concurrent association between bullying perpetration and popularity (e.g., de Bruyn et al., 2010 ), and between bullying and peer rejection (e.g., Pouwels et al., 2016 ). Based on these cross‐sectional findings, a common perspective is that perpetrators are generally popular, but disliked. At the potential cost of being disliked, adolescents with high status (particularly popularity) may use aggression over time to maintain their status, such that they demonstrate their dominance to their peers (e.g., van den Berg, Burk, & Cillessen, 2019 ). Likewise, bullying is thought to be one tool that youth may use to gain popularity (e.g., by acquiring material and/or social resources; Volk, Camilleri, Dane, & Marini, 2012 ). However, research from the past decade has resulted in a more complex picture of the direction of this association over time.

Although there are reasons to expect bidirectional associations between bullying and status, the extant literature is quite inconsistent. In a large Finnish sample of early adolescents, no significant longitudinal associations were found between bullying and popularity (Sentse, Kretschmer, & Salmivalli, 2015 ; Sentse, Veenstra, Kiuru, & Salmivalli, 2015 ). In contrast, a recent study found a positive, bidirectional association between bullying and popularity over the span of 1 year in a sample of Italian early adolescents (Pozzoli & Gini, 2021 ). Other studies have found evidence that popularity is more likely to predict aggression over time, rather than aggression predicting popularity (e.g., Lu, Li, Niu, Jin, & French, 2018 ; Malamut, van den Berg, Lansu, & Cillessen, 2020 ; Ojanen & Findley‐Van Nostrand, 2014 ). Furthermore, Pouwels et al. ( 2016 ) found that youth who belonged to a stable popular group in late childhood/early adolescence were more likely to be bullies later in adolescence. A different study using joint trajectory analysis of bullying, popularity, and peer acceptance concluded that stable high levels of bullying often overlapped with stable high levels of popularity, but that bullying was not a prerequisite to achieving popularity (Reijntjes et al., 2013 ). They found that most early adolescents who belonged in the high‐bullying group also belonged to the high‐popularity group, whereas less than half of those in the high‐popularity group were simultaneously high in bullying. de Vries, Kaufman, Veenstra, Laninga‐Wijnen, and Huitsing ( 2021 ) found that bullies had higher popularity than other groups, but belonging to a bully group did not predict changes in popularity over time. Thus, popularity generally appears to be a robust predictor of aggression, whereas less consistent evidence has been found for aggression predicting popularity. Similar patterns have been found for both physical (e.g., hitting others) and indirect/relational (e.g., excluding others) forms of aggression (e.g., Lu et al., 2018 ; Malamut, Berg, Lansu, & Cillessen, 2020 ; Ojanen & Findley‐Van Nostrand, 2014 ).

Our understanding of the longitudinal links between bullying and status is further complicated by the fact that peers may not have a uniform reaction to bullying. Indeed, person‐centered approaches have found that some subgroups of bullies are rejected by peers, whereas other subgroups of bullies have average social acceptance (e.g., Reijntjes et al., 2013 ), or even have high levels of acceptance and number of friends (e.g., De Vries et al., 2021 ). These findings are consistent with a cross‐sectional study that found that bullies (and victims) were not particularly disliked by their classmates—instead, bullies’ and victims’ reputations for being disliked were primarily driven by mutual antipathies between bullies and victims (Hafen, Laursen, Nurmi, & Salmela‐Aro, 2013 ). In one longitudinal study, limited prospective associations were found between bullying and rejection: for adolescent boys, peer rejection predicted higher levels of bullying 5 months later, but bullying did not predict becoming more rejected by peers (Sentse, Kretschmer, et al., 2015 ; Sentse, Veenstra, et al., 2015 ). Similarly, Pozzoli and Gini ( 2021 ) found a weak, negative association between social preference (i.e., being well‐liked) and subsequent bullying, but did not find that bullying was a significant predictor of social preference over time. Taken together, these studies suggest that bullies may not incur as many social costs amongst peers (in terms of likeability or affection) as previously suggested by most cross‐sectional research.

Therefore, somewhat surprisingly, the extent to which bullying and status reinforce each other over time remains unclear, despite years of research on this topic. One challenge to disentangling the temporal associations of bullying and status is the high stability of status (particularly popularity). Thus, it may be more difficult to identify the impact of bullying on popularity over time; especially as popularity has many behavioral and personality correlates other than aggression (Vaillancourt & Hymel, 2006 ). Another challenge is that bullies represent a heterogenous group (Peeters, Cillessen, & Scholte, 2010 )—some bullies may be high in status, whereas others are low in status. For example, bullies who are also victimized by peers (i.e., bully‐victims) are generally lower in popularity and social preference than “pure” bullies (e.g., Guy, Lee, & Wolke, 2019 ). Yet, longitudinal studies on the associations between bullying and status often do not take this into account.

Moreover, a growing body of research in the past decade has highlighted that the extent to which bullying and aggression are normative or rewarded with status varies across contexts (e.g., schools, classrooms; Dijkstra & Gest, 2015 ; Garandeau, Laninga‐Wijnen, & Salmivalli, 2011 ; Laninga‐Wijnen et al., 2017 ). Following the social misfit model (Wright, Giammarino, & Parad, 1986 ), adolescents experience social sanctions if they behave in ways that are inconsistent with the norms or values of their peer group. Indeed, peer norms appear to impact how accepted or rejected bullies are in the peer group (Dijkstra & Gest, 2015 ). Still, these studies have been primarily cross‐sectional, and the few longitudinal studies (e.g., Berger & Caravita, 2016 ; Sentse, Kretschmer, et al., 2015 ; Sentse, Veenstra, et al., 2015 ) have not found a consistent pattern of results in adolescence. Further research is still needed to understand how the peer norms influence the bidirectional, longitudinal associations between bullying and status.

Due to these challenges, it is difficult to evaluate the extent to which interventions can impact the associations between bullying and status. Importantly, and contrary to common conceptions, there is little to no evidence that bullying is costly in terms of peer acceptance or social preference over time. This poses a challenge for intervention efforts, as it may be difficult to persuade adolescents to cease bullying if they do not perceive there to be any social costs to their behavior. In adolescence, being reprimanded by teachers or adults may not be seen as a salient “cost” to the same extent as low peer status. Furthermore, more tailored intervention strategies may be needed for classrooms or schools with differing bullying norms.

Bullying and Status Goals

Another challenge to understanding the link between bullying and status is that adolescents vary in the extent to which they value popularity and peer acceptance. Although research on the impact of adolescents’ status goals on aggression and bullying originated a long time ago (e.g., Hawley, 1999 ; Pellegrini, 2002 ), the shift in focus to bullying as a strategic, goal‐directed behavior in the last decade corresponded with an increased interest in the underlying goals, motivations, and status cognitions of youth who bully.

The idea that bullying may be used strategically to gain status presumes that the individual engaging in bullying wants to gain status, which suggests that status goals should be a unique predictor of aggression. Cross‐sectional studies have found that status goals (e.g., popularity goals, agentic goals, social demonstration goals, and social dominance goals) are positively related to bullying (e.g., van den Broek, Deutz, Schoneveld, Burk, & Cillessen, 2016 ) and aggression more generally (e.g., Cillessen, Mayeux, Ha, de Bruyn, & LaFontana, 2014 ). In a sample of Canadian high schoolers, high popularity motivations in the beginning of the school year were associated with elevated levels of indirect/relational aggression at the end of the school year (Dumas, Davis, & Ellis, 2019 ). Moreover, adolescents high in bullying are more likely to find it more important to be popular than well‐liked (Garandeau & Lansu, 2019 ). Although status goals related to popularity or dominance may be one explanation for why adolescents bully, not all youth will be equally equipped to act on those goals. Several studies suggest that aggression and popularity are more likely to be longitudinally associated when youth have high motivation to be popular or socially dominant (e.g., Dawes & Xie, 2014 ). For example, in a sample of Finnish early adolescents, both physical and indirect/relational aggression only predicted elevated popularity over time when youth had higher agentic goals (Ojanen & Findley‐Van Nostrand, 2014 ). Still, not all studies have found a significant interaction between status and status goals in predicting aggression (e.g., Dumas et al., 2019 ).

In addition to individual characteristics, there are also contextual factors to consider that may impact the association between status goals and bullying. In a study of Chinese early adolescents, Pan et al. ( 2020 ) found that social dominance goals were only associated with increasing bullying perpetration across 1 year in classrooms where popularity was asymmetrically distributed (i.e., high status hierarchy). This further suggests that adolescents strategically use aggression: adolescents with high social dominance goals were more likely to bully in contexts where there are likely to be social benefits to bullying.

Victimization and Status

Insofar as bullying in adolescence is strategic, goal‐directed behavior, youth should also be strategic about who they target with aggression. In keeping with this perspective, research has traditionally conceptualized victims of aggression as low status, socially marginalized youth—in other words, “easy” targets. Through this lens, bullies would presumably not be taking a large risk of losing affection or facing retaliation (e.g., Veenstra, Lindenberg, Munniksma, & Dijkstra, 2010 ). However, even though targeting low‐status peers may be seen as “low risk”, it also may not be seen as “high reward”. From a strategic standpoint, there is more to potentially gain by strategically targeting a social competitor (i.e., instrumental targeting) than a peer who is already low in the social hierarchy (e.g., normative targeting) (e.g., Andrews, Hanish, & Santos, 2017 ; Faris, 2012 ).

Although many victims of bullying do have low status (e.g., de Bruyn et al., 2010 ), growing evidence has highlighted that youth with high status can also be victims of bullying and aggression (see Dawes & Malamut, 2020 for a review). This idea originated in the 1990s (e.g., see Adler & Adler, 1995 ; Merten, 1997 ; Prinstein & Cillessen, 2003 ), but research in the last decade has increasingly called attention to this phenomenon. For example, Sainio, Veenstra, Huitsing, and Salmivalli ( 2012 ) found that being seen as highly popular by other‐sex peers increased the likelihood of being bullied by other‐sex peers. High‐status victims were also found in a recent study using latent profile analysis to identify different subtypes of victimized youth (Malamut, Dawes, et al., 2021 ). Although there is evidence of popular youth being targeted with multiple forms of victimization (Dawes & Malamut, 2020 ), they are particularly likely to be targeted with indirect/relational forms of victimization (e.g., Badaly, Kelly, Schwartz, & Dabney‐Lieras, 2013 ; Closson, Hart, & Hogg, 2017 ; Dyches & Mayeux, 2012 ; Malamut, Dawes, & Xie, 2018 ; Malamut, Luo, & Schwartz, 2020 ).

Consistent with ideas of instrumental targeting, popular bullies are more likely to target high‐status peers (Malamut, van den Berg, Lansu, & Cillessen, 2020 ; Peets & Hodges, 2014 ), and targeting peers with higher status (e.g., social centrality) can lead to increased social network prestige for the aggressor (Andrews et al., 2017 ). Moreover, bistrategic youth who engage in both aggressive and prosocial behavior (Hawley, 2003 ) were more likely to target popular peers with social aggression (Wurster & Xie, 2014 ). There is also some indication that popular youth are likely to be victimized within the contexts of friendships (e.g., Closson & Watanabe, 2018 ); perhaps, because friends (and friends‐of‐friends) are likely direct social competitors (see Faris, Felmlee, & McMillan, 2020 ).

This growing body of research challenges long‐standing assumptions that high status is always a desirable characteristic associated with positive outcomes, as popular youth appear to be more at risk for negative outcomes than previously thought (e.g., Dawes & Malamut, 2020 ; Schwartz & Gorman, 2011 ), including psychosocial maladjustment (e.g., lower social satisfaction and social self‐concept, poorer best friendship quality: Ferguson & Ryan, 2019 ). High‐status victims were found to have larger increases in internalizing symptoms compared to low‐status victims, possibly because they have “more to lose” (Faris & Felmlee, 2014 ). Moreover, the overlap between high status and victimization may be one factor contributing to aggression in the peer group. Highly popular adolescents who reported high levels of indirect victimization were more indirectly aggressive 1 year later (Malamut, Luo, et al., 2020 ).

Thus, it is critical to understand the consequences of victimization amongst popular youth; however, there are some methodological challenges to identify high‐status victims. Other informants (e.g., peers, teachers) may not always recognize or report popular youth as being victimized, because these youth do not fit the idea of a typical victim (e.g., Bjereld, Daneback, & Mishna, 2021 ; Dawes, Norwalk, Chen, Hamm, & Farmer, 2019 ). Distinguishing between specific forms of victimization, examining curvilinear associations between status and victimization, and measuring victimization via dyadic nominations all may assist with identifying victims with high status (Dawes & Malamut, 2020 ). It is essential to account for the victimization experiences of popular adolescents to have a comprehensive understanding of victimization dynamics, and their experiences may also have important implications for intervention efforts. For example, there is already evidence that interventions are less effective for popular bullies (Garandeau, Poskiparta, et al., 2014 )—popular adolescents’ experiences with, or their perceptions of, being the target of aggression may partially explain the limited effectiveness of interventions on popular bullies.

CONSEQUENCES OF DEFENDING

Bullying is not solely a matter between bullies and victims—it often is a group process in which multiple peers are involved (Salmivalli, 2010 ). Some peers may assist the bully whereas others merely observe the situation. Prior work shows that peers are present in 80% of bullying episodes on average (e.g., Craig & Pepler, 1997 ; Jones et al., 2015 ), and even though most students disapprove of bullying (Pouwels, Lansu, & Cillessen, 2017 ), often only a minority of bystanders (10–25%) reaches out to help victims (Trach et al., 2010 ; Quirk & Campbell, 2015 ). The silence of passive bystanders can hurt even more than the bullying itself (Jones et al., 2015 ).

The observation that most peers remain passive in bullying situations has led various anti‐bullying programs to adopt the encouragement of peer defending as a central component in combatting bullying (Gaffney et al., 2021 ). Defending can be defined as a type of prosocial behavior that is shown in response to bullying situations. Studies have recently started to distinguish two main types of defending: direct, bully‐oriented defending (such as publicly confronting bullies) and indirect, victim‐oriented defending (comforting victims or asking help from adults; often occurring more privately; Lambe & Craig, 2020 ; Reijntjes et al., 2016 ; Yun & Juvonen, 2020 ).

Adolescents are assumed to undertake several sequential steps before they decide upon defending a victimized peer (bystander intervention model; Latané & Darley, 1968 ). These steps include: 1) noticing the event, 2) interpreting it as an emergency situation, that is, someone is suffering and in need of help, 3) feeling personally responsible for defending, 4) knowing how to defend, and 5) endorsing this defending behavior. Interventions tap into these steps in various ways. For instance, they might aim to raise empathy for victims (Garandeau et al., 2021 ), or increase individuals’ feelings of responsibility for defending (Peets, Pöyhönen, Juvonen, & Salmivalli, 2015 ). Moreover, regarding the fourth and fifth steps, the various—direct and indirect—ways in which individuals can defend are brainstormed and discussed with youth, and practiced in online environments or role‐play sessions (e.g., Salmivalli, 2014 ).

Theoretically, it can be argued that encouraging defending is beneficial for victims: psychological stress‐buffering theories posit that receiving help in stressful circumstances promotes adaptive appraisal and coping, which should buffer against psychosocial problems (Cohen & Wills, 1985 ). Moreover, social protection theory suggests that bullies are less likely to target children who are protected by peers, due to fear of retaliation (Hodges & Perry, 1999 ). Thus, peer defending should reduce bullying and promote victims’ psychosocial adjustment. Despite the theorized benefits of defending, researchers have started to ask whether—under some circumstances—defending can be risky for defenders or even for victims.

Is Defending Risky for Defenders?

It has been theorized that intervening in favor of victims could have detrimental social and psychological consequences for defenders (Meter & Card, 2015 ; Pozzoli & Gini, 2012 ). In terms of social consequences , it has been argued that defending can result in a loss of social status, or increase the risk of becoming a victim oneself. Bullies are powerful peers who often do not operate on their own. Preventing aggressors from reaching their goals (Pozzoli & Gini, 2012 ) and challenging the status and power of perpetrators (Salmivalli, Voeten, & Poskiparta, 2011 ) can be risky and result in retaliation—particularly if defending proves to be unsuccessful (retaliation hypothesis; Spadafora et al., 2018 ). In qualitative studies, one of the main reasons why adolescents are hesitant to defend a victimized peer is that they are afraid they will lose status or become the target of bullying themselves (Strindberg, Horton, & Thornberg, 2020 ). This fear is not wholly unfounded: some studies have suggested that defending can result in a decrease in social preference (Meter & Card, 2015 ; Pozzoli & Gini, 2012 ). A social network study on an elementary school sample also indicated that defenders ran the risk of becoming victimized by the bullies of the peers that they defended (Huitsing, Snijders, Van Duijn, & Veenstra, 2014 ). It is likely that this risk of defending is particularly present during adolescence. First, compared to childhood, adolescent bullies are more powerful and have higher status (Dawes & Xie, 2014 )—which makes it riskier to stand up against them. Moreover, if defending is encouraged by adults in interventions, defending may be seen as less genuinely driven by a feeling of moral injustice (Healy, 2020 ) and rather “soft”, teacher‐obedient behavior, and hence may be sanctioned with lower status among peers.

Besides these social consequences, defending may have psychological costs , perhaps because defenders actively intervene in bullying—a stressful and potentially traumatic situation (Lambe et al., 2017 ). Prior work on other stressful experiences, such as interparental conflict, has shown that youth who actively intervened experienced more internalizing and externalizing problems than youth who just passively observed it (Jouriles et al., 2014 ). Similarly, youth who actively try to stop a bullying episode could suffer more from psychosocial consequences than youth who just observe passively. Moreover, often, defenders are higher on affective empathy, which could also make them more susceptible to feel along with how victims feel (Olivia et al., 2014 ). Accordingly, several studies detected a positive concurrent association between defending and psychosomatic and internalizing problems among defenders (e.g., Callaghan et al., 2019 ; Jenkins & Fredrick, 2017 ; Lambe et al., 2017 ; Malamut, Trach, Garandeau, & Salmivalli, 2021 ). These studies point to potential adverse consequences of defending which poses a dilemma: should peer defending be encouraged if it is risky for defenders themselves?

In response to this emerging debate, an increasing number of studies started examining whether defending indeed is risky for defenders longitudinally , as there were also reasons to assume that defending could work out positively for them on the longer term. Specifically, defending could enhance someone’s popularity, because defenders show that they are powerful and brave enough to take a stance against bullying, which may foster respect and admiration among other peers (Reijntjes et al., 2016 ). Defending may also increase social preference among peers because they undertake prosocial actions that are helpful for others (Pronk et al., 2020 ). Indeed, qualitative work indicated that students believe defending may also result in higher social status (social preference and popularity) over time (Spadafora et al., 2018 ). Further, being able to help somebody in times of harassment may improve defenders’ self‐views and well‐being.

Most longitudinal work indicates that defending can promote social status. Two studies found that defending positively predicted social preference, but not popularity (Pronk et al., 2020 ; Pozzoli & Gini, 2021 ). Another study showed that defending predicted popularity 1 year later (Van der Ploeg, Kretschmer, Salmivalli, & Veenstra, 2017 ). An experimental study found that adolescents regarded defenders as most favorable compared to bullies, bystanders, or victims: actual and hypothetical defenders received more “liking” nominations; and in a computerized reaction task, defenders were evaluated more positively implicitly (Pouwels et al., 2017 ). Regarding psychological consequences, a longitudinal investigation (Malamut, Trach, et al., 2021 ) found that, in general, defending was unpredictive of future internalizing problems. Importantly, initial victimization status of defenders appeared to play a role in the extent to which defending related to internalizing symptoms: defending was associated with elevated depressive symptoms for low‐status, highly victimized youth, whereas defending related to lower levels of depressive symptoms for high‐status youth. Two intervention studies found that high school female students who were trained in a brief, bystander bullying intervention reported a greater decrease in internalizing symptoms over a 3‐month time span compared to female students in a control group (Dumas et al., 2019 ; Midgett & Doumas, 2019 ). However, these studies did not assess whether this decrease in internalizing symptoms could be explained by an increase in actual defending behavior as a result of this intervention.

To conclude, the preliminary longitudinal evidence suggests that defending is generally not a risky behavior for defenders, which means that most youth presumably can defend safely. However, more research is needed to further understand whether all youth can defend safely under all circumstances. For instance, victimized youth were more likely to develop internalizing symptoms when defending others (Malamut, Trach, et al., 2021 ), thus for some youth, defending may pose an additional risk. Moreover, classroom norms may affect the extent to which defenders are regarded favorably by their peers or not (Pouwels, van Noorden, & Caravita, 2019 ). Consequently, more research is needed to identify moderators of the effects of defending on adjustment and determine why and when defending may be risky for defenders. Even though qualitative studies indicate that some students fear the negative social consequences of defending, an important area for research is to which extent defenders actually care about a potential drop in status—students vary in the extent to which they strive for popularity or being liked (Dawes & Xie, 2017 ), and may predominantly defend because they feel empathy for the victim or because they consider bullying as morally wrong (Pouwels et al., 2019 ).

Is Defending Risky for Victims?

Theoretically, it seems plausible that being defended would be beneficial for victims. Bullies are less likely to target youth who are protected by other peers presumably for fear of retaliation (Hodges & Perry, 1999 ) and defending may signal to victims that others care about them and do not condone the bullying, which may be comforting for victims and help them cope with their plight (McDougall & Vaillancourt, 2015 ; Scardera et al., 2020 ). Thus, being defended by peers should logically reduce bullying and promote victims’ psychosocial adjustment over time.

Despite these clear theoretical arguments, empirical findings on the role of being defended in diminishing bullying and improving victims’ psychosocial functioning vary considerably across prior studies, and most studies have been conducted on elementary school samples—leaving it unknown whether defending can be helpful in adolescence. With regard to decreases in bullying, one longitudinal study found higher classroom levels of defending to relate to lower levels of bullying perpetration (Saarento, Garandeau, & Salmivalli, 2015 ; Saarento, Boulton, & Salmivalli, 2015 . However, not every defending attempt effectively ends bullying episodes: a naturalistic observation study showed that this was true in about two‐third of the cases (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001 ). Moreover, an intervention study on children and preadolescents found victims without a support group to report decreased victimization at the end of the school year, whereas victims with a support group did not report such a change. A support group was a teacher‐assigned group of six to eight students, including bullies and their assistants, defenders or friends of the victim, and prosocial classmates, designed to create mutual concern for the well‐being of victims and to encourage bullies to alter their behavior. Strikingly, a third of victims with a support group even reported that their victimization levels had increased—despite having more defenders (van der Ploeg et al., 2016 ). A longitudinal study indicated that defended and non‐defended victims (at the start of the school year) had comparable levels of victimization at the end of the school year ( Laninga‐Wijnen, van den Berg, Garandeau, Mulder, & de Castro, in press ).

Studies examining the role of being defended on victims’ psychological functioning also report mixed findings. Two cross‐sectional studies on (pre‐)adolescents demonstrated that defended victims had lower anxiety and depression (Ma et al., 2019 ; Sainio, Veenstra, Huitsing, & Salmivalli, 2011 ) and higher self‐esteem (Sainio et al., 2011 ) than non‐defended victims. Another study, however, detected no effect of being defended in victims’ distress (Jones et al., 2015 ) —even though this study also indicated that victims were particularly hurt if bystanders did nothing to intervene. Longitudinal work on the role of being defended in victims’ adjustment is scarce. Three longitudinal studies have examined the moderating effect of a related construct, namely, friendship support—such as having friends one can trust and rely on—in the association between victimization and future psychological adjustment. One study did not detect any significant role of friendship support in changes in victims’ psychological functioning (Burke, Sticca, & Perren, 2017 ). Results from the two other longitudinal studies were counter‐intuitive; receiving emotional support from friends increased victims’ depressive symptoms (Desjardins & Leadbeater, 2011 ) and enhanced maladaptive coping and distress among victimized girls (but not among victimized boys; Thompson & Leadbeater, 2013 ). To our knowledge, the impact of being defended on victims’ adjustment has been examined longitudinally only in one study. This study demonstrated that defended victims were higher on their feelings of connectedness to the classroom, but did not differ from non‐defended victims in terms of depressive symptoms or self‐esteem at the end of the school year ( Laninga‐Wijnen et al., in press ). Lastly, a recent meta‐analysis indicated that interventions that included informal peer involvement (such as group discussions) and encouragement of defending were effective in reducing victimization; however, interventions that did not include encouragement of peer defending were more effective than interventions that did include it (Gaffney et al., 2021 ).

These findings may indicate that tackling bullying by encouraging defending can be difficult, and that the benefits of defending for victims may be more limited than once assumed. As with every intervention, defending may go together with both positive and negative consequences. A recent commentary (Healy, 2020 ) theorizes that defended victims may be even worse off than non‐defended victims because defending could disempower victims by making them dependent on their helpers and encouraging the belief that they cannot solve problems themselves. Defending could also provoke additional bullying attempts if this defending is enacted in inappropriate or aggressive ways—this could elicit retaliation of bullies, or stigmatize victims by making them stand out from other peers as the ones needing special treatment in contrast to those who can stand up for themselves.

Even though the literature does not provide strong evidence for the statement that defending would work out adversely, it is clear that more research is needed to inform interventions on how to increase the effectiveness of defending attempts. This requires knowledge on the factors that may explain why defending can work out adversely versus beneficially (i.e., mediators), as well as on victim‐, defender‐, and contextual characteristics that may either exacerbate or mitigate the effectiveness of defending attempts (i.e., moderators).

Underlying reasons on why being defended either helps or hurts victims may be both internal and external to the victim. One internal reason for adverse effects of defending could be that being defended promotes maladaptive cognitions in victims about the solution for the bullying issue. For instance, defending may undermine victims’ feeling of autonomy; it can enhance victims’ beliefs that they are powerless to stand up against bullies themselves and that they need others to make the bullying stop (i.e., learned helplessness; Healy, 2020 ). Moreover, indirect forms of defending such as providing comfort or listening to the victims’ story may stimulate co‐rumination processes in which victims dwell on negative affect and repeatedly think about their negative experiences together with their defenders (Schacter & Juvonen, 2020 ). These maladaptive cognitions and rumination processes put victims at risk for further psychological maladjustment. On the other hand, an internal reason explaining why defending promotes victims’ adjustment is because defending promotes adaptive appraisal and adequate coping styles within victims, which, in turn, helps them to restore their self‐esteem or diminishes symptoms of depression (Cohen & Will, 1985 ).

External reasons why defending may work out adversely is that it can set victims even more apart from others: these victims are not only considered as weak because they are victimized, but also because they apparently are the ones in need of help. Because of this deviation from others, classmates may start blaming victims for their plight or see these victims as “social misfits”, which may backfire in victims’ psychological functioning (Healy, 2020 ). An external reason for why defending may work out beneficially for victims is that it clearly signals that the bullying is not condoned by other peers, which could discourage bullies in their behaviors.

The extent to which these internal or external processes occur after being defended may depend on the type of defending that is enacted, as well as on victim‐, defender‐, and contextual characteristics. For instance, regarding the type of defending , victims were found to have better psychosocial adjustment in classrooms where it was more common to defend victims in direct ways (i.e., by confronting the bully; Yun & Juvonen, 2020 ). It could be that these direct ways of defending signal to the victim that others blame the bully for the situation, which could diminish victims’ self‐blame (Yun & Juvonen, 2020 ). Furthermore, regarding victim characteristics , gender may play a role: victimized girls who received support from their victimized friends were found to have more internalizing problems compared to victimized boys who received support from their victimized friends (Schacter & Juvonen, 2020 ). It could be that girls tend to discuss emotions frequently, which may result in co‐rumination processes. Regarding defender characteristics , defending may be more effective if defenders possess sufficient popularity to deflect the bully’s dominance. Accordingly, a former study in classrooms where defending is endorsed by popular peers rather than by unpopular peers, all students—including victims—have higher well‐being at school and regard the classroom as more positive (Laninga‐Wijnen et al., 2021 ). At last, contextual factors such as the context of the bullying may play into how helpful defending is viewed to be by the victim. For instance, victims’ perceptions of the effectiveness of defending may depend upon whether there is an audience to the bully, or on the severity of the bullying. Broader classroom factors, such as how teachers react to bullying or classroom norms, may also play a role, because they determine the value of defending behaviors among youth. If teachers are strongly disapproving of the bullying and if classmates consistently consider bullying as an inappropriate behavior (an anti‐bullying norm), defenders may be more likely to be regarded favorably by their classmates and bullies may be more likely to comply to their anti‐bullying messages.

To conclude, more research is needed to understand which factors play a role in the effectiveness of defending in diminishing victimization and promoting victims’ adjustment. Teaching students to defend other peers is of vital importance: victims should not be left alone in their plight and previous studies have shown that having passive bystanders hurts victims even more than the bullying itself (Jones et al., 2015 ). Moreover, standing up for others in general (i.e., when somebody is being discriminated or threatened) is a general citizen skill which should be transferred to youth. Defending does not only have the potential to benefit victims, but also defenders , particularly in adolescence: a growing body of research indicates that adolescents are driven by a strong desire to contribute to society and to others’ well‐being, and that they reap emotional benefits from helping others (see Fuligni, 2019 for review). Thus, it is essential to gain more insights in the factors that contribute to the effectiveness of defending for victims, not only for victims themselves, but also for their defenders.

THE HEALTHY CONTEXT PARADOX

The past 20 years have seen increased recognition of the importance of the social environment in bullying and significant advances in the identification of contextual factors that promote bullying behavior (e.g., Saarento, Boulton, et al., 2015 ; Saarento, Garandeau, et al., 2015 ). This has led prevention efforts to increasingly focus on improving the classroom or school context as a whole. In the past decade, however, new findings have emerged to suggest that desirable or sought‐after features of the social context, such as low levels of victimization, could in fact have adverse effects on the adjustment of victimized youth (Garandeau & Salmivalli, 2019 ). The idea that “healthier” (i.e., more prosocial or less aggressive) classrooms may paradoxically increase maladjustment risks for vulnerable students was suggested in earlier research (e.g., Bellmore, Witkow, Graham, & Juvonen, 2004 ; Sentse, Scholte, Salmivalli, & Voeten, 2007 ), but the last 10 years have witnessed a renewed interest in this issue and a growing number of studies from different countries on a phenomenon that has come to be known as the healthy context paradox (Salmivalli, 2018 ; Huitsing et al., 2019 ).

Victimized adolescents have been found to have lower self‐esteem (Huitsing, Veenstra, Sainio, & Salmivalli, 2012 ) and higher levels of depressive symptoms (Yun & Juvonen, 2020 ), somatic complaints (Gini, Holt, Pozzoli, & Marino, 2020 ), and externalizing problems (Liu et al., 2021 ), in classrooms with lower levels of victimization. Verbally victimized fifth graders were also found to have more negative self‐views in low‐aggression than in high‐aggression classrooms (Morrow, Hubbard, & Sharp, 2019 ). These concurrent findings have been further supported by longitudinal research internationally. In a Finnish sample, youth who remained victimized across 1 year felt more depressed, more socially anxious, and were less liked at the end of the year in classrooms where the proportion of victims had decreased compared to stable victims in other classrooms (Garandeau, Lee, & Salmivalli, 2018 ). In a Chinese sample, victimized students had higher depression, lower self‐concept, and fewer opportunities for friends after 1 year in classrooms where victimization was less prevalent (Pan et al., 2021 ). Moreover, in an ethnically diverse sample of American adolescents, victimized youth showed stronger increases in characterological self‐blame (i.e., beliefs that they deserve their plight) one semester later in schools with lower levels of victimization (Schacter & Juvonen, 2015 ).

Empirical support for the healthy context paradox is not limited to evidence of a moderating effect of the average level of victimization in the classroom or school. Mean classroom levels of defending behavior were also found to be associated with victims’ maladjustment in adolescence. Research has shown that highly victimized youth had lower feelings of belonging and perceived less cooperation and cohesion in classrooms where defending was more common (Laninga‐Wijnen, Van den Berg, Mainhard, & Cillessen, 2021 ). Moreover, victimized youth may be worse off in schools implementing anti‐bullying interventions. In a study by Huitsing et al. ( 2019 ), chronic victims, as well as newly victimized students, had lower self‐esteem and higher depressive symptoms after 1 year in schools implementing an effective anti‐bullying program than their counterparts in control schools. It should be noted, however, that the intervention helped decrease bullying and was, therefore, beneficial for most students who were victimized at baseline.

These findings are obviously concerning, as they bring to light possible iatrogenic effects of successful anti‐bullying interventions for those who remain or become victimized despite the intervention. It is urgent to understand why improved social contexts may exacerbate the psychological and social difficulties that victims of bullying experience. So far, only one study has tested potential mechanisms accounting for the adverse effects of low‐victimization classrooms on the development of internalizing problems in victimized students (Pan et al., 2021 ). First, they demonstrated that such classrooms exacerbated victims’ depressive symptoms by reducing their opportunities for friendships. Indeed, victims tend to affiliate with other victims (Huitsing et al., 2014 ) and their non‐victimized peers are often reluctant to form friendships with them (Sentse, Dijkstra, Salmivalli, & Cillessen, 2013 ; Sijtsema, Rambaran, & Ojanen, 2013 ). Moreover, individuals who are dissimilar from the rest of the group—“social misfits” —are more likely to be rejected by their peers (Sentse et al., 2007 ; Wright et al., 1986 ). For these reasons, being in a social environment with fewer victims likely makes victimized students more socially isolated, with fewer friends, which, in turn, increases their depressive symptoms (Pedersen, Vitaro, Barker, & Borge, 2007 ). Second, the effect of lower levels of classroom victimization on future depressive symptoms was partly explained by its negative effect on victimized students’ self‐concept (Pan et al., 2021 ). When few peers in the classroom are subjected to bullying, youth who are bullied should be more apt to engage in upward social comparisons (Wills, 1981 ), which can be damaging to their self‐regard (Tesser, Millar, & Moore, 1988 ). Another likely mechanism for these effects is the increase in characterological self‐blame that contexts of lower victimization have been shown to promote (Schacter & Juvonen, 2015 ), since self‐blame tends to play an important role in depressive disorder (e.g., Zahn et al., 2015 ). With regard to the moderating effect of classroom victimization level on the link between victimization and externalizing problems, one cross‐sectional study has suggested that increased hostile attribution bias was at play (Liu et al., 2021 ). In classrooms with lower levels of victimization, frequent victims of bullying were more likely to attribute hostile intent to peers, which was associated with higher levels of externalizing problems.

A growing body of studies conducted with a diversity of samples is providing support for a healthy context paradox. However, it is important to keep in mind that these findings are not unanimous; for instance, one study with middle schoolers found that friendless victims felt less anxious, lonely, and unsafe after 1 year in schools with stronger peer prosocial norms (Schacter & Juvonen, 2018 ). Also, many of the above‐mentioned studies were conducted with pre‐ or early adolescents, and therefore it remains uncertain whether the healthy context paradox is still occurring later in adolescence. More longitudinal studies using samples from older age groups and examining different types of healthy contexts are needed for a better understanding of the phenomenon.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Bullying prevention programs have desirable effects, as compared with treatment as usual. However, the effects are modest, and they seem to be especially weak in adolescence. Furthermore, research carried out in the past decade has shown that some of the solutions proposed may rest on shaky assumptions—especially when targeted at adolescent populations—or involve components that pose new challenges, such as potential iatrogenic effects for some youth in some circumstances.

Several explanations have been proposed for why adolescents are less responsive to prevention and intervention efforts than younger children. However, few studies have directly tested whether factors such as strong status needs (Sijtsema, Veenstra, Lindenberg, & Salmivalli, 2009 ), or psychological reactance (Yeager et al., 2015 ) undermine the effects of school‐based prevention programs in adolescence. Even evidence regarding the much‐discussed effect of school transition on bullying is mixed (Farmer et al., 2011 ; Pellegrini, 2002 ; Pellegrini et al., 2010 ), and there are no studies investigating whether transition affects the success of interventions.

Analyses on effective components of anti‐bullying programs emerged 10 years ago and so far, they have not been done separately among younger versus older youth. Decisions regarding relevant components to include should be considered through a developmental lens. We acknowledge, however, that, for instance, autonomy supportive intervention components were not taken into account in meta‐analyses aiming to identify effective ingredients of programs, simply because there were not enough of them.

Due to the importance of peers, as well as the difficulty of accepting adult injunctions in adolescence, mobilizing peers in prevention work seems like a fruitful approach. But even then, it is necessary to first get the influential peers on board. In addition, it is critical to increase our knowledge about the kind of peer involvement that is most beneficial in interventions (see Gaffney et al., 2021 ). For instance, the consequences of defending for both defenders and victims need to be better understood. Even though there are strong reasons to assume that refraining from defending is hurtful for victims (Jones et al., 2015 ), more insight is needed in the relative effectiveness of different types of defending and the moderators of their effects (which victim‐, defender‐, and contextual factors may mitigate or even turn around the beneficial effects of peer defending for victimized youth).

There is some indication that popular youth might not respond to existing interventions by decreasing their bullying behavior. A recently developed Meaningful Roles intervention attempts to utilize adolescents’ need for status by providing prosocial, constructive roles for youth to gain status, rather than trying to stop them from doing something (bullying) that is rewarded with status. It is not clear, however, whether alternate ways to gain status would make youth refrain from aggression; in contrast, they may end up using both prosocial and aggressive strategies to maximize their status (Hawley, 2003 ; Laninga‐Wijnen et al., 2020 ). Overall, the longitudinal associations among high status, status goals, bullying behavior, and victimization are not as clear as one might think they are; this is an area in need of further inquiry.

Besides age, other moderators of the effects of anti‐bullying programs have been identified, such as students’ temperament, or their popularity among peers. These findings raise new challenges, especially the question of whether (and to what extent) tailoring interventions is realistic. Universal interventions can be adapted to better fit the classroom, school, and broader context, but even such adaptations should be informed by evidence. Tailoring targeted interventions for different individuals and situations is even more complex, and would need some kind of a decision model for adults. Kaufman et al. ( 2021 ) recently provided a preliminary process model for this; however, in their model the actual “tailoring” (deciding what should be done in a particular case) is still up to individual teachers. Future research will hopefully inform evidence‐based recommendations regarding intervention approaches that are most likely to be effective among specific subgroups of youth (such as popular bullies) or across different classrooms.

We argue that extensive focus on the average program effects no longer moves the field forward, even when based on stringent RCTs. We hope to see an increase in adolescence‐specific interventions models and studies investigating the moderators and mediators of their effects. The outcomes of program effects could be widened to look at different forms of bullying and victimization, including bullying in online contexts (see Salmivalli et al., 2011 ; Williford et al., 2013 ) and identity‐based bullying (Earnshaw et al., 2018 ). Very little is known about individual‐ and group‐level moderators of intervention effects in decreasing bullying and victimization, especially in adolescence. Also, despite the attention to the importance of studying mediation in intervention trials (e.g., Bradshaw, 2015 ; Eisner & Malti, 2013 ), studies doing this are almost non‐existent (for an exception, see Saarento, Boulton, et al., 2015 ; Saarento, Garandeau, et al., 2015 ).

Besides intended effects, intervention trials should examine both positive and negative side effects of prevention programs, including mental health outcomes (e.g., Williford, Noland, Little, Kärnä, & Salmivalli, 2012 ). Specifically, we call for more longitudinal tests of the mechanisms explaining the adverse effects of “healthy contexts” on victims’ adjustment. Researchers should examine different types of “healthy” contexts, such as average levels of classroom defending, or implementation of a particular anti‐bullying intervention. Future studies should also seek to identify mitigating factors for the healthy context paradox. In other words, are there individual or contextual characteristics that can make victims less susceptible to the adverse influence of healthier contexts? The strong practical implications of the healthy context paradox make this research particularly important. School professionals should not be discouraged from aiming for less aggressive and more prosocial classroom climates; however, a higher awareness and better understanding of these effects should make it easier to counteract them and better protect students who remain victimized.

It should be noted that preventing adolescent bullying and victimization does not only need to happen in adolescence; quite the contrary, it may be critical to start much earlier. If programs implemented at a younger age (e.g., elementary school) had long‐term effects, their implementation would be another way to reduce bullying and victimization in adolescence. Whether this is the case is not established, as most program evaluations to date are short‐term trials. However, there are reasons to believe that intervention work started early on lays the foundation for successful anti‐bullying work in adolescence.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing of the current review was supported by the Academy of Finland Flagship Program (decision number: 320162), ERC Advanced Grant for the first author (ERC AdG 2019 Challenge, 884434), and in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number F32HD100054 for the third author. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding organizations.

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80 Bullying Essay Topics

Table of Contents

Bullying Essay Guide: Topics, Selection, and Writing Tips

Bullying is a topic that has attracted significant attention over the years due to its widespread prevalence and detrimental effects on victims. Primarily observed among school children, bullying often stems from social differences, physical appearances, or an individual’s vulnerability. This article aims to guide you through the process of selecting the best bullying essay topic and offers a plethora of topics to inspire your writing.

How to Choose the Best Bullying Essay Topic?

1. Consider Your Audience: Choose a topic that resonates with your readers. Given the prevalence of bullying, many can relate, including perhaps your teachers.

2. Brainstorm and Collaborate: Discuss potential topics with peers to gauge their depth and relevance.

3. Hook Your Readers: Start with an engaging title and opening line to captivate your audience immediately.

4. Rely on Facts: Ensure you incorporate accurate statistics and facts to build a credible argument.

5. Proofread: Review your essay, refine it, and seek feedback. Ensure all aspects of your chosen topic are addressed. For comprehensive proofreading and topic selection, consider using professional services like writeondeadline.com .

Bullying Essay Topics

General topics:.

• Effects of bullying on victims’ wellbeing.
• Strategies to combat bullying in schools.
• The role of parents in addressing bullying.
• Personal experiences with bullying – as a bystander or victim.
• Legal implications and interventions against bullying.
• Motivations behind bullying behaviors.
• The societal view on bullying: Is it normalized?
• Differentiating between various forms of bullying.
• The impact of teachers’ interventions in bullying scenarios.
• Raising awareness about bullying in educational institutions.

Cyberbullying Topics:

• Factors leading to cyberbullying.
• Overcoming the trauma of online harassment.
• Investigative methods to trace cyberbullies.
• The psychology of individuals who cyber bully.
• Comparing the psychological impacts: Cyberbullying vs. traditional bullying.
• How social media platforms can be breeding grounds for cyberbullying.
• Prevention strategies against online harassment.

Anti-Bullying Topics:

• Effective measures to eradicate bullying.
• The repercussions of bullying on individuals.
• Role of parents and educators in supporting bullying victims.
• Social dynamics contributing to bullying.
• Governmental initiatives against bullying in schools.
• Techniques to confront and neutralize bullies.

General Bullying Topics:

• The psychological aftermath of being bullied.
• The global statistics on bullying: How does it vary?
• The role of school leadership in bullying interventions.
• Bullying and its connection to the rise in youth mental health issues.
• Can bullying be linked to familial structures and parenting styles?
• Bullying in adult workplaces: Is it an extension of school behavior?
• How pop culture and media representation influence bullying trends.
• The economic implications of bullying on society.
• Effects of bullying on academic achievements.
• The role of peer pressure in bullying incidents.

Cyberbullying Themes:

• Anonymity and its role in escalating cyberbullying.
• The dark side of social networking sites: A hub for bullies.
• Laws and regulations against cyberbullying worldwide.
• The role of tech companies in preventing online harassment.
• Digital footprints: How they contribute to cyberbullying.
• The evolution of cyberbullying: Past, present, and future.
• Parental monitoring: A solution to teen cyberbullying?
• The contrast between online and offline bullying personas.
• How educators can equip students against online threats.
• The long-term effects of cyberbullying on mental health.

Anti-Bullying Initiatives:

• School programs that effectively reduce bullying.
• The power of storytelling and personal narratives in bullying prevention.
• Community-driven initiatives against bullying.
• The role of celebrities and influencers in anti-bullying campaigns.
• Collaborative strategies between parents and schools to counteract bullying.
• Importance of counseling services in schools for bullied students.
• Anti-bullying laws and their effectiveness.
• The positive impact of peer-support groups.
• Role models and mentors: Their influence on reducing bullying.
• International anti-bullying initiatives and their success stories.

Bullying Research and Case Studies:

• Detailed analysis of high-profile bullying incidents.
• Cultural influences on bullying behaviors.
• Ethnographic studies on bullying patterns.
• The connection between substance abuse and bullying.
• How do marginalized groups (LGBTQ+, ethnic minorities) experience bullying differently?
• The link between childhood trauma and becoming a bully.
• Comparative studies: Bullying in urban vs. rural schools.
• Evaluating the success of helplines for bullied individuals.
• The role of the internet in both escalating and combating bullying.
• Assessing the impact of anti-bullying mobile apps and digital tools.

Societal and Psychological Perspectives:

• Bullying from a sociological viewpoint: What does it reveal about society?
• The psychological profile of a typical bully.
• Do societal standards and ideals indirectly promote bullying?
• How bullying affects the family dynamics of the victim.
• The cycle of bullying: Can a victim become a bully?

Argumentative Essay Ideas on Bullying:

• Defining a bully: Are they criminals?
• Examining bullying trends across different age groups.
• Gender dynamics in bullying: Do boys bully more than girls?
• Assessing the correlation between bullying and academic performance.
• The link between bullying and suicidal thoughts.

For those who might feel overwhelmed by the wide array of topics, our dedicated team at writeondeadline.com is here to assist. Whether you need help in choosing a topic, writing, or proofreading your essay, our experts are just a click away.

Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice (2016)

Chapter: 1 introduction, 1 introduction.

Bullying, long tolerated by many as a rite of passage into adulthood, is now recognized as a major and preventable public health problem, one that can have long-lasting consequences ( McDougall and Vaillancourt, 2015 ; Wolke and Lereya, 2015 ). Those consequences—for those who are bullied, for the perpetrators of bullying, and for witnesses who are present during a bullying event—include poor school performance, anxiety, depression, and future delinquent and aggressive behavior. Federal, state, and local governments have responded by adopting laws and implementing programs to prevent bullying and deal with its consequences. However, many of these responses have been undertaken with little attention to what is known about bullying and its effects. Even the definition of bullying varies among both researchers and lawmakers, though it generally includes physical and verbal behavior, behavior leading to social isolation, and behavior that uses digital communications technology (cyberbullying). This report adopts the term “bullying behavior,” which is frequently used in the research field, to cover all of these behaviors.

Bullying behavior is evident as early as preschool, although it peaks during the middle school years ( Currie et al., 2012 ; Vaillancourt et al., 2010 ). It can occur in diverse social settings, including classrooms, school gyms and cafeterias, on school buses, and online. Bullying behavior affects not only the children and youth who are bullied, who bully, and who are both bullied and bully others but also bystanders to bullying incidents. Given the myriad situations in which bullying can occur and the many people who may be involved, identifying effective prevention programs and policies is challenging, and it is unlikely that any one approach will be ap-

propriate in all situations. Commonly used bullying prevention approaches include policies regarding acceptable behavior in schools and behavioral interventions to promote positive cultural norms.

STUDY CHARGE

Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, a group of federal agencies and private foundations asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to undertake a study of what is known and what needs to be known to further the field of preventing bullying behavior. The Committee on the Biological and Psychosocial Effects of Peer Victimization:

Lessons for Bullying Prevention was created to carry out this task under the Academies’ Board on Children, Youth, and Families and the Committee on Law and Justice. The study received financial support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the Highmark Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Semi J. and Ruth W. Begun Foundation, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The full statement of task for the committee is presented in Box 1-1 .

Although the committee acknowledges the importance of this topic as it pertains to all children in the United States and in U.S. territories, this report focuses on the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Also, while the committee acknowledges that bullying behavior occurs in the school

environment for youth in foster care, in juvenile justice facilities, and in other residential treatment facilities, this report does not address bullying behavior in those environments because it is beyond the study charge.

CONTEXT FOR THE STUDY

This section of the report highlights relevant work in the field and, later in the chapter under “The Committee’s Approach,” presents the conceptual framework and corresponding definitions of terms that the committee has adopted.

Historical Context

Bullying behavior was first characterized in the scientific literature as part of the childhood experience more than 100 years ago in “Teasing and Bullying,” published in the Pedagogical Seminary ( Burk, 1897 ). The author described bullying behavior, attempted to delineate causes and cures for the tormenting of others, and called for additional research ( Koo, 2007 ). Nearly a century later, Dan Olweus, a Swedish research professor of psychology in Norway, conducted an intensive study on bullying ( Olweus, 1978 ). The efforts of Olweus brought awareness to the issue and motivated other professionals to conduct their own research, thereby expanding and contributing to knowledge of bullying behavior. Since Olweus’s early work, research on bullying has steadily increased (see Farrington and Ttofi, 2009 ; Hymel and Swearer, 2015 ).

Over the past few decades, venues where bullying behavior occurs have expanded with the advent of the Internet, chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication. These modes of communication have provided a new communal avenue for bullying. While the media reports linking bullying to suicide suggest a causal relationship, the available research suggests that there are often multiple factors that contribute to a youth’s suicide-related ideology and behavior. Several studies, however, have demonstrated an association between bullying involvement and suicide-related ideology and behavior (see, e.g., Holt et al., 2015 ; Kim and Leventhal, 2008 ; Sourander, 2010 ; van Geel et al., 2014 ).

In 2013, the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requested that the Institute of Medicine 1 and the National Research Council convene an ad hoc planning committee to plan and conduct a 2-day public workshop to highlight relevant information and knowledge that could inform a multidisciplinary

___________________

1 Prior to 2015, the National Academy of Medicine was known as the Institute of Medicine.

road map on next steps for the field of bullying prevention. Content areas that were explored during the April 2014 workshop included the identification of conceptual models and interventions that have proven effective in decreasing bullying and the antecedents to bullying while increasing protective factors that mitigate the negative health impact of bullying. The discussions highlighted the need for a better understanding of the effectiveness of program interventions in realistic settings; the importance of understanding what works for whom and under what circumstances, as well as the influence of different mediators (i.e., what accounts for associations between variables) and moderators (i.e., what affects the direction or strength of associations between variables) in bullying prevention efforts; and the need for coordination among agencies to prevent and respond to bullying. The workshop summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014c ) informs this committee’s work.

Federal Efforts to Address Bullying and Related Topics

Currently, there is no comprehensive federal statute that explicitly prohibits bullying among children and adolescents, including cyberbullying. However, in the wake of the growing concerns surrounding the implications of bullying, several federal initiatives do address bullying among children and adolescents, and although some of them do not primarily focus on bullying, they permit some funds to be used for bullying prevention purposes.

The earliest federal initiative was in 1999, when three agencies collaborated to establish the Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative in response to a series of deadly school shootings in the late 1990s. The program is administered by the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice to prevent youth violence and promote the healthy development of youth. It is jointly funded by the Department of Education and by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The program has provided grantees with both the opportunity to benefit from collaboration and the tools to sustain it through deliberate planning, more cost-effective service delivery, and a broader funding base ( Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2015 ).

The next major effort was in 2010, when the Department of Education awarded $38.8 million in grants under the Safe and Supportive Schools (S3) Program to 11 states to support statewide measurement of conditions for learning and targeted programmatic interventions to improve conditions for learning, in order to help schools improve safety and reduce substance use. The S3 Program was administered by the Safe and Supportive Schools Group, which also administered the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act State and Local Grants Program, authorized by the

1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 2 It was one of several programs related to developing and maintaining safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools. In addition to the S3 grants program, the group administered a number of interagency agreements with a focus on (but not limited to) bullying, school recovery research, data collection, and drug and violence prevention activities ( U.S. Department of Education, 2015 ).

A collaborative effort among the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Interior, and Justice; the Federal Trade Commission; and the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders created the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention (FPBP) Steering Committee. Led by the U.S. Department of Education, the FPBP works to coordinate policy, research, and communications on bullying topics. The FPBP Website provides extensive resources on bullying behavior, including information on what bullying is, its risk factors, its warning signs, and its effects. 3 The FPBP Steering Committee also plans to provide details on how to get help for those who have been bullied. It also was involved in creating the “Be More than a Bystander” Public Service Announcement campaign with the Ad Council to engage students in bullying prevention. To improve school climate and reduce rates of bullying nationwide, FPBP has sponsored four bullying prevention summits attended by education practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and federal officials.

In 2014, the National Institute of Justice—the scientific research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice—launched the Comprehensive School Safety Initiative with a congressional appropriation of $75 million. The funds are to be used for rigorous research to produce practical knowledge that can improve the safety of schools and students, including bullying prevention. The initiative is carried out through partnerships among researchers, educators, and other stakeholders, including law enforcement, behavioral and mental health professionals, courts, and other justice system professionals ( National Institute of Justice, 2015 ).

In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act was signed by President Obama, reauthorizing the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is committed to providing equal opportunities for all students. Although bullying is neither defined nor prohibited in this act, it is explicitly mentioned in regard to applicability of safe school funding, which it had not been in previous iterations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The above are examples of federal initiatives aimed at promoting the

2 The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act was included as Title IV, Part A, of the 1994 Elementary and Secondary Education Act. See http://www.ojjdp.gov/pubs/gun_violence/sect08-i.html [October 2015].

3 For details, see http://www.stopbullying.gov/ [October 2015].

healthy development of youth, improving the safety of schools and students, and reducing rates of bullying behavior. There are several other federal initiatives that address student bullying directly or allow funds to be used for bullying prevention activities.

Definitional Context

The terms “bullying,” “harassment,” and “peer victimization” have been used in the scientific literature to refer to behavior that is aggressive, is carried out repeatedly and over time, and occurs in an interpersonal relationship where a power imbalance exists ( Eisenberg and Aalsma, 2005 ). Although some of these terms have been used interchangeably in the literature, peer victimization is targeted aggressive behavior of one child against another that causes physical, emotional, social, or psychological harm. While conflict and bullying among siblings are important in their own right ( Tanrikulu and Campbell, 2015 ), this area falls outside of the scope of the committee’s charge. Sibling conflict and aggression falls under the broader concept of interpersonal aggression, which includes dating violence, sexual assault, and sibling violence, in addition to bullying as defined for this report. Olweus (1993) noted that bullying, unlike other forms of peer victimization where the children involved are equally matched, involves a power imbalance between the perpetrator and the target, where the target has difficulty defending him or herself and feels helpless against the aggressor. This power imbalance is typically considered a defining feature of bullying, which distinguishes this particular form of aggression from other forms, and is typically repeated in multiple bullying incidents involving the same individuals over time ( Olweus, 1993 ).

Bullying and violence are subcategories of aggressive behavior that overlap ( Olweus, 1996 ). There are situations in which violence is used in the context of bullying. However, not all forms of bullying (e.g., rumor spreading) involve violent behavior. The committee also acknowledges that perspective about intentions can matter and that in many situations, there may be at least two plausible perceptions involved in the bullying behavior.

A number of factors may influence one’s perception of the term “bullying” ( Smith and Monks, 2008 ). Children and adolescents’ understanding of the term “bullying” may be subject to cultural interpretations or translations of the term ( Hopkins et al., 2013 ). Studies have also shown that influences on children’s understanding of bullying include the child’s experiences as he or she matures and whether the child witnesses the bullying behavior of others ( Hellström et al., 2015 ; Monks and Smith, 2006 ; Smith and Monks, 2008 ).

In 2010, the FPBP Steering Committee convened its first summit, which brought together more than 150 nonprofit and corporate leaders,

researchers, practitioners, parents, and youths to identify challenges in bullying prevention. Discussions at the summit revealed inconsistencies in the definition of bullying behavior and the need to create a uniform definition of bullying. Subsequently, a review of the 2011 CDC publication of assessment tools used to measure bullying among youth ( Hamburger et al., 2011 ) revealed inconsistent definitions of bullying and diverse measurement strategies. Those inconsistencies and diverse measurements make it difficult to compare the prevalence of bullying across studies ( Vivolo et al., 2011 ) and complicate the task of distinguishing bullying from other types of aggression between youths. A uniform definition can support the consistent tracking of bullying behavior over time, facilitate the comparison of bullying prevalence rates and associated risk and protective factors across different data collection systems, and enable the collection of comparable information on the performance of bullying intervention and prevention programs across contexts ( Gladden et al., 2014 ). The CDC and U.S. Department of Education collaborated on the creation of the following uniform definition of bullying (quoted in Gladden et al., 2014, p. 7 ):

Bullying is any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated. Bullying may inflict harm or distress on the targeted youth including physical, psychological, social, or educational harm.

This report noted that the definition includes school-age individuals ages 5-18 and explicitly excludes sibling violence and violence that occurs in the context of a dating or intimate relationship ( Gladden et al., 2014 ). This definition also highlighted that there are direct and indirect modes of bullying, as well as different types of bullying. Direct bullying involves “aggressive behavior(s) that occur in the presence of the targeted youth”; indirect bullying includes “aggressive behavior(s) that are not directly communicated to the targeted youth” ( Gladden et al., 2014, p. 7 ). The direct forms of violence (e.g., sibling violence, teen dating violence, intimate partner violence) can include aggression that is physical, sexual, or psychological, but the context and uniquely dynamic nature of the relationship between the target and the perpetrator in which these acts occur is different from that of peer bullying. Examples of direct bullying include pushing, hitting, verbal taunting, or direct written communication. A common form of indirect bullying is spreading rumors. Four different types of bullying are commonly identified—physical, verbal, relational, and damage to property. Some observational studies have shown that the different forms of bullying that youths commonly experience may overlap ( Bradshaw et al., 2015 ;

Godleski et al., 2015 ). The four types of bullying are defined as follows ( Gladden et al., 2014 ):

• Physical bullying involves the use of physical force (e.g., shoving, hitting, spitting, pushing, and tripping).
• Verbal bullying involves oral or written communication that causes harm (e.g., taunting, name calling, offensive notes or hand gestures, verbal threats).
• Relational bullying is behavior “designed to harm the reputation and relationships of the targeted youth (e.g., social isolation, rumor spreading, posting derogatory comments or pictures online).”
• Damage to property is “theft, alteration, or damaging of the target youth’s property by the perpetrator to cause harm.”

In recent years, a new form of aggression or bullying has emerged, labeled “cyberbullying,” in which the aggression occurs through modern technological devices, specifically mobile phones or the Internet ( Slonje and Smith, 2008 ). Cyberbullying may take the form of mean or nasty messages or comments, rumor spreading through posts or creation of groups, and exclusion by groups of peers online.

While the CDC definition identifies bullying that occurs using technology as electronic bullying and views that as a context or location where bullying occurs, one of the major challenges in the field is how to conceptualize and define cyberbullying ( Tokunaga, 2010 ). The extent to which the CDC definition can be applied to cyberbullying is unclear, particularly with respect to several key concepts within the CDC definition. First, whether determination of an interaction as “wanted” or “unwanted” or whether communication was intended to be harmful can be challenging to assess in the absence of important in-person socioemotional cues (e.g., vocal tone, facial expressions). Second, assessing “repetition” is challenging in that a single harmful act on the Internet has the potential to be shared or viewed multiple times ( Sticca and Perren, 2013 ). Third, cyberbullying can involve a less powerful peer using technological tools to bully a peer who is perceived to have more power. In this manner, technology may provide the tools that create a power imbalance, in contrast to traditional bullying, which typically involves an existing power imbalance.

A study that used focus groups with college students to discuss whether the CDC definition applied to cyberbullying found that students were wary of applying the definition due to their perception that cyberbullying often involves less emphasis on aggression, intention, and repetition than other forms of bullying ( Kota et al., 2014 ). Many researchers have responded to this lack of conceptual and definitional clarity by creating their own measures to assess cyberbullying. It is noteworthy that very few of these

definitions and measures include the components of traditional bullying—i.e., repetition, power imbalance, and intent ( Berne et al., 2013 ). A more recent study argues that the term “cyberbullying” should be reserved for incidents that involve key aspects of bullying such as repetition and differential power ( Ybarra et al., 2014 ).

Although the formulation of a uniform definition of bullying appears to be a step in the right direction for the field of bullying prevention, there are some limitations of the CDC definition. For example, some researchers find the focus on school-age youth as well as the repeated nature of bullying to be rather limiting; similarly the exclusion of bullying in the context of sibling relationships or dating relationships may preclude full appreciation of the range of aggressive behaviors that may co-occur with or constitute bullying behavior. As noted above, other researchers have raised concerns about whether cyberbullying should be considered a particular form or mode under the broader heading of bullying as suggested in the CDC definition, or whether a separate defintion is needed. Furthermore, the measurement of bullying prevalence using such a definiton of bullying is rather complex and does not lend itself well to large-scale survey research. The CDC definition was intended to inform public health surveillance efforts, rather than to serve as a definition for policy. However, increased alignment between bullying definitions used by policy makers and researchers would greatly advance the field. Much of the extant research on bullying has not applied a consistent definition or one that aligns with the CDC definition. As a result of these and other challenges to the CDC definition, thus far there has been inconsistent adoption of this particular definition by researchers, practitioners, or policy makers; however, as the definition was created in 2014, less than 2 years is not a sufficient amount of time to assess whether it has been successfully adopted or will be in the future.

THE COMMITTEE’S APPROACH

This report builds on the April 2014 workshop, summarized in Building Capacity to Reduce Bullying: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014c ). The committee’s work was accomplished over an 18-month period that began in October 2014, after the workshop was held and the formal summary of it had been released. The study committee members represented expertise in communication technology, criminology, developmental and clinical psychology, education, mental health, neurobiological development, pediatrics, public health, school administration, school district policy, and state law and policy. (See Appendix E for biographical sketches of the committee members and staff.) The committee met three times in person and conducted other meetings by teleconferences and electronic communication.

Information Gathering

The committee conducted an extensive review of the literature pertaining to peer victimization and bullying. In some instances, the committee drew upon the broader literature on aggression and violence. The review began with an English-language literature search of online databases, including ERIC, Google Scholar, Lexis Law Reviews Database, Medline, PubMed, Scopus, PsycInfo, and Web of Science, and was expanded as literature and resources from other countries were identified by committee members and project staff as relevant. The committee drew upon the early childhood literature since there is substantial evidence indicating that bullying involvement happens as early as preschool (see Vlachou et al., 2011 ). The committee also drew on the literature on late adolescence and looked at related areas of research such as maltreatment for insights into this emerging field.

The committee used a variety of sources to supplement its review of the literature. The committee held two public information-gathering sessions, one with the study sponsors and the second with experts on the neurobiology of bullying; bullying as a group phenomenon and the role of bystanders; the role of media in bullying prevention; and the intersection of social science, the law, and bullying and peer victimization. See Appendix A for the agendas for these two sessions. To explore different facets of bullying and give perspectives from the field, a subgroup of the committee and study staff also conducted a site visit to a northeastern city, where they convened four stakeholder groups comprised, respectively, of local practitioners, school personnel, private foundation representatives, and young adults. The site visit provided the committee with an opportunity for place-based learning about bullying prevention programs and best practices. Each focus group was transcribed and summarized thematically in accordance with this report’s chapter considerations. Themes related to the chapters are displayed throughout the report in boxes titled “Perspectives from the Field”; these boxes reflect responses synthesized from all four focus groups. See Appendix B for the site visit’s agenda and for summaries of the focus groups.

The committee also benefited from earlier reports by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine through its Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education and the Institute of Medicine, most notably:

• Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders: Frontiers for Preventive Intervention Research ( Institute of Medicine, 1994 )
• Community Programs to Promote Youth Development ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2002 )
• Deadly Lessons: Understanding Lethal School Violence ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2003 )
• Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 )
• The Science of Adolescent Risk-Taking: Workshop Report ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2011 )
• Communications and Technology for Violence Prevention: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2012 )
• Building Capacity to Reduce Bullying: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014c )
• The Evidence for Violence Prevention across the Lifespan and Around the World: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014a )
• Strategies for Scaling Effective Family-Focused Preventive Interventions to Promote Children’s Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Health: Workshop Summary ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2014b )
• Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015 )

Although these past reports and workshop summaries address various forms of violence and victimization, this report is the first consensus study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the state of the science on the biological and psychosocial consequences of bullying and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease bullying behavior and its consequences.

Terminology

Given the variable use of the terms “bullying” and “peer victimization” in both the research-based and practice-based literature, the committee chose to use the current CDC definition quoted above ( Gladden et al., 2014, p. 7 ). While the committee determined that this was the best definition to use, it acknowledges that this definition is not necessarily the most user-friendly definition for students and has the potential to cause problems for students reporting bullying. Not only does this definition provide detail on the common elements of bullying behavior but it also was developed with input from a panel of researchers and practitioners. The committee also followed the CDC in focusing primarily on individuals between the ages of 5 and 18. The committee recognizes that children’s development occurs on a continuum, and so while it relied primarily on the CDC defini-

tion, its work and this report acknowledge the importance of addressing bullying in both early childhood and emerging adulthood. For purposes of this report, the committee used the terms “early childhood” to refer to ages 1-4, “middle childhood” for ages 5 to 10, “early adolescence” for ages 11-14, “middle adolescence” for ages 15-17, and “late adolescence” for ages 18-21. This terminology and the associated age ranges are consistent with the Bright Futures and American Academy of Pediatrics definition of the stages of development. 4

A given instance of bullying behavior involves at least two unequal roles: one or more individuals who perpetrate the behavior (the perpetrator in this instance) and at least one individual who is bullied (the target in this instance). To avoid labeling and potentially further stigmatizing individuals with the terms “bully” and “victim,” which are sometimes viewed as traits of persons rather than role descriptions in a particular instance of behavior, the committee decided to use “individual who is bullied” to refer to the target of a bullying instance or pattern and “individual who bullies” to refer to the perpetrator of a bullying instance or pattern. Thus, “individual who is bullied and bullies others” can refer to one who is either perpetrating a bullying behavior or a target of bullying behavior, depending on the incident. This terminology is consistent with the approach used by the FPBP (see above). Also, bullying is a dynamic social interaction ( Espelage and Swearer, 2003 ) where individuals can play different roles in bullying interactions based on both individual and contextual factors.

The committee used “cyberbullying” to refer to bullying that takes place using technology or digital electronic means. “Digital electronic forms of contact” comprise a broad category that may include e-mail, blogs, social networking Websites, online games, chat rooms, forums, instant messaging, Skype, text messaging, and mobile phone pictures. The committee uses the term “traditional bullying” to refer to bullying behavior that is not cyberbullying (to aid in comparisons), recognizing that the term has been used at times in slightly different senses in the literature.

Where accurate reporting of study findings requires use of the above terms but with senses different from those specified here, the committee has noted the sense in which the source used the term. Similarly, accurate reporting has at times required use of terms such as “victimization” or “victim” that the committee has chosen to avoid in its own statements.

4 For details on these stages of adolescence, see https://brightfutures.aap.org/Bright%20Futures%20Documents/3-Promoting_Child_Development.pdf [October 2015].

ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT

This report is organized into seven chapters. After this introductory chapter, Chapter 2 provides a broad overview of the scope of the problem.

Chapter 3 focuses on the conceptual frameworks for the study and the developmental trajectory of the child who is bullied, the child who bullies, and the child who is bullied and also bullies. It explores processes that can explain heterogeneity in bullying outcomes by focusing on contextual processes that moderate the effect of individual characteristics on bullying behavior.

Chapter 4 discusses the cyclical nature of bullying and the consequences of bullying behavior. It summarizes what is known about the psychosocial, physical health, neurobiological, academic-performance, and population-level consequences of bullying.

Chapter 5 provides an overview of the landscape in bullying prevention programming. This chapter describes in detail the context for preventive interventions and the specific actions that various stakeholders can take to achieve a coordinated response to bullying behavior. The chapter uses the Institute of Medicine’s multi-tiered framework ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ) to present the different levels of approaches to preventing bullying behavior.

Chapter 6 reviews what is known about federal, state, and local laws and policies and their impact on bullying.

After a critical review of the relevant research and practice-based literatures, Chapter 7 discusses the committee conclusions and recommendations and provides a path forward for bullying prevention.

The report includes a number of appendixes. Appendix A includes meeting agendas of the committee’s public information-gathering meetings. Appendix B includes the agenda and summaries of the site visit. Appendix C includes summaries of bullying prevalence data from the national surveys discussed in Chapter 2 . Appendix D provides a list of selected federal resources on bullying for parents and teachers. Appendix E provides biographical sketches of the committee members and project staff.

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Bullying has long been tolerated as a rite of passage among children and adolescents. There is an implication that individuals who are bullied must have "asked for" this type of treatment, or deserved it. Sometimes, even the child who is bullied begins to internalize this idea. For many years, there has been a general acceptance and collective shrug when it comes to a child or adolescent with greater social capital or power pushing around a child perceived as subordinate. But bullying is not developmentally appropriate; it should not be considered a normal part of the typical social grouping that occurs throughout a child's life.

Although bullying behavior endures through generations, the milieu is changing. Historically, bulling has occurred at school, the physical setting in which most of childhood is centered and the primary source for peer group formation. In recent years, however, the physical setting is not the only place bullying is occurring. Technology allows for an entirely new type of digital electronic aggression, cyberbullying, which takes place through chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication.

Composition of peer groups, shifting demographics, changing societal norms, and modern technology are contextual factors that must be considered to understand and effectively react to bullying in the United States. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts and each of these contexts interacts with individual characteristics of youth in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and bullying perpetration or victimization. Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, this report evaluates the state of the science on biological and psychosocial consequences of peer victimization and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease peer victimization behavior and consequences.

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EDITORIAL article

Editorial: advances in youth bullying research.

• 1 Department of Psychology, Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, United States
• 2 Social Science Research Center, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS, United States

Editorial on the Research Topic Advances in Youth Bullying Research

Bullying amongst youth is a worldwide concern. Globally, as many as 246 million children reported experiencing bullying and school violence annually [ United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 2019 ]. In the UNESCO report, 32% of children reported bullying victimization with the most common type being psychological or verbal aggression. This special issue highlights the prevalence as well as some of the predictors and buffers of types of bullying occurring among youth from a variety of countries. Specifically, this issue can speak to bullying concerns in Peru, China, Chile, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Russia, Mexico, and the United States.

Variation in Youth Bullying Statistics

Rates vary across samples in the present special issue. For example, contrasting current bullying statistics in the U.S. where bullying and other forms of victimization appear to be on the decline ( Musu-Gillette et al., 2018 ), researchers have found that the bullying prevalence in Peru has increased, as has the social, emotional, and behavioral impacts of victimization ( Arhuis-Inca et al. ). Also, in contrast to North American samples, where ~20% of students report bullying victimization, lower rates—16%—were reported in a Russian sample of 6,249 students ( Avanesian et al. ). These contributions alone demonstrate the importance of examining cultural differences in bullying.

Consequences of Youth Bullying Behavior

All authors recognized the significant harms of bullying. Research by Peng et al. examined these potentially devastating consequences. In their study of 4,241 7th to 12th grade students in China, they examined the relationship between bullying and self-harm. Their results indicated that different forms of bullying (physical, relational, verbal, and cyber) are associated with different harmful behaviors (self-harm, suicide attempts, and suicidal ideation). Most forms of bullying—except verbal—posed a significant risk for suicide attempts ( Peng et al. ). This is particularly troubling as the World Health Organization reports suicide as the fourth leading cause of death in 15–19-year-olds worldwide ( World Health Organization, 2021 ), and rates appear to be rising ( Zohuri and Zadek, 2020 ).

Individual Differences Associated With Bullying Perpetration

Understanding the individual difference variables that affect the experience of bullying and responses to bullying can help guide the implementation of more effective intervention strategies. Zhang et al. conducted a study of 1,631 middle and high school students, analyzing individual differences (i.e., Big Five personality, loneliness, and self-concept) and their influence on bullying behaviors via self-report measures. The links between personality variables and bullying behavior was mediated by loneliness, thus indicating the importance of addressing relational variables as a route for intervention.

Indeed, relationship variables were identified as important in other studies featured in this issue. For instance, Vagos and Carvalhais surveyed 375 youth between 15 and 19 years old to examine the relationship between their attachment quality with parents/peers and their likelihood of engagement in aggressive vs. prosocial behaviors. They found that peer attachment had an indirect effect on prosocial behaviors and quality maternal relationships indirectly resulted in a decrease in overt aggression and delinquency.

Stubbs-Richardson et al. tested the Multimotive Model (MMM), which measures prosocial, asocial, antisocial responses to bullying victimization in a sample of 605 American high school students. Relational variables were key to predicting whether victimized youth would choose a prosocial path over an antisocial response. Students who perceived having fewer supportive relationships were least likely to choose prosocial responses. Relatedly, those seeking help when bullied were more likely to report strong peer connections and family communication ( Sitnik-Warchulska et al. ).

Further research in Silesia is consistent with this relational narrative. Children engaging in bullying perpetration often reported low quality parental relationships ( Sitnik-Warchulska et al. ). Low quality family relationships were also linked to bullying victimization as revealed by a study of 2,415 Mexican youth (9–15 years old), where familial child abuse (i.e., emotional, physical, and sexual) was strongly linked to peer victimization (i.e., direct, indirect, and cyberbullying; Martin-Babarro et al. ).

Impact of School Climate on Youth Bullying

Youth bullying is also embedded in school culture. Researchers examining the validity of the Dual School Climate and School Identification Measure—Student (SCASIM-St15) in 2,044 Chilean school-aged children found that negative school climate is associated with tolerance of antisocial behavior ( Gálvez-Nieto et al. ). Students who hold a more positive perception of their school climate were less likely to break the rules; those who positively identify with their school may view authority figures more positively and thus be more willing to seek help.

Other aspects of school climate included examined how much students perceived having help and how well-equipped they were to deal with bullying. A study consisting of 75 Silesian students analyzed the relationship between the probability of help-seeking behaviors and bullying risk factors ( Sitnik-Warchulska et al. ). They found that the majority of participants exhibited help-seeking behaviors, most of which was directed toward family followed by peers ( Sitnik-Warchulska et al. ). This perceived presence of support proved to be vital in reducing bullying prevalence in schools.

Researchers in Russia, consistent with past work on school climate variables, noted that “Bullying…tends to develop more frequently in a competitive environment” ( Avanesian et al. , p. 1). They encourage schools to foster a less competitive context to decrease bullying.

In another study by Montero-Carretero et al. of 629 Spanish students between the ages of 12 and 14 years old examined the relationship between school climate and bullying behaviors. Results indicated that when students perceived greater teacher support and rule clarity, they experienced more positive perceptions of school climate and lower levels of victimization ( Montero-Carretero et al. ). Thus, across cultures, various improvements in school climate appear promising for reducing the harm of bullying, if not reducing the bullying behavior itself.

Additional Considerations for Interventions

Some of the papers featured herein tested specific interventions whereas others identified additional routes for intervention beyond what was discussed above. For example, researchers examining the effects of the “Zero Violence Brave Club” as a prevention effort among young children found that, after its implementation, participants became more aware of the problem, were less favorable toward aggression, valued kindness, and increased bystander peer intervention ( Roca-Campos et al. ). Compellingly, this research involved a diversity of school environments and showed effects across contexts.

Outside of the school walls, Stives et al. point to the importance of interventions involving more than just the children. They examined parental perspectives of bullying. Results showed that most parents find bullying to be problematic but feel that their children under-reported to them about instances of bullying. The researchers recommend the greater inclusion of parents in anti-bullying efforts as there was a strong interest among parents interviewed in addressing the problem.

Beliefs about bullying are also influenced by societal values. When examining the relationship between Belief in a Just World (BJW) Hypothesis and responses to bullying, researchers found that higher global BJW, instead of personal BJW, was correlated with minimization of perpetrator actions ( Voss and Newman ). Therefore, belief in a just world may constitute victim blaming which is counterproductive to bullying prevention efforts. Thus, countering these attitudes could be means to improve assistance afforded to victims.

What is consistently shown, no matter the cultural context, is that bullying hurts, carrying significant negative outcomes for bullies, victims, and bully-victims. Research evidence collected here also revealed factors that may be helpful for intervention purposes. Namely, the research shows how changes to school climate—such as reducing competition—and the involvement of the community—such as parents and peers—can reduce the impact of bullying and bullying prevalence, as well as enhance prosocial behavior. In particular, the importance of social connection for curbing antisocial behavior was a consistent theme cross-culturally. As bullying is a worldwide problem it requires cross-cultural research to address the associated problems and outcomes. The present special issue addresses this need.

Author Contributions

KW focused on article summaries. MS-R on the introduction, fact-checking, and references. HS on conclusion, editing of the entirety, checking against results, cutting to meet word limits, refinement, and flow. All author contributed to the writing, editing, summaries, and fact-checking of the material within this manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all of the authors and reviewers who contributed to bringing this special issue to fruition.

Musu-Gillette, L., Zhang, A., Wang, K., Zhang, J., Kemp, J., Diliberti, M., et al. (2018). Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2017 (NCES 2018-036/NCJ 251413) . National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, and Bureau of Justice Statistics, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

Google Scholar

United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2019). Behind the Numbers: Ending School Violence and Bullying . Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

World Health Organization. (2021). Suicide Worldwide in 2019: Global Health Estimates . Geneva: World Health Organization.Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.

Zohuri, B., and Zadek, S. (2020) Global suicide rate among youngsters increasing significantly. J. Neurol. Disord. doi: 10.32474/OJNBD.2020.03.000175. [Epub ahead of print].

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Keywords: bullying, adolescence, prevention, cross-cultural, child psychology, aggression

Citation: Sinclair HC, Wilson KJ and Stubbs-Richardson M (2022) Editorial: Advances in Youth Bullying Research. Front. Psychol. 13:860887. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.860887

Received: 23 January 2022; Accepted: 21 February 2022; Published: 07 June 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Sinclair, Wilson and Stubbs-Richardson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: H. Colleen Sinclair, csinclair@ssrc.msstate.edu

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Bullying Essay Topic Ideas & Titles

🏆 good bullying essay topic ideas, 🥇 interesting bullying topic ideas for college, 📍 essay topics to write about bullying, 📝 list of topics about bullying.

• Bullying Case Essay Sample The victim may not know what to do, to tell someone or to just let the bullying happen. Cyber bullying and social bullying can both lead to the victim to many directions, but which direction is the right one to ...
• How Does This Assertion Sit with Our Duty to Produce Trained Soldiers for the Front Line by Running Hard, Relevant and Fair Training? The overarching reason is a conceptually simple one: an historical preoccupation with maintaining the culture of superiority: "Throughout history the superiority of the winners has been connected to a denial of feelings - what, in the British Empire, was called ...
• Workplace Bullying Critical Essay It is difficult to define the acts and limitations of a bully because of complexity in measuring the level of bullying. While the focus of our study is the examination of the racial difference of the bully and the victim ...
• Bullying Essay/Story This was used in a olo provinical exam in the past to help prepare for my English 10 provincials this past summer. Bullying is one of the hardest things to get over, and this is my story.
• Bullying And Its Effect On Education School bullying robs them of that opportunity to have a bright and successful future, since they are unable to do well academically. However, identifying the types of bullying in school can help parents and teachers pinpoint which form of bullying ...
• Bullying Goes Tweeting Essay Sample The major objective of this study is to know how features of Twitter affect the prevalence of cyber bullying in the said site. After identifying the different forms of cyber bullying that occur in twitter and linking it to the ...
• Preventing Bullying Kyndall Dunn Dr. Hawkins The outcome of the surveys and the interview is that there needs to be more awareness on bullying because a lot of people and students in the Central Florida School Systems do not know how to deal with the problem. ...
• Cyber Bullying The writer's appeal to sense of justice triggers emotions of sympathy for the victims from the reader as the reader is inclined to feel an overwhelming unfairness at the fact that offenders are able to get away "unpunished". Thus, the ...
• Speech: Stop Bullying in the U.S. Teachers and fellow students are failing to stand up for the bullied. If we do this, we can look forward to a future where people do not tolerate any form of bullying, and kids are accepted for who they are.
• The Problem of Bullying in School – We Should Be Aware Bullying in schools presents problems to every age group therefore there should be more bullying prevention programs to help get rid of the problem. Older age bullying is defined from the grades of eighth to a senior in high school.
• Bullying and Its Effects on Individual’s Education The author of this work takes the stance that bullying does most positively affect an individual in terms of their quality of education and in fact does continue to affect the individual who receives and even the one who perpetrates ...
• Bullying in the Workplace Workplace Bullying Prevalence "Many bullied employees feel victimized by the bully and the human resource department" One of the issues leading to an increase in workplace bullying is the economical decline. According to the Workplace Bullying Institute in 72 percent ...
• Effects of Bullying Bullying is happening everywhere and the chances that you, that all of us have bullied, been bullied or at least encountered bullying are high. Consequently, there is evidence of more emotional scarring in girls who are bullied than in incidences ...
• Bullying and Suicide Essay Example Once the students are back home, a requisite must be to share their perceptions both at the school and at the interior of their very own communities. Families will start to receive a very positive input from their children experiences ...
• Cyber Bullying Problem in Nowadays Society In order to understand the problem and develop an intervention plan that can be used to stop it, it is important to identify the various forms of bullying that are going on within the schools and the trends they are ...
• School Bullying Paper Essay Sample I told her about the voluntary nature of the interview and at anytime if she wanted to discontinue the interview we could, if she decided to continue or not, it would not affect her relationship with me or with the ...
• How To Stop Bullying In Schools Indicators of bullying can be recognized in the early stages and if these signals can be seen at onset, they can be tamed to avoid a much bigger problem in the future. Classroom discussions should also be held about the ...
• Bullying Research Paper I took a picture of all the rude comments and the picture of us and made a collage, I then reposted it on the page saying that I would use the information I found in my research paper. It is ...
• The Necessity Of Anti-Bullying Awareness We need to do something to help eliminate bullying and one way to do so is by raising anti- bullying awareness. To lower the number of people getting bullied in any way, I believe that anti- bullying awareness is key.
• Bullying-Literary Review It looks at the general occurrence of bullying and the researches that indicate the extent of bullying in the different parts of the world. Richter and AMA add the factor of imbalance of power to the definition of bullying.
• Bullying & media Thus we have come to conclude that power is good when it is used for the benefit of many and it becomes bad when it is used to suppress the rights of others or to render harm to those who ...
• Cyber Bullying Is the Fastest Growing Trend in Bullying Cyber bullying can come in many ways: text message, email, website, blogs, They can be pictures taken from a camera phone sent to many people to see. A place to "get away" and when those things are taken away the ...
• Example Of Should Colleges Be Required To Prohibit Bullying And Harassment Argumentative Essay This served as a wakeup call for the legislators to come up will laws to stop this form of bullying. This though would not eliminate the problem completely from colleges nonetheless, it is expected that colleges will be restored as ...
• Types Of Bullying Among Italian School Children Critical Thinking The research took place in one of the typical schools of the Rome and involved the students of the 11-14 years old. Although the prevalence of bullying the children in the Italian schools is quite high, none of the pupils ...
• Bullying Bosses Q3) If you were a victim of workplace bullying, what steps would you take to try to reduce its occurrence? Insecurity, lack of confidence, and low self esteem are a few factors that could contribute to workplace bullying.
• Example Of Social Media Bullying Term Paper In large letters that tower over the city street it's a picture of a box of crackers, and the promise "You will be back for more". These essays looks at social media as a new form of bullying under the ...
• Report on Bullying in Malaysia and What Can Be Done to Solve the Problem Bullying is explained as an aggressive behavior that is recurrent and deliberate in which a gradual dominance exists between the one being bullied and the bully themselves. In order to fully fulfill the research, the researcher decided to relate the ...
• Bullying: It Is Right or Wrong Essay At the same time, girls and boys are going to say they are victims of bullies. Children who are victims of bullying keep it to themselves.
• School significant section of children and adolescents. Bullying Physical effects of bullying Infact, it is tangible that bullying harms children's physical health, and affectthem negatively. Physical bullying takes no prisoners, so it can occur anytime, anywhere and allvictims can be exposed to this kind of bullying.
• Bullying and School A clear definition of bullying and a policy that disallows it and lays out the consequences is one means to arm a school. And also, there is alot of bullying going in that school, and I know a kid who ...
• Free Essay On Bullying As A Social Psychological Issue Bullying, which is an age old vice, has serious detrimental effects of the lives of both the victims and the perpetrators in the long run. While this is the case, political leaders have turned to psychologists in search of a ...
• Children Bullying Essay This paper discusses the problem of child bullying, several related aspects of the issue and what are the provisions which can help in solving the issue. The issue should be seriously negotiated with the children and in this method the ...
• Good Preventing Bullying Essay Example Colleges and universities should have anti-bullying and anti-harassment programs intended to control the use of internet and prevention of bullying. They should also be educated on the effects and the provisions of the law on internet bullying.
• Cyber Bullying Essay Unfortunately, the power of the internet can be used negatively, such as in bullying. Education can help deter bullying by enabling the young internet users to be in a position to predict the outcomes of certain decisions.
• Free Research Paper On The Social Issue Of Bullying Analysis of an individual's portrait who is working hard to make changes in the field of Educational bullying Analysis of this social issue of bullying in schools- Reflections drawn upon this person's actions and work and the results of his ...
• Children And Youth: Real Life Consequences Of Bullying With the right leadership and education, we can assure the overall health of our youth and their development because that is the most important thing to take away from this paper. Essentially giving our youth a loving and nurturing environment ...
• Essay On Bullying In Schools: Annotated Bibliography Retrieved 20 October,2013 from http://www.violencepreventionworks.org/public/bullying_effects.pageThis article adopts a categorical approach in discussing the impacts of bullying on various groups of people, including the bullies, bystanders and the schools. The Impact of Bullying on Students and Schools.
• Doing the Right Thing: The Need to Stop School Bullying And if we want to stop violence, we have to, or should, take immediate action, and ask ourselves, "What are the most common causes of violence in youth or adult?", "What can I do to prevent this?", and "How has ...
• Anti-bullying laws The number of kids that get bullied everyday are increasing in the state of Arizona. In order to stop the bullying in the schools of mesa, Arizona must create a stronger anti-bullying law.
• Free Research Paper On The Effect Of Teacher Intervention On Bullying However, the researchers caution against generalizing the results to the real world given the limitations of the single subject study. There also appears to be an inverse relationship between the independent variable and dependent variable as increased applications of the ...
• Ron Banks - Bullying in School The decision to use a subjective title responds to the writer's questions regarding bullying and the consequences to the victims and those who commit it. A clear presentation and breakdown of the issues gives the audience visualization of bullying and ...
• Causes And Nature Of The Workplace Bullying Report Given the prospective that there might be an expansion of the store, the employees compete on the basis of who can get the promotions or higher places of power. This would help to avoid the advancement of the conflict to ...
• Psychological Effects Of Cyber Bullying On Adolescents Literature Review Samples It is "Masquerading" and is the most common form of bullying.- There is also a form of bullying that even known and familiar people do. Cyber bullying is a criminal activity, and it adds burden to the criminal justice system.
• Bullying Research Paper Examples As such, the aim of this paper is to describe the myriad of issues construed to constitute the epitome of interest for researchers as far as this anti-social behavior is concerned that is, the characteristics of the persons who author ...
• Free Bullying In The Workplace Research Paper Example Since workplace assault poses a tremendous threat to physical and psychological well-being of victims, mental, emotional and physical consequences of bullying were given a particular focus in the concluding part of the project. Workplace bullying is a type of bullying ...
• Essay On Cyber-bullying Types And Methods Australia is one of the global leaders in the usage of mobile phone and text messaging and this contributes to the greater risk of cyber-bullying incidents, a study done by Campbell in 2005 revealed that out of one-fourth eighth standard ...
• Bullying Bullying is a problem that is also a cause of worry for the parents and the teachers. The one big thing that encourages a bully is the failure of the victim to complain against one.
• Workplace Bullying And Ethical Leadership Such badgering has taken a toll, not simply on the physical and mental prosperity of the individual specifically influenced, be that as it may, on his or her familial and social relations, work efficiency, and in general workforce resolve. The ...
• Harassment/Bullying In The Workplace Essay Examples Among the critical problems that the company is facing are the ethical issues concerning employees and/or members of the middle management that engaged in acts of harassment and or bullying. Recently, the Canadian operations of Wal-Mart was placed on a ...
• Cyber-bullying: be performed by speech or language However, a new formality of bullying is called "cyber-bullying"that is a hot potato in XXI century and more and more popular. Possiblecauses of cyber-bullying One of the first and foremost causes of cyber-bullying is power.
• Psychological effects of bullying in adolescence To support this thesis, Sourander et al.'s 2007 study, which observed the mental health of bullied and victimised males in adolescence and then adulthood, will be examined, as well as a study conducted by Hawker and Boulton which provides a ...
• Bullying in the workplace essay sample An analysis of the issue will include: a definition of workplace bullying, typical behaviours associated with bullying, profiles of both the bully and the victim, and the effects of bullying on workers and the organization. I agree with this article, ...
• How can schools prevent bullying assignment Josselson offers this definition, " Identity, then is a dynamic fitting together of parts of the personality with the realities of the social world so that a person has a sense both of internal coherence and meaningful relatedness to the ...
• Bullies like bullying In a chilling finding,' she wrote, a ? the researchers found aggressive youths appear to enjoy inflicting pain on others". In the paragraph above I find these facts to be startling.
• Correlations among depression, suicidal tendencies, bullying, cyberbullying, experiences of victimization, and suicide in high school students The purpose of the study was explicitly identified as closely evaluating correlations among the following variables: depression, suicidal tendencies, bullying, as well as experiences of victimization. Moreover, the authors disclosed that the conceptual framework of interpersonal theory of suicide, the ...
• Bullying and depression With today's emphasis on bullying and bullying prevention and zero tolerance in schools, there may have been a different outcome today to this tragedy, if there were some form of anti-bullying education, awareness, or school policies implemented at Columbine and ...
• Is it a tradition to continue bullying and use foul language? In some parts of the world, when there is a stand taken against bullying and cussing words, they are threatened to take their police complaints back, FIR's or any other threat that can be harmful to the people who take ...
• Theories of discrimination and workplace bullying There are several theories concerning colorism or discrimination based on skin color in the workplace that has been coupled with social and structural theories of the African American experience and or new theories of race and discrimination within the United ...
• School bullying in california This is because through the meetings both the parents and teachers get to know the causes of school bullying and as such make necessary recommendations. The studies done on the issue of bullying in this country and abroad have contributed ...
• Student in china suffering from school bullying education essay This paper investigates the peer victimization experiences of an internal migrant student in an urban public school in China, analyzes the social context in which the victimization took place, discusses the variables that may have exacerbated or decreased the bullying ...
• The problem of bullying The inability to maximize these cognitive resources is because a student lives in fear and channels a lot of effort on strategies that can offer security against further bullying. The best way to stop bullying is by avoiding situations that ...
• Character education and bullying characteristics prevention The investigator assessed perception, knowledge, and attitudes of bullying at the preschool level, and to identify the quality of children's literature with a bullying theme. While the researcher read the pictured literature and teaching the character education activity, with bullying ...
• A review of literature: bullying effects The reviewed children's' books showed the roles of the bully, the bystander and the importance of adult involvement when bullying takes place. It is significant to communicate that the victim in each of the stories used was capable of rising ...
• Bullying and its impact on bullying There aretwo actual types of bullying but it can happen in a lot of different ways, the effects, and the bystanders. Social bullying is spreading rumors, telling people to not be friends with their victim, leaving them out and embarrassing ...
• Case study on bullying It is difficult to find enough data on the problem, because the quantity of the publications on the topic is quite small. Writing a case study on bullying in school, you should concentrate your efforts on the revealing of this ...
• Effects of social media on juveniles and how that impact has changed the way bullying is addressed In the modern networking society, social media is highly to blame for its immense contribution to the high rate of bullying experienced among juveniles. Bullying Beyond the Schoolyard: Preventing and Responding to Cyberbullying.
• The golden rule : anti- bullying essay The Golden Rule Bullying has been in the news more lately than in the past, because of the tragedies that follow the torture and harassment of the young children in our country. The response to the increasing teen suicides and ...
• Why are workplace bullying and violence important issues for organizations? Some of the indirect results of workplace bullying includes decrease in efficiency and productivity, loss in the quality of the products, loss of corporate image, and a drop in the number of customers. The duty of the employer to provide ...
• Where to draw the line with bullying and freedom of speech Consequently, the extent to which a public institution can punish a person for expressing their opinion is an issue and a question arises: is this person using their freedom of speech legitimately or is this person causing a disruption that ...
• Workplace bullying It usually occurs when there is a power disparity among people and is repetitive in nature; almost 49% of workers in America have reported cases of being bullied at the workplace according to the statistics laid down by 2007 Workplace ...
• Workplace bullying and victimisation on productivity impact The objectives that will be used to achieve that are as follow; To assesses gender differences and ethnicity in a given work place To identify perceptions of work bullying and victimisation To analyse implications of work bullying and victimisation To ...
• Impact of bullying and depression psychology essay The results of his studies were published in a Swedish book in 1973 and in the United States in 1978 under the title Aggression in the Schools, Bullies and Whipping Boys. In the continuum of participants in a bullying situation, ...
• Bullying's effects You do not know how much it can mean to someone when you show you care. Consider the benefits from bullying, it is part of life and you can learn from it.
• Cyber bullying and racial discrimination Governments and schools should see the brighter side of these two religions instead of stereotyping them as terrorist in accordance to what have happened in the events of 9/11 Attacks in New York and Charlie Hebdo killings. Games and activities ...
• Effects of cyber bullying criminology essay Over the years the cyber bullying has received a lot of attention from the media and administration in school settings. Although existing research suggests that new form of bullying have similar negative effects as traditional bullying, additional research is needed ...
• Bullying of gay and lesbian students
• The ways in which attempts are being made to address the problem of cyber bullying in the criminal justice system of england and wales
• Preventing school bullying
• Bullying which is how to approach when
• Bullying: types, effects and government initiatives
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• American students' worst case of bullying: misunderstanding the condition of epilepsy
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• Bullying in school
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• The dangers of cyber bullying
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• The struggles of bullying
• Bullying and harassment
• Strategies to combat workplace bullying
• The psychological effects of cyber bullying
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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165 Bullying Research Topics: Qualitative & Quantitative

Have you ever witnessed someone face unwanted aggressive behavior from classmates? According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 1 in 5 students says they have experienced bullying at least once in their lifetime. These shocking statistics prove that bullying is a burning topic that deserves detailed research.

In this article, you will find as many as 165 bullying research paper topics created by our custom-writing experts especially for students. We will also provide actionable writing tips. Check them out!

• 🔝 Top 12 Research Topics
• ❓Top 12 Research Questions
• ⚠️ Types of Bullying
• 💡 Qualitative Research Topics
• 📊 Quantitative Research Ideas
• 🖥️ Cyberbullying Topics
• 🕵️ Bullying Crime and Law Topics

🚀 Bullying Research Paper Outline

🔗 references, 🔝 top 12 bullying research topics.

• Long-term effects of bullying.
• Bullying as a cause of addiction.
• Workplace harassment prevention.
• Bullying and domestic violence.
• The impact of bullying on society.
• Victimization: how to break the silence.
• Anti-bullying laws and their importance.
• Bullying is the crime of the 21 st century.
• Emotional and physical forms of bullying.
• Are bullying awareness programs efficient?
• Cyberbullying: consequences and solutions.
• The impact of social media on bullying rates.

❓ Top 12 Bullying Research Questions

•  How does aggression affect individual education?
• Is there a correlation between bullying and suicide?
• What is the bystander effect in workplace bullying?
• How does harassment impact job satisfaction and retention?
• How does cyberbullying affect school-aged children?
• Are there any victim selection patterns in school bullies?
• Why do people accept and condone workplace bullying?
• Is there a correlation between bullying and school dropout rates?
• How does maltreatment interfere with children’s emotional development?
• In what ways does interpersonal aggression influence adolescents’ academic performance?
• What is the connection between school bullying and relationship problems in adulthood?
• Should we prosecute cyberbullying and cyberstalking as criminal offenses?

⚠️ Types of Bullying 

There are several types of bullying, each with their own methods and characteristics:

💡 Qualitative Bullying Topics for Research Papers

• Common characteristics of school bullies.
• The peer victimization selection patterns.
• How did COVID-19 impact workplace bullying?
• Anti-bullying measures in schools and their effects.
• Analyze the causes of bullying and harassment at work.
• Parental feeling and perceptions of bullying incidence.
• Explain the impact of harassment acts on the perpetrators.
• The psychological effect of the bystander effect on empathy levels.
• Domestic abuse and interparental violence’s impact on bullying.
• Look into the effect of protective factors in victimization experiences.
• The strength of parental relationships and bullying perpetration.
• What are the long-term behavioral effects of school bullying on children?
• Bullying response patterns from parents of victims and perpetrators.
• The impact of bullying on children with developmental disabilities.
• Explain the emotional effects of workplace bullying.
• Personal ways of coping with bullying among adolescents.
• Study the alleviating effect of community on harassment.
• The emotional and mental state of workplace bullies.
• Discuss the impact of ineffective organizational practices on bullying incidence.
• Review the victims’ views on interventional approaches to workplace bullying.
• What are the factors in group bullying participation?
• Provide an overview of key features of adolescent bullying of students with disabilities.
• Organizational factors impacting the solutions to bullying.
• Research the factors of investigating the cases of nurse bullying.
• What is the role of friendship bonds in bullying experiences?
• Provide an insight into the primary causes of bullying.
• The physical health impacts of bullying on adolescents.
• The experiences of teenagers with bullying and suicidal ideation.
• Explore the features of social isolation as a form of bullying.
• Challenges in finding support for aggression experienced by teenagers.
• Study the impact of cyberbullying on the physical health of children.
• Power, control, and purpose as factors in bullying.
• What is the impact of teacher-initiated bullying reduction strategies?

Bullying is a serious issue that has gotten a lot of academic attention. In particular, the need for qualitative research on this topic has significantly grown. Qualitative approaches use methods to identify and evaluate crucial aspects of adolescent bullying and find solutions to decrease this problem. Feel free to use any of our qualitative bullying research topics to kickstart the writing process.

📊 Quantitative Bullying Research Paper Topics

• Bullying of LGBTQ+ adolescents.
• Gender differences in harassment behavior.
• Depression as a long-term effect of victimization.
• Long-term effects of bullying in adulthood.
• Quantitative research on bullying and mental health.
• Analyze the effects of bullying on victim’s physical health.
• Aggression and substance use: a structural equation modeling study.
• Study the correlation between parental involvement and the frequency of bullying.
• Frequency of victimization depending on ethnicity.
• Conduct quantitative analysis of bullying according to school types.
• Bullying and academic achievement : a longitudinal study.
• Research the prevalence of anxiety among victims of interpersonal aggression.
• Provide a quantitative examination of bullying by country.
• Compare the prevalence of intimidation in urban vs. rural schools.
• Frequency of bullying incidents in relation to school size.
• Quantitative association between intimidation and self-esteem.
• Write a regression analysis of victimization phenomenon.
• Impact of bullying on academic performance of teenagers.
• Bullying prevention programs: a quantitative evaluation.
• Analyze the impact of harassment on anxiety symptoms.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of popular anti-bullying PSAs.
• Write a quantitative study of the median age of cyberbullying victims.
• School strategies for preventing intimidation between students.
• Study the correlation between racial differences in aggression experiences.
• Evaluate the efficiency of legislation to reduce bullying.
• How interpersonal aggression affects peer relationships.
• Harassment in third-world countries’ schools.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of family interventions in addressing bullying.
• Assess the productivity of school-based anti-bullying support programs.
• Aggression and social media use : a quantitative assessment.
• Degree of dependence on bullying and academic outcomes.
• Effects of abuse on body mass index in adolescence.
• Study the frequency of victimization among students with disabilities.
• Review of the association between harassment and physical health.
• Provide a quantitative examination of bullying and peer support.
• What is the impact of intimidation on social adaptation?
• Assess the efficiency of strategies to cope with bullying.
• Provide a quantitative investigation of bullying and school attendance.
• Effects of interpersonal aggression on sleep quality: a longitudinal study.

Quantitative research analyzes the issue based on statistics, percentages, and ratios. This type of research often defines bullying in the context of social behaviors and relationships. Choose any idea from our list of quantitative bullying research topics and study the issue using numerical data. 

🖥️ Bullying Research Topics: Cyberbullying

• Cyberbullying in the form of ghosting.
• Why are online abusers challenging to identify?
• Factors that help identify online abuse.
• Who are the main targets of online harassment?
• Laws and regulations that prevent and penalize cyberbullying .
• Present the reasons behind increasing cases of cyberbullying in modern society.
• Study the facts about cyberbullying issues in the LGBTQ+ community.
• Is age a determinant when it comes to the problem of cyberbullying?
• The effects of cyberbullying and violent behavior on victims.
• Are the ethics of cyberbullying the same as with regular bullying?
• Teenage cyberbullying is a cause of mental disorders.
• Study social media as one of the most common places for online harassment.
• Research computer games as a place of online abuse.
• Explore the reasons why the public is becoming more concerned about cyberbullying of children.
• What is the frequency of cyberbullying vs. traditional bullying?
• Boys and girls: who are more prominent victims of digital harassment?
• Cyberbullying is a manifestation of internal frustration.
• How does anti-social behavior result in online victimization?
• What are the consequences for individuals who cause cyberbullying?
• Explore the connection between juvenile delinquency and cyberbullying.
• Initiatives that can be taken to reduce the occurrence of digital harassment2.
• What is cyberbullying among university students connected to?
• The difference between offline and online bullying.
• How does cyberbullying affect the social lives of the victims?
• Study cyberbullying as one of the reasons behind high school absenteeism.
• Evaluate the organizations that provide support to victims of cyberbullying.
• Discuss cyberstalking as a distinct kind of cyberbullying.
• Education on cyberbullying as one of the measures to prevent it.
• Is there online etiquette to prevent digital harassment?
• Can blocking the cyberbully protect the victim?
• Are nonconsensual sexual messages considered cyberbullying?
• The role of educators in the issue of online abuse.
• Should parents be involved in the resolution of cyberbullying issues?
• Is peer pressure the reason behind digital abuse?
• Anonymity as a facilitator of cyberbullying.
• Ridiculing with insults as a subtype of cyberbullying.
• Case study: celebrities who were affected by online harassment.
• Research the psychology of aggressors who initiate and support cyberbullying.
• Suggest the actions of a parent whose child was subjected to online abuse.

According to statistics, 15% of kids between 12 and 18 who reported being bullied at school said they were harassed online or via text messages. Writing essays on cyberbullying may assist in raising awareness and drawing people’s attention to this issue.

🕵️ Bullying Research Titles: Crime and Law

• The impact of abuse on troubled adolescents.
• Bullying as a form of relational aggression.
• The social concepts of harassment and its types.
• The “Mean Stinks” program and girl-to-girl bullying.
• Rank American states by their anti-bullying laws.
• Suggest intervention techniques for preventing bullying in elementary and middle schools.
• How can we prevent sexual harassment and aggression in the workplace?
• Consider ways to resolve conflicts and stop bullying within an organization.
• How can we address aggression among children in school settings?
• The Dumfries and Galloway Council’s anti-bullying policy.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy to help victims of harassment.
• What is the role of parenting styles in bullying?
• Explore the prevalence of bullying in modern society.
• How can we use anti-bullying measures to deter juvenile crime and delinquency?
• Ways to deal with workplace bullying and the “office bully.”
• Anti-bullying practices in the criminal justice system.
• Research the negative impact of workplace bullying on mental health.
• The persistence of bullying in modern communities : an editorial.
• Nurse bullying as unprofessional conduct.
• Why should we recognize harassment as a serious social problem?
• The physical, emotional, and social aspects of intimidation.
• Do we need government regulations to prevent bullying?
• How does bullying affect the social learning theory?
• Study the changing landscape of aggression in the modern world.
• Research cyberbullying through anonymity on social media.
• Is abuse a social determinant of health?
• Evaluate factors that increase the likelihood of interpersonal aggression.
• Bullying as a form of social and criminal deviance.
• Suggest ways of balancing free speech and anti-bullying laws.
• Study the link between bullying and substance abuse.

Bullying incidents are typically not crimes. Nonetheless, some forms of bullying are prohibited by law and must be reported to the authorities. This includes bullying that involves physical harm or assault, theft, long-term harassment, intimidation, etc. If this interests you, choose any of our bullying topics connected to crime and law and write a paper about it!

Have you been assigned to write an essay about bullying? If you need help with this task, you’re in luck: check out our practical guide with practical tips and examples! 

Bullying Research Paper Introduction

Let’s start from the very beginning. A strong introduction must include the following components: 

• A hook. The opening sentence of an introduction paragraph should contain something attention-grabbing. It can be a piece of statistics, a shocking fact, a quotation, or a powerful statement related to your topic.

The internet has transformed the landscape of human interaction, giving rise to a realm where words can wound or even kill.

You can also check out our free attention grabber generator to help you develop catchy hooks!

• A brief overview . An introduction should provide background information on the paper’s significance within a specific field. 

Teenagers spend more and more time navigating a complex virtual world online via social media sites like Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. According to recent studies, these hours of increasing online usage may be linked to cyberbullying behaviors.

• An explanation of your position . The introduction needs to transition smoothly from background information to the specific argument of the paper. 
• A thesis statement . Finish your introductory paragraph with a short summary of the paper’s main ideas. Read on to learn how to write it!

Bullying Thesis Statement: How to Write

A thesis statement is a sentence that summarizes the arguments in your essay. Follow these steps to create a compelling and informative thesis statement: 

• Examine the primary sources.
• Choose the most compelling arguments.
• Formulate your own position based on the information you’ve found.
• Turn it into a short persuasive statement.

Most of the time, cyberbullying goes unreported, but it is still an extremely destructive and, in some cases, fatal phenomenon.

To make the writing process easier, try using our free thesis generator .

Main Body & Topic Sentences for Bullying Research Paper

The main body of your text should contain topic sentences, compelling evidence, and a description of your research and findings. To write a good body paragraph, follow our tips:

📌 Give plenty of detail on the points raised in your introduction.

📌 Gather all the facts you’ve learned from different sources during your investigation.

📌 Create a logical structure for your argument.

When adolescents connect with their peers in person, they adopt social norms that differ significantly from those used in online communication. Social media tends to make them more aggressive due to their anonymity and ability to avoid retaliation. Furthermore, because they cannot see the actual consequences of their activities, cyberbullies may feel less remorse or empathy when engaging in bullying behaviors.

Bullying Conclusion Paragraph: Writing Tips

To create an effective research paper conclusion , you will need to rewrite your thesis and summarize your main arguments. But that’s not all of it: it is also necessary to leave a lasting impression on the reader. Here’s how you can do it:

🎯 Finish by connecting the last paragraph to the first.

🎯 Conclude with a statement that is made up of one-syllable words.

🎯 End with a sentence that summarizes your main points.

Cyberbullying is a grave problem that can happen to anyone but is especially widespread among young people. For this reason, schools and parents must be aware of this issue and take appropriate action to avoid negative consequences. But we must also remember that the power to combat cyberbullying lies in our empathy, vigilance, and kindness towards each other.

We hope that our list bullying topics for research papers will be helpful to you! If you haven’t found a suitable topic here, you can also try our free research question generator to help you develop a writing idea. Feel free to comment below or share this article with your friends!

Further reading:

• Research Paper Format Tips for Ultimate Writing Success
• A List of 181 Hot Cyber Security Topics for Research [2023]
• How to Write a Cause & Effect Essay: Examples, Outline, & Tips
• 500 Sociology Questions and Topics [Examples & Tips]
• A List of 580 Interesting Research Topics
• How to Write an Outline: Alphanumeric, Decimal, & Other Formats
• Bullying: Psychology Today
• A Guide to Understanding and Preventing School Bullying: University of Southern California
• Bullying: A Big Problem with Big Consequences: University of Minnesota
• What Are the Best Ways to Prevent Bullying in Schools?: University of California, Berkeley
• Bullying: What Educators Can Do About It: Pennsylvania State University
• Fast Fact: Preventing Bullying: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (.gov)
• Workplace Bullying: University of Mary Washington
• What You Need to Know about School Violence and Bullying: UNESCO
• Bullying: How to Spot It and How to Stop It: University of Utah
• Guide to Preventing Cyberbullying: Ohio University
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Bullying Essay Topics: 50+ Ideas to Get Started

by  Antony W

December 16, 2023

Are you looking for essay topics about bullying for your next assignment? We’ve put together a list of 50+ ideas to get you started.

Bullying is one of the most controversial issues that get the most attention these days. It’s prevalent in school, playgrounds, places of work, and even in pour very own neighborhood. Bullying tends tend to stem from different fronts, mostly from social differences, religious beliefs, physical appearances, and social differences.

Given how sensitive and common bullying is, it may not be exactly clear to you what topic to work on if you teacher asks you to write an essay on the subject. If this is the case for you, see the topic ideas below to start your brainstorming, research, and writing process.

Key Takeaways

• You should choose a topic that you find interesting based on personal experience or observation.
• Read and understand the assignment brief before you start writing, so you know the kind of essay to write.
• If in doubt, don’t hesitate to ask your teacher for clarification.

50+ Best Bullying Essay Topics

The following is a list of 50+ topics and ideas that you may find interesting enough to explore in your essay about bullying:

Cyber Bullying Essay Topics

• How does the impact of cyberbullying compare to that of bullying in schools?    
• How does childhood bullying affect individuals in their adult lives and what are the potential long-term psychological impacts?
• Behaviors and signs bullied children commonly exhibit and how we can identify and address these indicators.
• How do children typically react when they experience bullying and what are healthy coping mechanisms they can adopt?
• Should children defending themselves against bullies face consequences?
• What role should teachers and school administrators play in preventing and addressing bullying within educational institutions?
• Should schools provide counseling or support services for children who experience bullying?
• How parents can understand and address bullying behaviors at home.

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Interesting Essay Ideas on Bullying

• What are the variations in bullying behaviors and patterns between boys and girls?
• How does bullying in schools adversely affect individuals and the school environment?
• Can you share your personal experience with bullying and explain how it affected you?
• Is cyberbullying less harmful than bullying that occurs in physical school environments?
• What are the common characteristics or traits found in individuals who engage in bullying behavior?
• The common traits or characteristics of individuals who often become targets of bullying
• How does experiencing bullying in childhood affect individuals’ lives in adulthood?
• What are the typical reactions and responses of an individual when they become a subject to bullying? 
• What strategies can victims of bullying employ to feel safe and protected within a school environment?
• Can you share your personal journey as a bullying survivor and explain how you managed to overcome it?
• What are the significant signs that parents can look for to recognize if their children are subject to bullying?
• How has the rise of the internet contributed to the increase in bullying and what are the reasons behind this?
• What are some common psychological strategies that bullies use to manipulate and harm their victims?

Cause and Effect Essay Topics on Bullying

• Why do children often target younger ones for persecution?
• How does being subject to bully affect an individual’s mental and emotional well-being?
• What motivates students to target those they perceive as weaker, and how can we address this behavior? 
• How does bullying contribute to a victim’s loss of self-esteem and confidence?
• How does bullying lead to a child becoming withdrawn and seeking solace in a confined space?
• How does the prevalence of bullying lead to an increase in aggressive behavior among students?
• Why are teenagers particularly susceptible to peer aggression?
• Why is verbal bullying a common form of harassment among peers?
• What are the consequences of each act of bullying?
• How does widespread bullying negatively affect the functioning of the youth environment and society as a whole?
• Why do children who experience bullying often develop a reluctance to attend school?
• How does bullying impact a child’s ability to engage with their peers?
• What are the psychosomatic signs that a child may exhibit due to bullying?
• How does bullying often mimic social structures with leaders, an average group, and those marginalized as “exiles”?
• What actions can parents take to create a secure environment for their child and counteract bullying in schools?
• How does the unequal power dynamic between aggressors and victims contribute to bullying?
• Who should take responsibility for addressing both psychological and physical violence at school?

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Easy Bullying Essay Topics

• What are the primary psychological effects that bullying has on adolescents, and how do these impacts manifest in their behavior and mental health?
• Could you analyze successful case studies of anti-bullying programs and their impact on school environments?
• What are the current trends, challenges, and proposed solutions to address the escalating issue of cyberbullying among teenagers?
• What effective strategies empower bystanders to intervene in bullying situations, and how does their intervention affect the outcome?
• How do bullying manifest in corporate environments and what strategies can organizations use to recognize, address, and prevent it in workplaces?
• What are the key factors influencing the correlation between bullying and academic achievement among students?
• Can you share case studies illustrating the impact of social media on bullying, along with the lessons learned from these incidents?
• What role do school policies play in preventing bullying, and how effective are these policies in curbing instances of harassment?
• What patterns and responses differ in bullying behaviors among different genders?

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About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

Subjective Well-Being and Bullying Victimisation: A Cross-National Study of Adolescents in 64 Countries and Economies

• Open access
• Published: 04 June 2024

Cite this article

You have full access to this open access article

• Ioannis Katsantonis   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7557-8136 1 ,
• Beatriz Barrado 2 ,
• Ros McLellan 1 &
• Gregorio Gimenez 3  

Bullying is a recognised serious public problem affecting many students worldwide. Despite the well-established empirical evidence for the negative consequences of bullying on adolescents? mental and physical health and educational outcomes, little is known about the link between bullying victimisation and adolescents? subjective well-being. Moreover, empirical studies using comparative large-scale survey data are particularly scarce. This study explores this question using nationally-representative data from 329,015 adolescents across 64 high and middle-income countries and economies from the 2018 PISA survey. Two measures of subjective well-being were considered: overall life satisfaction and positive affect. Multilevel regressions were estimated at three levels (student, school, and country). Results showed that bullying victimisation was negatively and significantly related to overall life satisfaction and positive affect after controlling for a wide set of factors affecting subjective well-being. Moreover, this negative relationship was more pronounced for top performing students. Locally adapted intervention programmes are needed to tackle the issue of school bullying and foster positive school climate and student well-being. Practical and policy implications are discussed in detail.

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

The theoretical accounts of subjective well-being (SWB) define this construct as a subjective evaluation of overall and specific satisfaction with life and positive affect and the absence of negative affect (Diener, 2009 ; McLellan & Steward, 2015 ). It is important to study students? well-being since it is linked with better academic competence (O?Toole & Simovska, 2022 ), positive school functioning (Bird & Markle, 2012 ), and later-life health and socio-economic advantage (DeNeve & Copper, 2012 ). Thus, rightly it has been described as an educational goal in itself (O?Toole & Simovska, 2022 ).

However, there is a globally growing concern about the declines in adolescent students? life satisfaction (Marquez & Long, 2020 ), and, especially, in developed countries (Due et al., 2019 ; Rees, 2019 ). This particularly concerning trend may manifest due to multiple factors, such as increasing levels of mental illness (Marquez et al., 2022 ), academic demands (Clarke, 2020 ), family background, and socio-economic status (SES) (Conger et al., 2010 ), school and classroom climate (Rathmann et al., 2018 ).

Nevertheless, one of the most pervasive educational problems across the globe, which can dramatically reduce SWB, is bullying victimisation at school. Bullying victimisation is usually defined as an aggressive physical and/or verbal behaviour that is repeated and is the product of a power imbalance between an agent (i.e., a bully) and the student who is the recipient of the aggressive action (i.e., victim) (Gimenez et al., 2021 ; Katsantonis, 2022 ; Olweus & Breivik, 2014 ). Recent evidence from 79 countries indicated that 23% of the secondary school students had fallen victim to school bullying victimisation at least a few times per month (OECD, 2019b ) and school bullying victimisation is manifesting with different strength in different countries (Katsantonis, 2021 ).

Even though extant empirical evidence has examined the impact of school bullying victimisation on students? well-being (e.g., Arslan et al., 2021 ; Sharpe et al., 2021 ), these studies did not account for multiple resilience factors across different levels that can promote well-being. Additionally, preceding research works have focused on limited within-country data and, thus, could not adjust for potentially meaningful country-level covariates. Moreover, past studies did not explicitly control for potential school-level factors.

Overall, given the detrimental effect of school bullying on students? SWB, our study aims to explore this association using a large nationally representative sample from 64 countries. In this study, we adopt a multisystem resilience approach (Masten et al., 2021 ). In multisystem resilience theory, promotive factors occur at multiple systems that are interconnected (Masten et al., 2021 ). Based on the theory, the resilience capacity of a student to maintain sufficient levels of life satisfaction and positive affectivity depends not only on the individual?s adaptive functioning and characteristics but also on the school system (Masten & Motti-Stefanidi, 2020 ) and more distal macrosystems (Masten & Motti-Stefanidi, 2020 ; Ungar, 2011 ). In this study, we account for both more proximal (e.g., school climate) and distal macrosystemic (e.g., countries? wealth) factors in the prediction of SWB. Specifically, the modelling accounts for personal factors (e.g., gender, age, immigration background, socio-economic status, and academic performance), school-level factors, such as the school climate (e.g., disciplinary climate, student co-operation, teacher support, teacher feedback), and country-level macrosystemic factors (e.g., human capital index, GDP per capita) that have been identified either as risk or protective factors. These variables are assumed to serve as promotive factors that sustain students? life satisfaction and positive affectivity, by being ?assets? that students from different cultural contexts hold and can improve their outcomes despite students being potential subjects of adversity, manifesting as school bullying victimisation (Masten et al., 2021 ; Ungar, 2011 ).

1 Literature Review

1.1 background characteristics influence on subjective well-being.

Multiple background characteristics have been linked with students? well-being. Most of the reviewed studies (e.g., Borraccino et al., 2018 ; Chen et al., 2020 ; Katsantonis et al., 2022 ), though, have not concomitantly explored how these background characteristics are influencing students? well-being across countries. These approaches do not offer a holistic picture of how these factors predict adolescent students? well-being when considered simultaneously.

The background characteristics considered here include gender, age, immigration background, and SES. Identifying as female has been connected to lower SWB (Chen et al., 2020 ; Katsantonis et al., 2022 ). Several studies have shown that, as students become older, their well-being declines (Brooks et al., 2020 ; Katsantonis et al., 2022 ). Higher individual socio-economic status has been found to be predictive of greater well-being (Shackleton et al., 2018 ). Similarly, coming from an immigrant background has been associated with lower SWB (Borraccino et al., 2018 ; Tang, 2019 ).

1.2 School climate and subjective well-being

Beyond students? background characteristics, other factors in the school ecosystem can play a protective role against declines in SWB. One such factor is school climate, which is defined as common beliefs, attitudes, and values that drive the interactions between students and adults and set the expectations of acceptable behaviours and norms in schools (Wang & Degol, 2016 ). Understandably, school climate is essential for fostering positive relationships and preventing problematic behaviours in school contexts (Thapa et al., 2013 ).

An integral aspect of the school climate is peer relationships (Katsantonis, 2024 ; Wang & Degol, 2016 ). Peer relationships play a critical role in both adaptive and maladaptive psychological functioning (Wentzel, 2017 ). Not all peer relationships are positive, though. As has already been noted, bullying victimisation, an aspect of peer relations, is consistently linked with lower SWB (Bradshaw et al., 2017 ). There are multiple pathways through which bullying may impact adolescents? SWB. For example, bullying victimisation can induce long-lasting physical harm and psychological distress (Vanderbilt & Augustyn, 2010 ; Wolke & Lereya, 2015 ), poor social school adjustment, and psychosomatic symptoms (Rigby, 2003 ; Wolke & Lereya, 2015 ), and a cycle of violence (Falla et al., 2022 ; Walters, 2021 ).

A supportive school climate is critical for fostering well-being (Mischel & Kitsantas, 2020 ; Wang et al., 2013 ) and reducing the risk of bullying victimisation (Coyle et al., 2017 ; Katsantonis et al., 2021 ). Teachers and peers are the main sources of social support in schools (Mischel & Kitsantas, 2020 ) and studies have shown that supportive teachers are a significant protective factor against low levels of well-being (Flaspohler et al., 2009 ).

While a supportive school climate is important, it may not be enough on its own to promote well-being, according to authoritative school discipline theory (Gregory et al., 2010 ). A set of disciplinary norms and rules are also necessary to protect students? well-being by acting as a gatekeeper against problematic behaviours (OECD, 2019b ). Empirical evidence underscores the importance of having a good disciplinary climate for promoting well-being (Kim et al., 2021 ). Hence, it is reasonable to include measures of both disciplinary climate and supportive peer and teacher relations (e.g., feedback, support, co-operation) in the model.

However, existing empirical models linking school climate indicators with students? students? victimisation experiences and well-being may be lacking to some extent since they do not account for the complexity of school climate. To this end, we seek to explore the potential associations between different aspects of school climate and students? well-being.

1.3 Country-level factors predicting subjective well-being

Despite the wealth of information on the antecedents of student well-being coming from preceding empirical studies, few studies have examined the potential impact of countries? structural characteristics on well-being. These macro-level indicators reflect countries? economic growth, educational attainment, and health outcomes (House et al., 2004 ; Kraay, 2019 ) and can influence people?s health outcomes (Ran et al., 2023 ). Therefore, it is important to account for such influences on student well-being.

One of the most frequently cited country-level factors associated with well-being is economic growth (Mikucka et al., 2017 ). Economic success is typically measured through the gross domestic product per capita (GDP), which reflects the market value of the goods within a country within a specific period and is considered an indicator of the overall standard of living in a country (Wilson et al., 2013 ). However, in recent years, development scholars have advocated incorporating a holistic view in the measurement of a country?s material well-being. Following this, the human capital index (HCI) is a composite indicator that reflects new-borns? survival rates, years of schooling, and health (Kraay, 2019 ). Nevertheless, the evidence regarding whether its impact is inconclusive. Some cross-national studies have found a negative relationship between economic growth and well-being (Rudolf & Bethmann, 2023 ), while other studies with adult samples indicate a positive relationship but moderated by other country-level factors (Mikucka et al., 2017 ). Additionally, other evidence with school-aged children did not find a significant association between the economic development and students? SWB (Lee & Yoo, 2015 ). Therefore, to be as inclusive as possible of the potential individual-, school-, and country-level antecedents of SWB, we included both GDP per capita and the HCI at the country-level.

1.4 The moderating role of academic performance

Studies analysing the links between academic performance and SWB have found mixed results. Some studies indicate an inverse link, with higher academic performance being associated with lower well-being (Bortes et al., 2021 ; Heller-Sahlgren, 2018 ), whereas other studies report a positive link (B?cker et al., 2018 ; Suldo et al., 2008 ). Moreover, some evidence suggests that those students with higher academic performance are subject to less bullying victimisation, although conversely there is some evidence indicating that poor academic performance is associated with bullying victimisation (Laith & Vaillancourt, 2022 ). A recent empirical study showed that students at the low and high ends of the achievement continuum were at significant risk to be subject of bullying victimisation (Park et al., 2017 ).

A systematic review of empirical evidence indicated that students? academic competence is indicative of their academic reputation and the latter has an impact on students? peer relationships (Laith & Vaillancourt, 2022 ). Research has shown that low-performing students had less chances of being accepted by their peers (Hughes & Zhang, 2007 ), whilst high-performing students were more accepted by peers (Green et al., 1980 ) and have more friends (Wentzel et al., 2018 ). Given that high-performing and low-performing students may be at higher risk for falling victims of bullies, it might be possible that students? achievement status may be interacting with bullying victimisation in the prediction of subjective well-being. Hence, we explore this relationship in the present study.

2 The present study

Informed by the reviewed evidence, we identified several evidence gaps in the extant literature. Specifically, preceding studies have not thoroughly explored how individual-level, school-level, and country-level indicators are collectively functioning as a comprehensive system to predict student SWB. Furthermore, limited research has examined how student bullying victimisation may function at different levels of academic performance and how this may lead to greater or lower SWB. Hence, the following research questions guide our present study:

RQ1: How is bullying victimisation associated with students? SWB after controlling for background characteristics, school climate perceptions, and country-level socio-economic indicators?

RQ2: Does academic performance moderate the association between bullying victimisation and SWB?

3.1 Data and participants

The data came from the 2018 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a large international sample in three nested levels comprising 612,004 students attending 21,903 schools in 80 countries. The two-stage stratified random sampling process adopted in PISA ensured the representation of the entire target population at the country level (OECD, 2020 ). Our final sample consisted of students for whom data across all analysed variables were available. Notably, students from Spain and Vietnam were excluded due to concerns over the full assurance of international comparability (OECD, 2019a ). This exclusion reduced the original sample to 570,684 students attending 20,663 schools in 78 countries and economies. Like other large-scale assessments, PISA is not immune to some technical problems. For example, the presence of missing observations stems from the fact that students and directors leave questions unanswered, given the lack of motivation when answering an evaluation that does not affect the students? academic record. Table 1 shows the share of missing values for all the variables included in the models. At the student level, missing data ranged from 0 to 24.26% (Bullying Victimization). At the school level, the range was from 5.61% (Disciplinary Climate) to 24.9% (Student Co-operation). At the country level, two countries (Belarus and Brunei Darussalam) lacked values for the Human Capital Index 2018, which diminished the initial sample to 76 countries.

Students with one or more missing values for any variable in our models were excluded using listwise deletion, ensuring that only complete cases were utilised for statistical analysis (see Table A 1 in the Supplemental Materials). As Sun et al. ( 2012 ) and Fern?ndez-Guti?rrez et al. ( 2020 ) point out, in the case of working with such a large data sample as the one compiled by PISA, the results do not vary significantly by making the estimates with the original sample or by imputing the missing values.

The current analytic sample sizes for the overall life satisfaction and positive affect models were 329,015 and 325,539 distributed across 64 countries. This accounted for 57.65% and 57.04% of the original PISA sample, respectively. Table A 2 in the Supplemental Materials provides the countries and their corresponding sample size. These are referred to as countries, regardless of the status of Hong Kong, Moscow, and Tatarstan and the fact that in China, data refers to the regions and cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Guangdong.

3.2 Measures

In this section, we describe the variables included in the model. All indices were weighted likelihood standardized scores (Warm, 1989 ) that have a mean value of around 0 and a standard deviation of 1. Cronbach?s alpha was used to check the internal consistency of each index within countries for cross-country comparisons. In all cases, Cronbach?s alpha coefficients ranged between 0.7 and 0.9, indicating high internal consistency (OECD, 2020 ).

3.3 Dependent Variables

Overall life satisfaction was measured by the question ?How satisfied do you feel about your life, on a scale from 0 to 10. Zero means you feel ?not at all satisfied? and 10 means ?completely satisfied?. Higher values in the response indicated higher life satisfaction. Although single-items are often criticized, several empirical studies have confirmed their advantages over multi-item scales due to its simplicity in providing a subjective evaluation of adolescent life satisfaction in cross-cultural comparisons (OECD, 2013 ).

Positive affect was measured by the index constructed by PISA, which was derived from student responses about how frequently (?never?, ?rarely?, ?sometimes?, ?always?) they feel happy, joyful, and cheerful. The index average was 0 and the standard deviation (SD) was 1 across OECD countries. Positive values in this index indicated that the student reported higher positive affect than the average student across OECD countries.

3.4 Independent Variables

Bullying victimisation was measured by the index of bullying victimisation . This index is based on students? experiences with bullying-related behaviours at school. It measures three types of bullying: physical, relational, and verbal. The index was derived from student responses about how frequently (ranging from ?never or almost never? to ?once a week or more?) during the 12 months prior to the PISA test they have had the following experiences in school: (1) ?Other students left me out of things on purpose? (relational bullying); (2) ?Other students made fun of me? (verbal bullying); (3) ?I was threatened by other students? (verbal/physical bullying). The index average was 0 and the SD was 1 across OECD countries. Positive values indicated that the student showed a higher value of bullying victimisation at school than the average student in OECD countries.

Additionally, an interaction term was created with our focal independent variable ( bullying victimisation ) to analyse if the relationship between SWB and bullying victimisation was different in the case of top performer students and their peers. We created the binary variable top performer equal to 1 whether the student was a high performer and equal to 0 otherwise. PISA rated student performance on seven proficiency levels (from 0 to 6) where students scoring at the highest levels (5 and 6) in at least one area (maths, reading, or science) were considered top performers (OECD, 2019a ). The share of top performers students was 8.80% in the total sample.

3.5 Control Variables

The covariates entered in the model were selected from the literature on the determinants of SWB. Regarding individual and family characteristics, we included gender, age, country of birth, and socio-economic status. Gender was captured by the binary question ?Are you female or male??. Age was measured by the variable Age , measuring the age difference in months. To determine the country of birth students were asked, ?In what country were you born?? with the answering categories ?Country of test? and ?Other country?. Economic, Social, and Cultural Status was measured by the PISA index ESCS. This index was derived from three student indicators about the family background: parental highest occupational status, highest parental educational attainment, and home possessions.

Our model accounted also for school climate characteristics. We included disciplinary climate, student co-operation, teacher support , and teacher feedback.

The disciplinary climate was measured by the PISA index of disciplinary climate. The index was derived from student responses about how frequently (?every lesson?, ?most lessons?, ?some lessons? and ?never or hardly ever?) the following things happened: (1) ?Students don?t listen to what the teacher says?; (2) ?There is noise and disorder?; (3) ?The teacher has to wait a long time for students to quiet down?; (4) ?Students cannot work well?; (5) ?Students don?t start working for a long time after the lesson begins?.

The student co-operation was measured by the PISA index of student cooperation. This index was derived from student responses (?not at all true?, ?slightly true?, ?very true? and ?extremely true?) to the following statements: (1) ?Students seem to value cooperation; (2) ?It seems that students are co-operating with each other?; (3) ?Students seem to share the feeling that co-operating with each other is important?.

The teacher support was measured by the PISA index of teacher support. The index was derived from student responses about how frequently (?every lesson?, ?most lessons?, ?some lessons? and ?never or hardly ever?) the following things happened in their language-of-instruction lessons: (1) ?The teacher shows an interest in every student?s learning?; (2) ?The teacher gives extra help when students need it?; (3) ?The teacher helps students with their learning?; (4) ?The teacher continues teaching until the students understand?.

The teacher feedback variable was measured by the PISA index of teacher feedback. The index was derived from student responses about how frequently (?never or almost ever?, ?some lessons?, ?many lessons?, ?every lesson or almost every lesson?) the following things happened in their language-of-instruction lessons: (1) ?The teacher gives me feedback on my strengths in this subject?; (2) ?The teacher tells me in which areas I can still improve?; and (3) ?The teacher tells me how I can improve my performance?.

The cross-national approach that we adopted required socio-economic data at the country level. So, we merged PISA data with data from the World Bank. Specifically, at the country level, we included GDP per capita and the Human Capital Index 2018 . GDP per capita ( corrected by purchasing power parity in constant 2017 dollars) referred to 2018 or the closest year available. The Human Capital Index 2018 designed by World Bank ( 2018 ) calculates the contributions of health and education to worker productivity. The index?s score (ranging from 0 to 1) measures the amount of human capital a child born today could expect to attain by age 18, given the risks of poor health and poor education that prevail in the country.

3.6 Analytic plan

PISA has established construct validity and measurement invariance across countries and within countries (in case of different languages within-country) through Item Response Theory modelling and specifically the generalised partial credit model (Muraki, 1992 ) (OECD, 2020 ). Thus, we can be confident that the students? scores can be compared both within and between countries. A Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) was estimated to analyse the link between bullying victimisation and students? SWB. The data from PISA have a hierarchical structure. That is, students are grouped into schools, which in turn are grouped into countries. The HLM is suitable for obtaining robust and unbiased estimators with nested data because it allows us to control for unobserved heterogeneity within each level (see Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002 ). This technique addresses the fact that students attending the same school may share some common characteristics not captured by the predictors included in the PISA database. The same will be true for the characteristics and teaching systems of schools in the same country. To address this issue, we estimated an HLM in three-levels (student, school, and country). Since our research questions do not require complex path analytic (mediation, moderated mediation) structural equation modelling (SEM) to be addressed, we did not estimate SEM models. The advantage of a SEM model in terms of accounting for measurement error through latent variables is not necessary here since the OECD PISA have extracted Weighted Likelihood (WLE) standardised estimates of the latent traits, which have very small bias in the estimates of the latent factors of each scale (Warm, 1989 ). Furthermore, a complex multiple-indicator multilevel SEM is impossible to estimate with ordered-categorical data, such as the current PISA data, given the need for computationally heavy numerical integration (Asparouhov & Muthen, 2007 ).

Additionally, we empirically examined the necessity of using HLM by computing the Intra-Class Correlation (ICC) values from the null models (a model composed only of the intercept, without any covariates). Results showed that 14.36% of the variation in students? life satisfaction occurred across schools and 5.47% across countries. Similarly, we found that 13.98% of the variation in the students? positive affect index occurred across schools and 4.63% across countries. These values corroborate the use of a multilevel approach in our study. As a general rule, a percentage of 5% indicates the need for applying HLM. By explicitly modelling the dependency between observations, unbiased standard errors and efficient estimates can be produced even with very small variance at the group level (Peugh, 2010 ). Further, the findings from the Likelihood-ratio test showed the HLM had a better fit ( p ?<.01) for both overall life satisfaction and positive affect models compared to traditional model regression, providing additional support for applying HLM.

The HLM model we estimated was given by the following equations:

In the first equation, Eq. ( 1 ), \({SWB}_{ijk}\) was the expected SWB of student i enrolled in school j in a country k.? \(BullyingVictimisation\) was our key independent variable, reflecting the level of bullying a student suffers from. To obtain the best estimates of \(\text\ss_{B}\) , our approach is to use our rich dataset by conducting the estimation at the individual student level to eliminate the most significant characteristics of students, schools and countries affecting SWB, collected by the vectors of control variables, \({\varvec{S}\varvec{t}\varvec{u}\varvec{d}\varvec{e}\varvec{n}\varvec{t}}_{\varvec{i}\varvec{j}\varvec{k}}\) , \({\varvec{S}\varvec{c}\varvec{h}\varvec{o}\varvec{o}\varvec{l}}_{\varvec{j}\varvec{k}}\) , and \({\varvec{C}\varvec{o}\varvec{u}\varvec{n}\varvec{t}\varvec{r}\varvec{y}}_{\varvec{k}}\) .To test whether the relationship between bullying victimisation at school and SWB differs between top performers and their peers, we estimated an interaction term between TopPerformers ijk and \({Bullying\,Victmisation}_{ijk}\) , being TopPerformers ijk a binary variable which took a value of 1 if the student was considered a top performer.

Equation ( 2 ) model the school and country-specific intercepts and the associated complex error structure. \({\phi }_{0k}\) and \({\omega }_{0jk}\) were the respective deviations of the schools? and the countries? means from the overall mean \({\delta }_{00}\) . They were assumed to be normally distributed, with a mean of 0, and uncorrelated with \(\epsilon_{ijk}\) .

Some missing data were identified at the student and school levels. However, in the case of working with such a large data sample as the one compiled by PISA, the results do not vary significantly by making the estimates with the original sample or by imputing the missing values (Fern?ndez-Guti?rrez et al., 2020 ). Therefore, we used listwise deletion. All data analyses were performed using Stata 17 (StataCorp., 2021 ).

4.1 Descriptive statistics and correlational and multicollinearity analysis

Table 1 reports the descriptive statistics of the variables referred to in this study. The average value of overall life satisfaction was 7.229. It ranged from 0 to 10, with a SD of 2.641. The average of the positive affect was 0.097, with an SD of 1.004. The average value of the index of bullying victimisation was 0.184. It ranged from ??0.782 to 3.859, with an SD of 1.109.

Figure 1 shows the bivariate correlation matrix. Correlations between the two measures of SWB and bullying victimisation were negative and significant ( p ?<.01), with a value of ??0.16 both for overall life satisfaction and positive affect . All control variables were significant and also showed the expected signs previously noted in the literature review with both overall life satisfaction and positive affect.

Correlation Matrix. Note: *** p <0.01, ** p <0.05, * p <0.1

Correlation coefficients shown in Fig. 1 were below Kline?s ( 2011 ) collinearity cut-off of 0.85, indicating no collinearity problems. Additionally, the variance inflation factor (VIF) was employed. Results presented in Table A 3 of the Supplemental Materials indicated that our regression models were unaffected by multicollinearity, as evidenced by VIF values remaining under the threshold of 5 (Kim, 2019 ).

4.2 Subjective well-being and bullying victimisation

Table 2 shows the results of the estimations of the system of Eqs. ( 1 ) and ( 2 ), with overall life satisfaction and positive affect as the dependent variables in columns 1 and 2, respectively. The estimations included the fixed- and-random-effects. The fixed effects account for the overall expected effects of the students?, schools?, and countries? characteristics on the student?s overall life satisfaction and positive affect . The random effects indicate if this effect varies between schools and countries by showing the standard deviations from the overall mean, with origin in the school and country levels variances unaccounted for in the model.

The fixed effects analysis showed a significant and negative correlation between bullying victimisation and, first, overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.01) and, second, positive affect ( p ?<.01). To assess the relative size of the effect of bullying victimisation , we calculated the interaction between the estimated coefficients and the SD of the predictors. An increase in the index of bullying victimisation of one SD, was associated with a decrease of 0.143 SD in overall life satisfaction , and 0.119 SD in positive affect.

In the case of the control variables, coefficients, signs, and significances were similar for both models, except for three variables: male, age , and GDP per capita. Specifically, at the student-level, we found that being male was positively and significantly correlated with overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.01) but was not significantly correlated to positive affect . Age was negatively and significantly correlated with overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.1) but was not significantly correlated to positive affect. Students born in other country different to the country of the test reported lower levels of overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.05) and positive affect ( p ?<.01). Economic , social, and cultural status was positively and significantly correlated with overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.01) and positive affect ( p ?<.01). Top performers showed lower and significant levels of overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.01) and positive affect ( p ?<.01). Additional results at the school-level showed that, disciplinary climate , student co-operation , teacher support , and teacher feedback were positively and significantly correlated with both overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.01) and positive affect ( p ?<.01). Finally, at the country-level, we found that the Human Capital Index was negatively and significantly correlated with both overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.05) and positive affect ( p ?<.01). The GDP per capita was negatively and significantly correlated with the positive affect ( p ?<.01) but was not significantly correlated to overall life satisfaction .

At the bottom of Table 2 shows the results of the random effects, which were statistically significant ( p ?<.01) among schools and countries. This shows that some school and country-level variances remain unaccounted for in the model, which justifies the inclusion of the school and country levels in the HLM.

4.3 Subjective well-being and bullying victimisation: the moderating role of top performers

Columns 3 and 4 show the estimations of the moderating role of the variable top performer in the relationships between SWB and bullying victimisation . Coefficients of the interaction term were negative and significant both for overall life satisfaction ( p ?<.01) and positive affect ( p ?<.05), indicating that the negative associations between bullying victimisation and both indicators of SWB were more pronounced for top performer students. Specifically, for top performers , an increase in the index of bullying victimisation of one SD was associated with an additional decrease of 0.090 SD in overall life satisfaction , and of 0.072 SD in positive affect , in comparison to the rest of the students.

5 Discussion

The present cross-country study aimed to contribute to the literature by exploring how bullying victimisation is associated with students? SWB, accounting for student-, school-, and country-level factors associated with students? SWB. Additionally, we explored whether being a high-attaining student moderated the relationship between bullying victimisation and SWB. To this end, we constructed a heuristic multilevel resilience model to address these issues, controlling for the potential multi-layered associations between background characteristics, school-level school climate factors, and country-level indicators.

5.1 The association between bullying victimisation and SWB

Although peer relationships play a critical role in adolescent adaptive functioning (Wentzel, 2017 ), research has also indicated that negative peer relationships, such as bullying victimisation, could reduce mental health (Wolke & Lereya, 2015 ) and well-being (Katsantonis et al., 2022 ). This appears to be the case in our study since we found that bullying victimisation was negatively associated with both overall life satisfaction and positive affect across countries.

The negative association can be explained in terms of the stress and coping model (Biggs et al., 2017 ; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984 ). Specifically, it is possible that the bullying victimisation experiences have been appraised as stressful, requiring efforts to handle these negative victimisation experiences. However, despite the existence of protective factors, the intensity of the bullying phenomenon might overwhelm their coping resources and, hence, the negative association between victimisation and SWB. From the school climate literature (Espelage & Hong, 2019 ; Wang & Degol, 2016 ), it becomes clear that the school climate might not be supportive enough to prevent bullying victimisation, which, in turn, predicts less life satisfaction and positive affect. The fact that this association persevered stringent statistical controls for other relevant protective factors suggests that educational researchers have not yet identified the collection of factors that can effectively mitigate the role of school bullying victimisation in reducing adolescents? SWB. This claim is further supported by separate research suggesting that there is not convincing evidence in favour of strongly effective programmes of bullying prevention (Juvonen & Graham, 2014 ).

Overall, the findings suggest that the research community needs to invest more effort to carefully study what educational and psychological factors are important for promoting adolescent students? SWB in the presence of bullying victimisation.

5.2 Bullying victimisation and SWB: The moderating role of high-performing students

The negative association between bullying victimisation and life satisfaction and positive affect is further compounded by the academic attainment of the students, as shown in our analyses. HLM modelling revealed that being a top performing student was exacerbating the negative effect of bullying victimisation on the two indicators of SWB. This is a noteworthy research aim given the inconclusive evidence regarding the association between academic performance and SWB, as well as the potentially moderating role of academic performance. To some extent, this finding coincides with evidence indicating a negative association between SWB and high academic performance (Bortes et al., 2021 ; Heller-Sahlgren, 2018 ) and contradicts empirical research suggesting otherwise (B?cker et al., 2018 ). Moreover, our results suggest that being a top performer student is a risk factor for bullying victimisation.

There are several potential explanations for this observed effect, yet few studies have examined whether students? academic attainment levels are predictive of the victimisation experiences of students (Bergold et al., 2020 ). A potential explanation of this finding comes from the work of Schwartz et al. ( 2005 ). Following these authors? argument top academic performance might be on average inconsistent with the normative values of the particular peer groups, which might lead to unpopularity and social rejection, propagating, thus, victimisation (Schwartz et al., 2005 ). It is commonly agreed that high performing students are under constant academic pressure leading to social comparisons and competitiveness in the peer group (Luthar et al., 2020 ). This kind of educational attainment accompanied by a school culture of competitiveness and comparisons can easily exacerbate victimisation incidents in adolescents (Di Stasio et al., 2016 ). Another account suggests that top performing gifted students struggle with loneliness and feelings of isolation and sadness but teachers are not necessarily able to identify that these students are struggling with socio-emotional problems (Vialle et al., 2007 ). This indicates that top performing students might be ?easy prey? for the bullies because of their already socio-emotional maladjustment (Vialle et al., 2007 ). Nevertheless, more longitudinal research is needed to delve deeper into the cause and effect of these relations and particularly within groups of high and top performing students.

5.3 Linking student-, school-, and country-level indicators with student SWB across countries

Although not of main importance, we statistically controlled for a range of covariates that could potentially function as protective factors against SWB declines. In the section below, we discuss the findings of the covariates.

The results of the analyses revealed that females exhibited lower overall life satisfaction. This finding is in line with past evidence showing a gender gap in life satisfaction (Chen et al., 2020 ; Katsantonis et al., 2022 ). However, it is noted that we did not find evidence for such an association between gender and positive affect, suggesting that the gender gap in SWB seems to be component specific. Additionally, our results verified preceding empirical evidence indicating a decline in life satisfaction with age (Brooks et al., 2020 ). Similar to our findings regarding gender, this statistically significant relationship seems to be component specific, too, since the HLM did not reveal any statistically significant relationship between positive affect and age. Our results also align with the empirical studies indicating that coming from an immigrant background was associated with lower life satisfaction and positive affect (Borraccino et al., 2018 ; Tang, 2019 ). As reported by preceding research (Shackleton et al., 2018 ), we also found evidence in favour of a social gradient in both life satisfaction and affect, indicating that having better resources and cultural capital was associated with inflated levels of SWB.

Regarding the potential influence of school climate, our findings also corroborate with evidence suggesting that positive and supportive school climate is a strong protective factor against reduced SWB. The multilevel modelling illustrated that having better levels of disciplinary climate, student co-operation, teacher support, and teachers? feedback in schools was linked with greater life satisfaction and positive affect. These findings cement the idea that a supportive school climate is crucial for fostering positive peer and teacher-student relationships and preventing problematic behaviours, such as school bullying (Mischel & Kitsantas, 2020 ; Thapa et al., 2013 ).

Finally, the present study contributes to the cross-country comparative literature since we explored additionally the associations between two important country-level indicators, namely human capital index and GDP per capita. It is necessary to stress the importance of accounting for country-level factors too, since macro-characteristics of the countries are known to influence people?s health outcomes (Ran et al., 2023 ). Our analyses revealed that countries with higher economic development, measured by their stocks of human capital and GDP per capita, have less satisfied adolescent students who feel less positive. This finding is quite unique since some studies with children have reported no such evidence (e.g., Lee & Yoo, 2015 ), and other studies with adults have reported mixed evidence either in favour of a positive moderated relationship (e.g., Mikucka et al., 2017 ) or in favour of a negative association (Rudolf & Bethmann, 2023 ).

5.4 Implications for policy and practice

The present findings are undoubtedly insightful for policymakers and educationalists. First, teachers and support staff in schools should be vigilant to prevent any bullying victimisation experiences given the deleterious effects of bullying victimisation on adolescent students? SWB. Due to the protective effect of having a supportive school climate in promoting adolescent students? SWB, we recommend systematic implementation of educational policies that would be able to improve and sustain a positive and supportive school climate. In line with theoretical evidence (Gregory et al., 2010 ; Mischel & Kitsantas, 2020 ; Wang et al., 2013 ), this could include building and maintaining a good disciplinary authoritative climate and a supportive social environment. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of school-wide, but context-sensitive, educational interventions to prevent and reduce the likelihood of school bullying victimisation experiences, especially in highly economically developed countries, where SWB seems to be on the decline.

5.5 Limitations

The present study suffers from some limitations that must be acknowledged. Firstly, we measured well-being through a single-item measure of overall life satisfaction, which may be more vulnerable to random measurement errors, and its internal consistency reliability statistic cannot be computed. However, the empirical literature contains many examples of single-item measures focused on subjective well-being (Sandvik et al., 2009 ), demonstrating an acceptable balance between practical needs and psychometric concerns. Secondly, the index of bullying victimization is based on self-report student measures. Even though self-report measures are well-established in the literature on bullying victimization, self-reports can be sensitive to response biases such as recall and social desirability bias, which might lead to underreporting bullying victimization (Buchholz et al., 2022 ). Thirdly, the cross-sectional nature of our data does not permit the examination of well-being over time to be able to make claims of causality. Further research based on longitudinal data is needed to explore the causal relationship between SWB and bullying victimization. Finally, another sample limitation is related to the representativeness of the countries included in the analysis. In particular, emerging and low-income countries are underrepresented or not included (e.g., African countries) in the PISA (Tuttle et al., 2023 ), which limits the scope of our findings.

Availability of data

The data are publicly available at: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2018database/

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Ioannis Katsantonis is supported by the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation (scholarship ID: F ZR024/1-2021/2022) and the A.G. Leventis Foundation.

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Katsantonis, I., Barrado, B., McLellan, R. et al. Subjective Well-Being and Bullying Victimisation: A Cross-National Study of Adolescents in 64 Countries and Economies. Child Ind Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-024-10147-0

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200 bullying essay topics + [selection tip & best example], bob cardens.

• September 10, 2022
• Essay Topics and Ideas

Bullying is the act of dominating or intimidating a weaker person. Various people have different ideas about the causes of bullying, its impacts on victims, and the solutions to it. Schools sometimes allow students to state and defend their personal views about bullying by asking them to write argumentative essays on bullying.

Although a lot of students find this opportunity to be interesting, they often face difficulties while attempting to come up with a suitable topic. We like helping students get essay topics easily, which is why we took our time to gather the best bullying essay topics.

We have listed these Bullying Essay Topics below, so students should select their essay topics from the list.

What You'll Learn

Purpose of a Bullying Essay

This sort of task’s main reason is to prompt a superior agreement and more profound thought of understudies’ concern.

The paper is additionally pointed toward featuring certain connected issues and discouraging them. With everything taken into account, the primary reason for this composing task is:

• Allow understudies to communicate their disposition and inflexible stance to this issue;
• Cause them to understand that the issue exists;
• Make individuals think if they have at any point been tormented or if they started animosity themselves;
• Cause them to dissect the issue, consider forestalling the occurrences, and give proposals.

You can also check Persuasive Speech Topics about Social Media

How to Select the Best Bullying Essay Topic

• Brainstorm: If you have a few ideas, list all of them. Also, you can have a sit-down with your peers and discuss the recent trends in school bullying and get some clues.
• Discuss: You might have a great idea: why not reinforce it by seeking some oversight from your tutor before it is too late. They are always open for discussions and can offer you guidance where possible.
• Explore: It is integral that you grasp as many details about your possible topic to figure out if you possess enough data from your sources.
• Eliminate: Get rid of ideas that you don’t like or those that you know sourcing relevant information would be difficult.

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Bullying Essay Topics

Best bullying essay topics.

• Should school authorities frown at bullying?
• Can bullying affect the education system?
• Bullying prevention programs can’t eradicate bullying in schools
• What are the primary causes of bullying?
• Bullying is almost the same thing as teasing
• Should bullies go to jail?
• Why is it a bad thing to bully innocent kids?
• Can bullying reduce education standards?
• The legal measures to stop bullying
• School bullying is a problem.
• Should victims of bullying act as bullies to weaker kids also?
• Is bullying a serious crime or fun?
• Is it proper to fight with a bully while trying to defend one’s rights?
• Can bullying lower the self-esteem of victims?
• Is bullying a serious matter or a laughing matter?
• The public education system promotes bullying
• Traditional bullying vs. cyberbullying
• How to stop bullying
• Effects of bullying in schools
• The best way to confront bullies
• What are the common motives of bullies?
• Should timid kids plead with bullies or report them to authorities?
• Bullying is a common behavior
• Solving The Problem Of Bullying
• Bullying has evolved
• Bullying is a misuse of power
• Can we call bullying an epidemic?
• Bullying in school is more serious than online bullying
• The problem of bullying
• Bullying is violent and cruel
• Should bullies get expelled from school?
• Is bullying a form of violence or drama?
• Why bullying can’t be stopped
• The best way to say no to bullying
• Is bullying a big issue?
• Can tolerance education reduce the rate at which students bully one another?
• Bullying doesn’t have serious effects on schools
• Putting a stop to bullying
• How should innocent kids respond to bullies?
• Do bullies feel proud or ashamed after bullying timid kids
• Bullying is a rite of passage
• The vicious cycle of bullying
• What can make bullies repent of their bad deeds?
• Physical bullying vs. verbal bullying
• Should bullies get punished?
• Is bullying a social issue ?
• Bullying is part of life.
• The effects of cyberbullying on youths
• Bullying is a threat
• Should innocent kids be afraid of bullies?
• Do adults also bully one another?
• Why must we prevent bullying?
• Why do kids bully one another?

You can also check Slavery Essay Topics

Argumentative Bullying Essay Topics

• Should bullying prevention be a part of education programs ?
• Do the members of LGBT communities become the victims of bullying more often than other students?
• Do violent games increase the level of bullying?
• Why should we stop bullying?
• Why should bullying carry criminal sanction?
• Is enough being done about bullying?
• Is bullying at school the main reason for a negative self-image among young men?
• Can teachers use social media to solve school bullying?
• Does bullying have any advantages?
• Should a student who bullies regularly be suspended from school or college ?
• Is it a crime to be a bully?
• Is bullying overrated in American schools?
• Bullying at high school
• Should parents get fined if their child bullies other children?
• Handling your child getting bullied
• How kids should save themselves from being bullied
• How should bullies get punished?
• Standing up to a bully
• Stricter punishment for bullies
• The impacts of bullying on victims
• Peer pressure can force innocent kids to become bullies
• Bullying is part of life
• Bullying is a recurring issue
• Bullying is a type of behavior
• Is bullying a social issue?
• Bullying has no cure
• Bullying is an old concept
• Bullying is prevalent among adolescents
• Different kinds of bullying
• School bullying is a problem
• Can bullying affect the school calendar?
• Can bullying make a child commit suicide?
• Can bullying transform an extrovert into an introvert?
• What are the dangers of bullying?
• Does bullying have some life-changing effects?
• Can bullying make kids become tougher?
• Is it proper to fight with a bully while trying to defend one’s right?
• The perils of bullying
• Workplace bullying
• How can timid kids handle bullies?
• How to avoid getting into the traps of bullies
• What should school authorities do to eradicate bullying?
• Cyberbullying vs. school bullying
• What makes bullying a serious problem?
• Can interfering in other countries’ business be considered bullying?
• Why do you hate bullying?
• Why is the participation of celebrities in anti-bullying campaigns important?

You can also check Environmental Persuasive Speech Topics

Cyber Bullying Essay Topicss

• Can cyberbullying cause suicides?
• Social awareness about cyberbullying: what can be done?
• Do you agree with the statement that a total prohibition on cyberbullying in social media violates the First Amendment?
• How can parents reduce cyberbullying against their child
• Should teens be afraid of cyberbullying?
• What are the reasons why people are being cyberbullied?
• How can one overcome Cyber intimidation trauma?
• Which investigation is conducted to get the attacker?
• Why do people Cyberbully others?
• Does Cyber victimization cause more suicidal cases than traditional victimization?
• What are the measures taken to avoid being Cyberbullied?
• Do our social media accounts lead us to be Cyberbullied?
• Is cyberbullying more, less, or equally damaging than bullying in schools?
• Should cyberbullying be punishable?
• How does bullying affect children in their adult lives?
• What behaviors do children who are bullied exhibit?
• How do children react when they are bullied?
• Should children who defend themselves from bullies be punished?
• What role do teachers and administrators play in putting a stop to bullying?
• Should schools offer counseling for children who experience bullying?
• Discuss children’s behavior at home and how parents can help stop bullying.
• Should bullying and its effects be taught in schools? If so, at what age?
• What is the best prevention of Cyber discrimination?
• What are the consequences of Cyber harassment?
• My own experience with Cyber intimidation.
• Is cyberbullying among adolescents worth attention from adults?
• Is cyberbullying overhyped?
• Can cyberbullying cause depression?
• Should teachers keep tabs on students’ social media profiles to prevent cyberbullying?
• What kind of bullying has a greater effect: cyberbullying or face-to-face bullying?
• Who are “trolls”? What do they have to do with cyberbullying?
• How has technology affected school bullying (or cyberbullying)?

Controversial Bullying Essays Topics

• The negative impact of bullying on children’s self-esteem.
• How has social media changed the phenomenon of bullying?
• How can bullying be prevented at the national level?
• How does the misunderstanding of masculinity cause bullying?
• Why are students less tolerant of differences than adults? Does intolerance cause bullying?
• Bullying in sports teams: detail the reasons and consequences .
• Compare and contrast bullying against girls and boys.
• How do gender stereotypes provoke bullying?
• What is common between genocides and bullying?
• Can bullying be considered a way to increase one’s self-esteem?
• Compare the similarities and differences between slavery and bullying.
• How has social media affected body image and bullying?
• What is the connection between bullying and sexual assault?

You can also check MBA Thesis Topics

Bullying Essay Topics related to School

• School rules against bullying: are they efficient?
• Should school do more to stop bullying?
• Should schools and colleges step in when students misuse social-network sites on school property?
• What are effective punishments for bullying at school?
• How can kids stand against bullying on their own?
• How does bullying affect students’ grades?
• Why don’t students stand against bullying when they witness it?
• Compare and contrast pranks and bullying. Should pranks be forbidden at schools?
• How will implementing school uniforms help to prevent bullying at schools?
• What should a student do if he or she becomes a victim of bullying?
• Who is responsible for bullying at schools: kids or adults?
• How can children with eating disorders avoid bullying?
• How can bullying of students with disabilities be stopped?
• What long-term effects does bullying at school have?
• How can students organize an efficient anti-bullying campaign?

Related FAQs

1. what is the conclusion of the essay bullying essay.

Conclusion – Bullying Essay The essay concludes that bullying is very common these days among teenagers people. The coming of social networking sites is fuelling the fire of bullying to a great extent. The effect of bullying on the human mind can also be seen in the essay how it put a great role in the psychological development of the person.

2. What is a bully?

According to Webster ‘s Dictionary, a bully is someone is however difficult to define bullying as there are different types of bullying. Bullying can be verbal, non-verbal, violent and non-violent. The reactions to bullying are also varied. While some do not mind bullying, some get severely affected by it.

3. How long should an essay on bullying be?

You can also find more Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more. We are providing students with essay samples on long essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on the topic Bullying for reference. Long Essay on Bullying is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

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88 Bullying Research Topics & Essay Examples

📝 bullying research papers examples, 🏆 best bullying essay titles, 🎓 simple research topics about bullying, ❓ bullying research questions.

• Family Violence: Adult-Child Sexual Abuse Psychology essay sample: This paper explores the risk and protection factors for child abuse in the light of Macro-system, microsystem, mesosystems; and programs that target the prevention of child abuse.
• Bullying and Suicide Relationship: Data Analysis Psychology essay sample: Bullying is one of the main reasons why teenagers commit suicide. Parents should watch over their children in order to identify and help them fight the effects of bullying.
• The Problem of Bullying in Colleges Psychology essay sample: This research study shows that college-going students are just as likely to be victims or perpetrators or even belong to the victim-perpetrator group of bullying.
• Anti-bullying Program for the School Psychology essay sample: Bullying is a serious problem that must be dealt with immediately. Usually, children develop the idea that bullying is acceptable in pre-school.
• Stuttering Among Schoolchildren: Teaching Interventions Psychology essay sample: Communication speech impairments affect children, adolescents. People with stuttering experience bullying and difficulties in forming relationships from a very young age.
• Bullying Children: The Analysis of Various Examples Psychology essay sample: This discussion provides a detailed analysis of various examples of bullying and some of the evidence-based strategies to prevent the malpractice.
• Bullying and Suicide: Outcomes and Implications Psychology essay sample: Bullying may occur in any society or time. Bulling is part of a wide-ranging pattern of antisocial behavior, with long-term consequences for society.
• Bullying as a Group Process in Childhood Psychology essay sample: The primary purpose of the article is to explore bullying as a network relation founded on the exact nominations for bullying.
• Middle Childhood Through the Prism of Psychological Disorders Psychology essay sample: The paper states that various disorders such as ADHD and ASD in middle childhood can affect an individual's ability to reach success and overcome obstacles.
• Suicide is a Crucial Health Risk among Adolescents Psychology essay sample: Nowadays, suicide is the second most prevalent cause of death among adolescents in the US and worldwide, accounting for about 800,000 lives globally.
• Deviant Behavior: Workplace Bullying Psychology essay sample: This paper aims to explore workplace bullying in terms of conflict and labeling theories to better understand its causes and nature.
• Aggression in Psychology Psychology essay sample: This emotion is difficult to define, and psychologists, judges, and lawyers have been trying to determine what actions should and should not be considered aggressive for a long time.
• Bullying in Adolescents and Social Work Interventions Psychology essay sample: Bullying provokes a number of negative emotions and situations when students need additional help and treatment.
• Moral Development Theory and Bullying Issues Psychology essay sample: The impact of bullying is not easy to predict. Moral development is used to identify the principles and moral values according to which adolescents should treat each other.
• Parenting Styles in Different Cultures Psychology essay sample: To understand the specificities of parents’ behavior that influence their children, it is vital to consider them in the context of selected countries and regions.
• Depression Management in Adolescent Psychology essay sample: Adolescents are men and women in their transitional age from childhood to youth. Their age bracket is from ten to twenty-two.
• Cell Phones and Mental Health Psychology essay sample: Limited use of smartphones, current human companions, makes life easier and enjoyable, while excessive screen time may bring severe mental health consequences.
• Developmental Psychology and a Movie Character Psychology essay sample: This work aims to assess adolescents' psychology by applying relevant concepts and considering some issues with specific examples.
• Bullying Behavior in Children Psychology essay sample: The paper states that contributing factors to bullying behavior are family violence and media content that encourages victimization.
• Cyberbullying in Social Psychology Psychology essay sample: The study aims to determine the prevalence and effects of cyberbullying among teenagers and young adults, as well as explore the most suitable coping strategies.
• Interpersonal Conflicts at Workplace: Types and Resolution Strategies Psychology essay sample: This paper aims to discuss the types of interpersonal conflicts and recommended strategies for effective conflict resolution.
• Narrative Therapy: Patient Case Psychology essay sample: The narrative approach would be the most useful for the described case conceptualization, as it allows the person to separate the context and see these stories as situational.
• Bullying: Collaborating with Parents to Increase Proactive Bystander Message Psychology essay sample: Bullying could potentially lead to anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. These symptoms could be typical also to the bystanders.
• Childhood Trauma: Causes, Effects, and Preventive Measures Psychology essay sample: It is salient to understand the causative factors and the effects of childhood trauma while also highlighting applicable preventive measures.
• The Best Solution to Predict Depression Because of Bullying Psychology essay sample: This paper examines interventions to prove that the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is the most effective solution for predicting depression provoked by bullying.
• The Long-Term Effects of Bullying: Understanding the Impact on Mental Health
• Bullying in the Digital Age: Problem Statement
• Empowering Students to Speak Up: Strategies for Reporting Bullying Incidents
• Bullying in the Workplace: Recognizing and Addressing Adult Bullying
• The Role of Bystanders in Bullying Situations: How to Be an Active Ally
• Bullying and Self-Esteem: Rebuilding Confidence After Being Bullied
• Exploring the Link Between Bullying and Substance Abuse in Adolescents
• Debunking Myths About Bullying: Separating Fact from Fiction
• Nurse Bullying Study: Ethical Perspectives The research question is: how does the medical community address the psychological effects of nurse bullying in the workplace in the context of ethical obstacles?
• Bullying Prevention Programs That Work: Case Studies and Success Stories
• Understanding the Psychology of a Bully: What Drives the Behavior?
• Bullying and Academic Performance: Impact
• The Legal Ramifications of Bullying: Navigating Anti-Bullying Legislation
• Parental Involvement in Bullying Prevention
• Bullying in the LGBTQ+ Community: Addressing Unique Challenges and Solutions
• Healing from Bullying Trauma: Coping Strategies and Resources for Recovery
• Understanding the Impact of Workplace Bullying on Mental Health
• From Victim to Victor: Inspirational Stories of Overcoming Bullying
• Spotting the Signs of Workplace Bullying: What to Look Out For
• Cyberbullying and LGBTQ+ Youth: Navigating the Unique Challenges and Solutions
• Addressing Friend Bullying: Tips for Parents and Caregivers
• How to Address Workplace Bullying: A Step-by-Step Guide for Employees
• Exploring the Legal Aspects of Workplace Bullying: Know Your Rights
• The Impact of Cyberbullying on Mental Health: Understanding the Long-Term Effects
• The Role of HR in Preventing and Addressing Workplace Bullying
• Empathy in the Digital Age: Fostering Compassion to Combat Cyberbullying
• The Impact of Workplace Violence on Nurses: Nurse Bullying Statistics Wondering about the impact of workplace violence on nurses? Read this essay to learn about economic and psychological effects of workplace bullying.
• Real Stories: Overcoming Workplace Bullying and Restoring Confidence
• Understanding the Impact of Friend Bullying on Mental Health
• The Long-Term Effects of Workplace Bullying on Employee Productivity
• The Impact of Bullying on Mental Health: Understanding the Long-Term Effects
• The Long-Term Effects of Friend Bullying on Self-Esteem
• How to Combat Bullying: An Action Plan
• Confronting the Bully: Tips for Standing Up to Workplace Aggression
• Building a Culture of Respect: Preventing Workplace Bullying Through Leadership
• Spotlight on Cyberbullying Laws: A State-by-State Comparison
• Breaking the Silence: Encouraging Open Communication About Workplace Bullying
• Healing from Workplace Bullying: Strategies for Moving Forward and Thriving in Your Career
• Exploring the Role of Social Media in Friend Bullying
• The Importance of Open Communication in Combating Friend Bullying
• Understanding the Dynamics of Family Bullying: What It Looks Like and Why It Happens
• The Long-Term Effects of Sibling Bullying on Mental Health
• When Bullying Goes Unnoticed: Signs That a Child Is Being Bullied by a Family Member
• How Social Media Exacerbates the Problem of Bullying?
• How Bullying Affects Student Achievement?
• How to Support Your Child if He Is Bullied?
• What Drives Psychology of Cyberbullies?
• How to Address and Prevent Cyberbullying in the Workplace?
• How to Recognize and Address Parental Bullying Within the Family?
• How to Protect Yourself from Bullying Within Your Own Family?
• How Teaching Kids to Address Bullying Within the Family?
• What The Impact of Social Bullying on Mental Health?
• What Is Mean Debunking Myths About Social Bullying?
• What The Legal Implications of Social Bullying?
• What The Role of Educators in Combating Social Bullying?
• How Social Bullying Differs from Other Forms of Harassment and Abuse?
• How Understand Navigating the Complexities of Cyberbullying Laws?
• Is It Possible to Avoid Bullying?
• How to Recognize if Your Child is Being Bullied?
• What Drives Perpetrators to Target Others on Online Bullying?
• How Witnesses Can Help Combat Online Bullying?
• How Verbal Abuse in Relationships Can Leave a Lasting Impact?
• How Community Efforts to Combat Online Bullying?

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73 School Bullying Research Topics & Essay Examples

📝 school bullying research papers examples, 🏆 best school bullying essay titles, ❓ school bullying research questions.

• Bullying in School and How to Minimize It The paper studies the phenomena of bullying in the school, its types and gives recommendations on how to minimize bullying.
• Physical Injury Bullying in High School The research study provides a framework for understanding the various aspects of bullying such as causes, effects, and how it can be prevented.
• School Bullying and Its Causes Bullying in schools has become a worldwide problem, and in some cases, its effects may have lasting implications on the victims.
• Students’ Willingness to Report Threats of Violence in Campus Communities The study was undertaken by Michael Sulkowski from the University of Florida with the objective of extending prior work conducted on college-age populations on the same issue.
• Bullying in School: Understanding and Dealing With It The purpose of this article is to understand the problem of bullying in schools, as well as possible methods of dealing with it.
• Impact of Rising Cyberbullying on High School Performance This literature review of five articles seeks to clarify how an increase in cyberbullying affects high school academic performance.
• How Teachers Deal With Bullying in the Classes The problem is that the teachers may take a lot of time addressing these acts of violence at the expense of instructional time in the classes.
• Journal Article Review: Correlates of Physical Violence at School: A Multilevel Analysis of Australian High School Students The school's student interaction policy plays an important role in determining whether students will be violent or not.
• School Violence Measures in the United States School violence is an urgent problem for most educational facilities in the United States. This discussion post will consider measures that can make schools safer.
• Preventing Violence in the Education System The issue of preventing situations of violence in the education system is very relevant nowadays. Violence in school is exposed to every tenth student in the world.
• Decision-Making and Bullying Problems Inside Our Schools Bullying is a serious problem that many schools are trying to battle. It can affect victims emotionally, socially, and academically.
• Bullying in the School Environment Bullying has a negative impact on the academic performance of the victims since it limits their participation in the school environment.
• A Strategy to Prevent Bias and Discrimination in School Practice In his school practice, as a strategy to prevent bias and discrimination, the author prefers to resort to the theory of contact.
• How to Combat Bullying: An Action Plan This plan includes two strategies – sensitization and fostering a safe environment for students with disabilities.
• Discrimination Against Children in Schools Most of a person's psychological problems arise in childhood and adolescence when parents and school are the main spheres of influence on the child.
• Bullying of Disabled Children in School The purpose of this study is to evaluate the level of bullying of students with disabilities and special education needs.
• Educational Anti-Bullying Programs This anti-bullying work includes an overview of harassment, as well as suggestions for developing a healthy school atmosphere and robust anti initiatives.
• Bullying and Its Effects on Adolescents Bullying has vast societal implications for a large adolescent population, resulting in more abuse and consequential mental illnesses.
• Peer Relations, Violence, and School Attendance: Analyses of Bullying in Senior High Schools in Ghana
• Bullying and Its Effects on Learning and Development in Australian Primary School
• Bullying, Identity, and School Performance: Evidence From Chile
• Anti Bullying Policy, the Matt Epling Safe School Law
• Bullying and Its Effects on School Across the United States
• School Bullying and Teacher Professional Development
• The Residential School System State-Sponsored Bullying
• Bullying and Columbine High School
• Effects Concerning School-age Bullying: A Retrospective
• School Violence: The Financial Costs of Bullying, Vandalism, and Violence
• Cyberbullying: Abuse and Old-school Bullying
• Bullying and Its Effect on School Communities
• Children and Adolescents Are Victims of School Bullying
• Bullying and Its Effects on School
• Correlation Among Depression, Bullying, Experience of Victimization, and Suicide in High School Students
• Bullying: America’s Worst School
• Middle School Advisory Programs: An Effective Anti Bullying
• Cyber Harassment and Bullying at Madera High School
• Bullying and School Attendance: A Case Study of Senior High School
• The Problem With Name-Calling and Bullying in School
• Bullying and High School Dropout Rates
• Bullying Children and School Personnel Challenges
• School Uniforms Should Stop Bullying With Anti Bullying
• Bullying Prevention and School Safety
• School Bullying and the Need for Policy Change
• Physical and Verbal Bullying at School
• Preventing School Bullying Through a Supervisory System
• School Students Bullying and Harassment
• Bullying and Emotional Abuse Among School Children
• School Bullying and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms: The Role of Parental Bonding
• Effects of Bullying and Victimization in Schools and the Victims
• Dealing With a Bullying Target and How We Should Behave Around Them
• Bullying and Problems of the Younger Generation
• Bullying Is Not Just Anger and Meanness
• Bullying and Lack of Contact With Peers
• How Can Parents Prevent Bullying at School?
• What Is the Nature and Consequences of School Bullying?
• Does Bullying Affect High School-Aged Students?
• What Is the School’s Involvement in Cyberbullying?
• Are School-Based Anti Bullying Programs Decreasing the Rate of Victimization?
• What Is the Relationship Between Bullying and Mass Shootings in Schools?
• What Is the Relationship Between School Violence and Psychological Bullying?
• How School Bullying Affects Bullies and Victims?
• What Is the Connection Between the LGBT Community and School Bullying?
• What Are the Causes and Effects of Bullying in School?
• Can High School Dress Codes Stop Bullying?
• How the Bystander Intervention and the Drowning Child Analogy Can Be Used in the School Bullying Cases?
• Does Maternal Spanking Lead To Bullying Behavior at School?
• Should There Be School Intervention Programs for Bullying Prevention?
• What Is the Relationship Between School Bullying and Robbery and How It Affects People’s Lives?
• What Are the Problems of Bullying and Victims in High School?
• How Has Bullying Affected the Entire Student Population or the School Climate?
• School Bullying: What Should Parents Do?
• What Is Known About Bullying Between Schoolchildren?
• What Is School Bullying From the Point of View of a Teacher?

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ChalkyPapers. (2024, May 25). 73 School Bullying Research Topics & Essay Examples. https://chalkypapers.com/topics/school-bullying-research-topics/

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About Bullying

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• What excuses do offenders make for bullying someone?
• What are personality factors that contribute to bullying?
• Does bullying differ based on gender?
• What are the various types of bullying?
• Which strategies and resources are used to deal with bullying?
• Can bullying lead to school shootings?
• Can bullying have a lasting effect?
• Do bullies outgrow their behavior?
• Is bullying a problem in the workplace?
• How can cyber bullying be prevented?
• How are schools legally liable, if they fail to protect students from bullying?
• What are the legal consequences of bullying?
• When does bullying become a hate crime?
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• Last Updated: Feb 6, 2024 11:38 AM
• URL: https://libguides.broward.edu/Bullying

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Research Resources

Stopbullying.gov resources include Fact Sheets , Research Summaries , and Infographics that provide current research findings, evidence-based strategies, and data on bullying prevention. The resources can be utilized for bullying prevention by youth, parents, educators, youth-serving professionals, schools, health care providers, organizations, communities, and states.  The resources can be shared, downloaded, and printed for distribution.