Reaching an American Consensus: Reactions to the Special Issue on School Bullying

The association between bullying and physical health among gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals

BACKGROUND

Research suggests that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) populations experience higher prevalence of school bullying than heterosexuals.

OBJECTIVES

We examined if (a) verbal versus physical bullying were differentially associated with physical health among sexual minorities and (b) if sexual identity (i.e., homosexual [i.e., lesbian/gay] vs. bisexual) moderated the association of bullying on physical health.

DESIGN

LGB adults aged 18 to 66 years (n = 463) were recruited online. Participants reported high school experiences of verbal and physical bullying and physician-diagnosed health conditions.

RESULTS

Physical and verbal bullying were related to physical health conditions (ps < .01). Physical bullying had a significant negative impact on physical health for bisexual persons (p < .001) but not for gay/lesbian persons.

CONCLUSIONS

Experiencing bullying in high school was associated with physical health problems in adulthood. Bullying had a different relationship with health problems for bisexually identified individuals compared to lesbian/gay individuals. Future research should strive to disentangle potential differences in the relationship between bullying and health within sexual minority groups.

Developmental trajectories of bullying and social dominance in youth

OBJECTIVE

Bullying is increasingly conceptualized as strategic behavior motivated by a desire to gain social dominance in the peer group. Cross-sectional research has shown that relative to their peers bullies are higher in social dominance as indexed by resource control, and are often perceived as powerful and "cool." However, research examining the developmental relationship between bullying and resource control is lacking. The present longitudinal study fills this gap in the literature.

METHOD

Using a three wave design, participants (N=394) were followed from late childhood into early adolescence. Joint trajectory analyses were used to test whether groups with distinct developmental trajectories of bullying and resource control can be identified, and how these trajectories are related.

RESULTS

For both bullying and resource control three groups emerged (high, medium, and low), indicating that bullies and social dominants do not constitute one homogeneous group. More intense bullying is associated with higher levels of social dominance. Being consistently high in bullying is almost synonymous with being consistently high in resource control, whereas the reverse is not the case.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that high bullying leads to the attainment of high social dominance, and do not support the view that children high in social dominance engage in bullying to maintain their dominant position.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

This study further underscores the need for interventions targeting mechanisms by which the peer group assigns social dominance to bullies.

Bullying as strategic behavior: relations with desired and acquired dominance in the peer group

To examine whether bullying is strategic behavior aimed at obtaining or maintaining social dominance, 1129 9- to 12-year-old Dutch children were classified in terms of their role in bullying and in terms of their use of dominance oriented coercive and prosocial social strategies. Multi-informant measures of participants' acquired and desired social dominance were also included. Unlike non-bullying children, children contributing to bullying often were bistrategics in that they used both coercive and prosocial strategies and they also were socially dominant. Ringleader bullies also expressed a higher desire to be dominant. Among non-bullying children, those who tended to help victims were relatively socially dominant but victims and outsiders were not. Generally, the data supported the claim that bullying is dominance-oriented strategic behavior, which suggests that intervention strategies are more likely to be successful when they take the functional aspects of bullying behavior into account.

Antibullying legislation: a public health perspective

PURPOSE

To determine the extent to which aspects of public health policy have been incorporated into the antibullying statutes enacted in the United States.

METHODS

We reviewed all the state laws dealing with school bullying, harassment, and/or intimidation enacted in the United States as of June 2007. These laws were evaluated using an Antibullying Public Health Policy Criteria Index, designed for the purpose of this study. The criteria included presence of a bullying definition, a prohibition of bullying, a statutory recognition of bullying as a public health threat, and a call for prevention programs. As part of that evaluation, laws were examined to ascertain whether they evidenced essential elements of public health concerns and also the extent to which the U.S. school age population was protected by these laws.

RESULTS

As of June 2007, 35 states have enacted antibullying legislation that aims to protect the safety of 77% of U.S. students enrolled in public schools. However, only 16 of those states have enacted statutes that incorporate comprehensive basic public health antibullying principles.

CONCLUSIONS

There is an urgent need for implementation of school bullying prevention laws. Such laws should clearly define the problem of bullying in schools and its associated health risks, prohibit bullying, require implementation of prevention programs, provide funding for prevention activities, and confer adequate and appropriate jurisdiction.