Bullying in elementary school, high school, and college

Adolescence,  Winter, 2006  by Mark S. Chapell,  Stefanie L. Hasselman,  Theresa Kitchin,  Safiya N. Lomon,  Kenneth W. MacIver,  Patrick L. Sarullo

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The final focus of this study is on bullying by college teachers and coaches. Chapell et al. (2004) found that 19.2% of 1,025 students had been bullied by teachers in college, 14.5% once or twice, 4.2% occasionally, and .5% very frequently. In addition to reporting the overall level of bullying by college teachers, the current study explores the types of bullying college teachers use: verbal, physical, and social. This study also explores bullying by college coaches and reports the types of bullying they use. There is very little research on bullying by college coaches, but some college coaches such as Bob Knight (Walton, 2000) have been described as bullies.

METHOD

Participants

A total of 119 undergraduates from a large eastern university (62 female, 57 male, including 21 freshmen, 28 sophomores, 20 juniors, and 48 seniors; M = 21.1 yrs., SD = 3.4 yrs.) participated voluntarily in this partially retrospective study. This sample of convenience was composed of 98 European Americans (82.3%), 10 African Americans (8.4%), 5 students of multiple ethnicity (4.2%), 4 Hispanic Americans (3.4%), and 2 Asian Americans (1.7%).

Materials

Participants were first administered a questionnaire including questions about age, sex, year in school, ethnicity, and cumulative college grade point average (M = 3.11, SD = .50), followed by a 32-item bullying self-report questionnaire. This questionnaire followed the model of the most widely used bullying instrument, the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (1996), by first presenting a definition of bullying based on Olweus's (1999) widely accepted definition of bullying by students. Olweus (1999) conceptualizes bullying as being characterized by three criteria: "(1) It is aggressive behavior or intentional harmdoing (2) which is carried out repeatedly and over time (3) in an interpersonal relationship characterized by an imbalance of power" (p. 11), and he defines school bullying as, "A student is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more students" (p. 10). Olweus operationalizes bullying using three forms of negative actions by students: direct verbal attacks (using mean and harmful words and names), direct physical attacks (hitting, kicking, shoving), and more indirect methods, such as intentionally isolating or excluding someone from a group.

This definition was adapted to include the contingency of bullying by college teachers and coaches: "As a student you are being bullied when someone who is more powerful than you repeatedly tries to hurt you by: (1) attacking you verbally, using harmful words, names, or threats, (2) attacking you physically, (3) intentionally isolating you or excluding you from a social group."

This definition was followed by questions about bullying or being bullied by students in college, high school, and elementary school, to which participants answered using one of four response alternatives, with scores ranging from 0 to 3: Never = 0; Only once or twice = 1; Occasionally = 2; Very frequently = 3. At each level of school, participants were also asked to identify the type of bullying they had committed or experienced: verbal, physical, and social, using the same four response alternatives. Similar questions were asked about having been bullied by college teachers and college coaches and the types of bullying they used, applying the same four response alternatives.