Press Releases

For Immediate Release: 31 August 2010

Several Details of School Bullying Linked to Increased Reporting to Officials

Boston, Mass. — Bullying often goes unreported in U.S. schools, making the problem difficult for school officials to identify and manage. In a new Issues & Answers Report published by the Institute of Education Sciences—“What Characteristics of Bullying, Bullying Victims, and Schools Are Associated with Increased Reporting of Bullying to School Officials?”—REL Northeast and Islands researchers identified several details associated with bullying incidents that are linked to increased reporting to school officials.

The researchers examined 51 characteristics associated with bullying incidents, bullying victims, and victims’ schools recorded in a national crime victimization survey and found 11 tied to increased reporting. Specifically, they found that:

• When the bullying involved injury, physical threats, destruction of property, actual physical contact (pushing, shoving, and the like), greater frequency, multiple types, more than one location, and at least one occurrence on a school bus, bullying victims were more likely to indicate that their victimization was reported to a school official.
• Victims involved in a fight during the school year and victims who reported being afraid of attack and avoiding certain school areas or activities were more likely to indicate that their victimization was reported to a school official.
• Lower grade levels were associated with more reporting: reporting ranged from 53 percent in sixth grade to 27 percent in 12th grade.
• No characteristic of bullying victims’ schools, including general characteristics, school culture, and school security and safety, was associated with reporting.

Echoing findings from previous research suggesting that school officials and teachers aren’t told about many bullying incidents, the researchers found that 64.2 percent of victims said the bullying was not reported, either by themselves or others, to teachers or school officials. “Even when a bullying victim had suffered injury, 40 percent of the time the students said the bullying was not reported,” lead researcher Anthony Petrosino said.

Petrosino and his team analyzed self-reported data from the Department of Justice’s 2007 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) School Crime Supplement, a biennial survey of children ages 12–18 who attended school in the prior academic year.

The REL Northeast and Islands report comes at a time of increased concern about the prevalence of school bullying, and as new state laws mandate that school districts prohibit bullying and put forth strategies for handling incidents.

At the same time, Petrosino cautioned that findings from the study should be interpreted as exploratory associations and not as causal relationships. Future research could examine why such a high percentage of bullying victimization is not reported (for example, fear of retaliation by bullies or belief that the school cannot help).

“We don’t have any data about how schools handle these incidents, once they are reported, and a follow-up study could ask: What did the schools do in response to bullying events? What happened to the bullies? What happened to the students? How did the parents perceive the response?” he said.

The report was written by Petrosino and Sarah Guckenburg of Learning Innovations at WestEd; Jill DeVoe of the American Institutes for Research; and Thomas Hanson of WestEd. It can be downloaded at the IES website or relnei.org.

For more information about this report, contact agaddis@edc.org.

The Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) is led by Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) in partnership with the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and WestEd’s Learning Innovations program. REL-NEI is one of 10 Regional Educational Laboratories funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education. REL-NEI provides rigorous research that is relevant to national education priorities, responsive to local needs, and usable for policy and practice. Visit www.relnei.org.

This project has been funded at least in part with federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract Number ED-06-CO-0025. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) is a global nonprofit organization that develops, delivers, and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges in education, health, and economic development. Visit www.edc.org.