Bullies and victims at school: are they the same pupils?
BACKGROUND
The reported prevalence of bully-victims and aggressive/provocative victims varies quite considerably in previous research, and only a few studies have reported prevalence rates across grades. There is also a lack of detailed analyses of the extent to which victims are also bullies, and bullies are also victims.


OBJECTIVE
To study the prevalence of male and female bully-victims across grade/age and to establish the degree of overlap or relative size of the bully-victim group by relating them to all victims, all bullies and all involved students.


METHODS
Participants in Study 1 were 5,171 pupils in grades 5-9 from 37 schools. Study 2 comprised 12,983 pupils in grades 4-10 from 66 schools.


METHODS
The Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire was administered to the pupils in their ordinary classrooms.


RESULTS
The prevalence of bully-victims was low and mainly declined across grades. There were far more boys than girls in the bully-victim group. Bully-victims resembled victims only (pure victims) in terms of age-trends and bullies only (pure bullies) in terms of sex composition. The overlap of bully-victims with the total victim group was fairly small (10-20%) in all grades. In primary grades, bully-victims constituted about 30-50% of the total bully group, whereas in higher grades these proportions were considerably lower.


CONCLUSIONS
Our analyses and overview of previous research suggest that the bully-victim group is small, and that the large variations across studies are mainly due to differences in choice of cutoff point. Bully-victims should generally be seen and treated statistically as a distinct subgroup. The relatively larger proportion of bully-victims in lower grades should be explored further.
Solberg
Mona E
ME
Research Center for Health Promotion, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. mona.solberg@psyhp.uib.no
Olweus
Dan
D
Endresen
Inger M
IM
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015995:Prevalence; D012574:Schools; D012931:Social Environment; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data