Objective
School bullying has many negative effects on students, such as high risk of suicide,
low grades in the school, and high drop-out rate (Cornell, Gregory, Huang, & Fan, 2013;
Mueller, James, Abrutyn, & Levin, 2015; Strom, Thoresen, Wentzel-Larsen, & Dyb,
2013). As school bullying is characterized by repetition, power imbalance, and
intentionality (Olweus, 1993), these offensive behaviors happen constantly among
students. Consequently, how to reduce school bullying and make the campus a better
and friendlier learning environment becomes an important issue.
Encouraging bystanders to intervene in school bullying is essential. Studies
revealed that school bullying is a part of the process of group interaction, and nearly
90% of bullying happened while peers were present (Hawkins, Pepler & Craig, 2001).
Advocating student and peer intervention or counselling students on the issue of school
bullying could bring positive impacts to schools (Salmivalli, 2014). Taking advantage
of the power of bystanders and encouraging them intervene in school bullying is one of
the strategies to improve school bullying.
However, one of the main difficulties in preventing school bullying at present is
that students have low intention to intervene. Research revealed that only about 20% of
students intervened in school bullying, while others watched passively, or clamored
when it happened (Hawkins et al., 2001; O’ Connell, Pepler & Craig, 1999). Peer
nomination studies also found that there are six categories of participant roles, including
bullies, victims, assistant, reinforcer, defender, and outsider (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz,
Björkqvist, Ö sterman, & Kaukiainen, 1996). As a result, it is necessary to further
comprehend what factors may affect students’ intervention to encourage students to
intervene at an appropriate time.
Studies have shown that students of different genders revealed differences in both
participant roles and willingness to intervene. Most of the females have taken the roles
of defenders and outsiders, while males were bullies, assistants and reinforcers
(Goossens, Olthof, & Dekker, 2006; Salmivalli et al., 1996). Moreover, females had
more willingness to intervene in bullying than males (Espelage, Green, & Polanin, 2012;
Rigby & Johnson, 2006). Consequently, the first purpose of this study was to examine
if there was interaction between genders and students’ willingness to intervene in
different types of bullying.
Research has indicated that the students had higher tendency to intervene in verbal
bullying than in physical bullying (Rigby & Johnson, 2006); teachers and pre-service
teachers showed higher willingness to intervene in physical bullying than in relational
bullying (Boulton, Hardcastle, Down, Fowles, & Simmonds, 2014; Craig, Henderson, & Murphy, 2000). Thus, the second purpose of this study was to examine whether there
were interaction between participant roles and different kinds of bullying.
In brief, the four research questions were shown as follow:
1. Do students of different genders show different willingness to intervene in school
bully?
2. Is there interaction between genders and the willingness to intervene in different
bullying categories?
3. Do students characterized by different bullying roles (e.g. defenders, outsiders) show
different willingness to intervene in school bullying?
4. Is there interaction between participant roles and the willingness to intervene in
different bullying categories?