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?

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