Introduction
Aggression among children today is not uncommon. Whether it appears in the family environment, at school, or for example on the playground, it is important to distinguish one-time expressions of aggression from repeated expressions. If aggressive behavior occurs repeatedly and is directed at one and the same child, this is already bullying. The definition of bullying has not yet been unambiguously delimited. There are several characteristics of this social-pathological phenomenon. According to Roland (Lines, 2007), bullying is prolonged violence, physical or psychological, carried out by an individual or group against an individual who is not able to defend themselves in the current situation. Mellor (Lines, 2007), in turn, defined a bullying act as one that arises when one person or group attempts to violate another person’s integrity by repeatedly saying offensive or hurting things. Sometimes these are fights or kicking people or forcing them to give up money. The person who is bullied cannot stop what is happening and fears that it will happen again. We do not speak of bullying when two people of roughly equal strength are involved. Any definition of bullying, including the definitions above, is of course valid because they share common traits.
This act occurs in various ways. There are several forms of bullying, depending on the angle from which we look at this negative phenomenon. Most often we distinguish physical bullying, psychological bullying, and a new, modern form, cyberbullying—a specific form of psychological bullying. Very often, attacks directed at the psychological side of a child are much more painful than those that are physical and have devastating consequences because they negatively affect the individual’s broader social functioning. On the other hand, bullying in any form is also a criminal offense. Teachers and parents often do not perceive it that way, yet bullying from a criminal-law perspective may also satisfy the statutory elements of restricting personal liberty, extortion, robbery, rape, sexual abuse, bodily injury, or damaging another person’s property. It is therefore clear that bullying may ultimately have a negative impact not only on the victim but also on the aggressor. There are many studies dedicated to this issue. Especially in foreign research, scientists do not examine only prevalence and the most common forms of bullying, but approach this topic more comprehensively. Therefore, this topic needs attention and it is necessary to conduct domestic research focusing on determinants that cause or influence it.
Research subject and aim
The subject of the research was to study the social contexts of children’s bullying through qualitative research methods. The goal was to analyze the popularity of individual pupils in the group, analyze the socioeconomic status of the families from which the pupils came, and also gender differences in the context of relational aggression.
Participants
The research sample consisted of 25 eighth-grade primary school pupils, approximately 13 years old, and also the pupils’ parents. Teachers as informants were also helpful in collecting data.
Research methods
Long-term field research was conducted mainly through participant observation. Other methods used were the questionnaire method and semi-structured interviews. In the article, however, I will focus on observation and questionnaires.
Research results
In the following subsection, I summarize what could be found through questionnaires and what through long-term observation during the study.
Before the start of long-term fieldwork in the classroom, in cooperation with the class teacher, I had the pupils fill out two questionnaires. The first focused on finding out what children consider bullying and in what form and where it occurs most often. I also inquired as to whom the pupils would confide if they encountered bullying and who, in their opinion, should address this negative phenomenon. The second, more substantial questionnaire was Thornberg’s, which focused on the personality of the victim and the personality of the aggressor. After evaluating the first questionnaire, I found that according to the pupils’ answers, bullying occurs in the class group, most often taking place in class, and it is mainly verbal bullying and taking things. According to pupils, such situations should be handled by the class teacher. On the other hand, they would first tell their parents about bullying, and toward the class teacher they expressed the lowest level of trust. The second questionnaire offered answers to why a pupil is bullied in a particular class and why the aggressor bullies. From the evaluated research results, it can be concluded that the most frequently bullied are pupils who are in some way “weird” or “odd,” and, conversely, that pupils who most often become aggressors are those who crave power or feel bad themselves. These findings needed to be verified through long-term observation. The combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is methodologically very beneficial because it allows sufficient data to be collected (the quantitative part), so that bullying case descriptions cannot be considered unique, and on the other hand, deep and thorough ethnographic field research allows one to place bullying processes and causes into a social context and provide a much more detailed analytical view of this phenomenon. In this way, bullying was studied in Slovakia for the first time.
The primary method during my field research was indeed long-term participant observation of a group of pupils, primarily in the school environment. I considered bullying completed in these dyadic interactions as such a display where the observed child clearly dominated over another child, and this dominance was immediate and clearly observable, while it had to involve repeated attacks focused on one and the same individual or group. It was necessary to observe their behavior not only in classrooms but also during breaks and outside school in places where pupils gather after school (school playground, bus stop, outdoor spaces of the cultural center), since the questionnaire results confirmed that bullying occurs most often in class and outside school. I spent most of my time in the specific class because that is where pupils spent most of their time, including during breaks. At the beginning of the research, girls in particular were mistrustful and cautious. Boys behaved naturally as if I were not even there. During the study, I managed through observation to capture many pieces of information. Even ones that were not the subject of the study (socioeconomic status, popularity, gender differences in manifestations of relational aggression).
For example, it was possible to observe victims’ emotional responses: how victims reacted to specific interactions, their experience, and mental state. Observation also made it possible to follow the process of integrating a new pupil into the class. This integration was associated with a kind of class ritual, in which bullying a classmate was part of it. Bullying itself was present in the class almost every day. Through observation I found that bullying of the pupil was already in a more advanced stage (it had been happening for several years) and that the victim perceived bullying as a form of play, but only with two aggressors. Since the pupil was being singled out by almost the entire collective, he was glad that at least someone was “paying attention” to him. However, he reacted differently to the third aggressor. He was afraid of him. When I mention aggressors, through observation it was also possible to observe the aggressors themselves and define types of aggressors. Kolář (as cited by Koštrnová, 2014) divides aggressors into three types:
- Coarse, impulsive, with a disrupted relationship to authority.
- Very polite, cultured, withdrawn person with sadistic tendencies in a sexual sense.
- Optimistic, adventurous, self-confident, popular and influential.
The first of the aggressors could be defined as type 3 aggressor (optimistic, adventurous, self-confident, popular and influential. He bullies victims for his own and others’ amusement.) In this case, also to attract attention. As a type 1 aggressor, based on observed behavior, the second aggressor could be designated (rough, impulsive, with a disrupted relationship to authority). A type 1 aggressor bullies harshly and demands absolute obedience, using bullying deliberately to intimidate others. This aggressor very often comes from a family where aggression from parents is present. Very often he lacks moral, spiritual, and emotional values in the family from which he comes. The third aggressor was a specific case. It was an aggressor-manipulator. He carried out his attacks through another pupil who was mildly mentally delayed and therefore easy to manipulate. That pupil also had a weakened ability to distinguish good from bad and a reduced ability to realize the consequences of his actions. The third aggressor therefore repeatedly incited him in an alibi-like way to attack the victim and interpreted it as a form of play or entertainment.
Observation also captured reactions of observers in the role of onlookers, relationships in the class, and the degree of participants’ dominance.
Conclusion
Among the most common research methods used in the humanities, observation, questionnaires, and interviews can be considered. Although the questionnaire method allows us to gather a large amount of data in a short time, are questionnaires sufficient when studying, for example, bullying? If we examine the frequency of bullying, yes—for monitoring this is the case. They offer answers to predefined questions. If we want, however, to study this phenomenon more deeply and find new knowledge, I believe this is not enough. Observation is time-intensive, but it can provide many interesting pieces of information observed in the natural environment. Many areas relevant to bullying can best be studied through participant observation, whether bullying as a form of ritual in integration into a peer group or the study of situational-contextual conditions under which pupils participate in bullying even though their attitudes toward bullying are negative, and similarly. Even so, the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods in bullying research is lacking. In this way, one could also study aggressors’ personalities. Why do they bully classmates? What in them supports the desire for violence? Does upbringing type, for example, influence bullying in the aggressor’s personality? Is it possible to find a connection? And many other questions that can be answered precisely by combining both quantitative and qualitative methods in research.
Author: Mgr. Veronika Poláková, PhD.
References
Koštrnová, D. 2014. Tvorba a rozvoj pozitívnej klímy v triede. Bratislava : Metodicko-pedagogické centrum Linnes, D., 2007, The Bullies: Understanding bullies and bullying, Jessica Kingsley Publishers : London