About this study
This study is the first in-depth investigation of pupil and school characteristics in relation to the bullying of secondary school pupils aged 14-16 in England.
You can read the topline findings from this study here and the full report here.
We explored the characteristics of young people who reported being bullied in various ways. Bullying could take the form of:
- name calling and cyberbullying - where children faced taunts, threats and insults via the internet and mobile phones
- being socially excluded
- being threatened with violence
- being subjected to actual violence, or
- having money or possessions taken.
We also looked at how being bullied affected young people’s educational outcomes, and patterns of bullying across the three years of the study.
Potential policy impact
Future anti-bullying initiatives could focus on the groups of young people our research found to be particularly vulnerable to bullying.
Steps could also be taken to raise awareness of the finding that parental awareness of bullying tends to increase the likelihood of young people escaping being bullied in future.
Method
We used information from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), which contains information on young people’s individual and family characteristics.
We used regression analysis to explore the characteristics of bullying victims over three years. We also used multi-level models to take account of the clustering of pupils within schools.