Citation

Pergolizzi F, Pergolizzi J, Gan Z, Macario S, Pergolizzi JV, Ewin TJ, Gan TJ. Int. J. Adolesc. Med. Health 2011; 23(1): 11-18.

Affiliation

Project Anti-Bully, 840 111th Avenue North, Suite #7, Naples, FL 34108-1877, USA. frpergolizzi@aol.com

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Freund Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

21721358

Abstract

A survey conducted in 2008 among 346 American middle school students in several cities determined that 82.7% of respondents found bullying to be a problem of some degree, with 46.0% rating it a "medium", "bad", or "very bad" problem. It was found that 89% had witnessed an act of bullying and 49.1% said they had been the victim of a bully. Boys were significantly more likely than girls to say that a victim deserved to be bullied (11.1% vs. 1.3%, p = 0.01), whereas girls were significantly more likely than boys to fail to intervene because they did not know what to do (30.3% for girls vs. 11.1%, p < 0.01). There was no significant difference in this study between boys and girls in terms of being a bully: 43.6% admitted they had bullied another (46.2% boys, 41.1% girls, p = 0.34); however, girls were significantly more likely than boys to bully by excluding others and gossiping about them than by hitting, teasing, or threatening. Cyberbullying, surveyed as a distinct entity, had affected 31.1% of respondents directly, with similar results from 2006 to 2007 surveys. Of those who found conventional bullying a "bad" or "very bad" problem at their schools, numbers fell from 17.3% in 2006-2007 vs. 11.3% in 2008.

Language: en