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Title: No Bullies Allowed: Understanding Peer Victimization, the Impacts on Delinquency, and the Effectiveness of Prevention Programs
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Wong, Jennifer S. |
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No Bullies Allowed: Understanding Peer Victimization, the Impacts on Delinquency, and the Effectiveness of Prevention Programs Ph.D. Dissertation, The Pardee RAND Graduate School, March 2009. Also: http://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/2009/RAND_RGSD240.pdf Cohort(s): NLSY97 Publisher: RAND Keyword(s): Bullying/Victimization; Delinquency/Gang Activity; Peers/Peer influence/Peer relations; Propensity Scores; Self-Reporting; Variables, Independent - Covariate Over the past decade school bullying has emerged as a prominent issue of concern for students, parents, educators, and researchers in North America and around the world. Research evidence suggests non-trivial and potentially serious negative repercussions of both bullying and victimization. The first chapter of the dissertation presents a comprehensive narrative literature review on the nature and significance of school bullying including controversies in definition; types of measurement; a description of victims, bully-victims, bullies, and bystanders with regard to defining characteristics, risk and protective factors, and outcomes and correlates of involvement in bullying/victimization; and a review of theoretical models that explain why bullying occurs. The second chapter of the dissertation uses a large, nationally representative panel dataset, the NLSY97, and a propensity score matching technique to assess the impact of bully victimization on a range of 10 delinquency outcomes measured over a six-year period. This analytic strategy considers the effect of baseline group differences by matching bullied and non-bullied subjects on propensity scores, thus allowing observable covariates to be eliminated as potential confounders of the estimated treatment effect. Results show that victimization prior to the age of 12 years is significantly predictive of the development of several delinquent behaviors, including running away from home, selling drugs, vandalism, theft, other property crimes, and assault. Using meta-analysis, the final chapter of the dissertation assesses the overall effectiveness of school-based programs for preventing bullying and victimization. Results suggest that as a whole, prevention programs are significantly effective at reducing the problem of victimization in schools, but are only marginally successful at reducing bullying. After participating in bullying prevention programs, students report an effect size of .188 for reduction in victimization, and an effect size of .109 for reduction in bullying others. The possibility of systematic between-study heterogeneity was explored via moderator analyses, and several significant moderators of treatment impact on victimization were identified. More work is needed to determine why programs are more successful with victims of bullying than with perpetrators, and prevention efforts should focus on the development of programs that are more likely to bring about successful reductions in both bullying and victimization. |
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Bibliography Citation
Wong, Jennifer S. No Bullies Allowed: Understanding Peer Victimization, the Impacts on Delinquency, and the Effectiveness of Prevention Programs. Ph.D. Dissertation, The Pardee RAND Graduate School, March 2009.. |