Bullying
Bullying Behaviors Among US Youth
Prevalence and Association With Psychosocial Adjustment
Tonja R. Nansel, PhD Mary Overpeck, DrPH Ramani S. Pilla, PhD W. June Ruan, MA Bruce Simons-Morton, EdD, MPH Peter Scheidt, MD, MPH
ULLYING AMONG SCHOOL-AGED youth is increasingly being recognized as an important problem affecting well-being and social functioning. While a certain amount of conflict and harassment is typical of youth peer relations, bullying presents a potentially more serious threat to healthy youth development. The definition of bullying is widely agreed on in literature on bullying.1-4 Bullying is a specific type of aggression in which (1) the behavior is intended to harm or disturb, (2) the behavior …show more content…
However, it is insufficient to guide intervention and policy development. Moreover, little is known specifically about bullying among US youth.6 In one county-wide middle school survey, 24.1% of youth reported bullying others at least once in the past semester26; it is not known whether this is characteristic of the rest of the nation. The purpose of this study was to report the prevalence of bullying in a nationally representative sample of US youth in grades 6 through 10, along with information on differences in the prevalence of bullying by sex, grade, and race. In addition, the relationships among bullying, being bullied, and psychosocial adjustment are explored for 3 distinct groups: bullies only, those bullied only, and those who both bully and are bullied. METHODS
Study Population
by the World Health Organization.27 The US survey was approved by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Institutional Review Board and was carried out by Macro International Inc (Calverton, Md). Both parental and student consent were solicited. The US sampling universe consisted of all public, Catholic, and other private school students in grades 6 through 10, or their equivalent, excluding schools with enrollment of fewer than 14 students. The sample design used a