Original articleBullying and School Safety
Section snippets
Methods
A large, urban public school district in a US west coast city agreed to participate in this study. The school district annually surveys students to determine how the school climate can be improved to better serve the students. Researchers involved with this study first approached the school district involved to discuss a potential collaborative study regarding bullying. The school district then offered to incorporate questions submitted by the researchers into their existing annual survey, with
Results
Youth in grades 7, 9, and 11 in 20 schools in an urban US school district were surveyed. Of the total of 6836 students enrolled in the schools, 5391 (79%) participated in the survey. Overall, 15% (796) of students surveyed reported being bullied but did not bully others, 7% (387) bullied others but were not bullied themselves, and 4% (195) were bully-victims. The remaining 74% (4013) reported no direct involvement in bullying and were categorized as bystanders. Only 27% of the students defined
Discussion
The National Household Education Survey of 1993 revealed that approximately 50% of students in grades 6 to 12 use strategies to avoid harm at school. Not only being victimized, but even simply witnessing bullying increased the likelihood that a student used a strategy to avoid harm.27 Many lawsuits have been filed over school districts’ failure to protect students being bullied at school.28, 29 DuRant et al30 reported a subgroup of students who have been victimized at school, are afraid to go
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None of the authors has any conflict of interest to disclose. This study was a collaborative effort between the school district and the authors. All costs were covered by the school district.
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Dr. Glew was supported by National Research Scientist Award Fellowships from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH20021-06 and MH 20021-07).