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 The study was confined to one large school district in the state of
Maryland. But among the students there, bullying in person or online
decreased between 2005 and 2014, researchers found.
"It gives us some idea that what we’re doing continues to work,"
said senior author Catherine Bradshaw, of the University of Virginia
in Charlottesville.
People should not take the results to mean bullying is no longer a
significant concern, she told Reuters Health.
"It continues to be a concern for students who continue to be a part
of it," she said.
Writing May 1st in the journal Pediatrics, she and her colleagues
note that bullying has received a lot of media attention over the
past decade - and as a result, many people may believe it's on the
rise.
Past research suggests bullying among school-age children is
decreasing, they add, but that research was often flawed. For
example, some studies did not use a standardized definition of
bullying; other studies only analyzed people who were victimized or
only elementary, middle or high school students.
For the new study, the researchers analyzed survey responses
collected between 2005 and 2014 from 246,306 fourth- through
12th-graders at 109 schools in Maryland.
The survey defined bullying the same way the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta does. The definition
includes "actions like threatening, teasing, name-calling, ignoring,
rumor-spreading, sending hurtful emails and text messages, and
leaving someone out on purpose."
Among other questions, the survey asked students if they'd been
bullied or if they had bullied someone else at least twice in the
last month.
Rates of bullying ranged from about 13 percent to about 29 percent.
Rates of being a bully ranged from 7 percent to about 21 percent.
Over the 10-year study period, being bullied, being a bully and
witnessing bullying became less common. There were also decreases in
the rates of student reports of being pushed, threatened,
cyberbullied and having rumors spread about them.
Rates of students reporting feeling safe at school increased over
the 10 years, too.
"In the more recent years, that’s where we’ve seen a steeper decline
in the data," said Bradshaw.
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While the study can't say why bullying rates decreased over the
decade or why the decrease was steeper in recent years, the
researchers suggest it may be due to increasing number of
anti-bullying policies and an increase in evidence-based
anti-bullying policies.
All states now have laws that address bullying, the researchers
write.
The most successful anti-bullying programs are typically science
based, intensive, involve the whole school and engage students,
teachers and parents, according to Stephen Leff and Dr. Chris
Feudtner, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the
University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
"These programs often try to build skills in youth problem-solving
abilities, empathy, perspective-taking, and how to be a positive
bystander," Leff and Feudtner write in an editorial accompanying the
new study.
They add that the new data is encouraging, but "we need to sustain
our focus to continue the decrease of bullying and victimization in
schools across the nation."
Bradshaw said the nation's foot must be kept on the gas in order to
make progress on decreasing rates of bullying.
"We wan to build momentum and not lose any traction," she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2pyVXgy and http://bit.ly/2pyS6Qr
Pediatrics 2017.
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