What age are students most likely to be bullied in school? This retrospective study will help parents know what kind of precautions need to be taken, and begin to formulate how to support their son or daughter in school.
This study found the frequency of bullying incidents falls with age. However, it is not clear how much of this decline is due to a real change in behavior and how much to children’s changing definitions of what bullying is.
This paper presents the results of two retrospective studies in an attempt to assess at what ages bullying is really most likely to occur. In male and female adults aged 18-55, bullying was most frequently remembered from around 11-13 years of age, with incidents from earlier and later childhood being reported comparatively rarely.
There were no differences between the reports of younger (18-21 years) and older (22-55 years) participants or between those of males and females. Bullying memories were also compared with memories for other aspects of childhood to assess the accuracy of these memories.
It is concluded that the most memorable (and therefore perhaps the most severe) bullying is that which occurs in middle childhood.
From: Aggressive Behavior, v. 27, n. 6, 2001, pp. 419-429
Copyright © 2002, All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
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