The article under consideration is called Adolescents’ Perception of Bullying: Who Is the Victim? Who is the Bully? What Can Be Done To Stop Bullying? The research conducted by the group of scientists, Ann Frisen, Anna-Karin Jonsson, and Camilla Persson (Department of Psychology, Göteborg University, Sweden), was aimed at describing “adolescents’ perceptions and experiences of bullying: their thoughts about why children and adolescents are bullied, their ideas about why some bully others, and what they believe is important in order to stop bullying.” (Frisen et al. 749) The second and the third aims of the study were “to describe how adolescents perceive bullies” and “to describe what adolescents believe to be important in order to stop bullying”, respectively (Frisen et al. 750). One more aim was “to determine whether there are differences in the perceptions of victims, bullies, bully-victims, and uninvolved adolescents.” (Frisen et al. 750) The research focused on the following areas:
- Who gets bullied?
- Who bullies others?
- What is important in order to stop bullying?
To achieve the goals set the authors inquired adolescents about their experiences throughout their school years. A total of 119 adolescents took part in the investigation (48 boys and 71 girls); two high schools in Göteborg were involved in the study. The age of participants differed from 15 to 20 years. The participation was on a voluntary basis. The questions to the participants were about the students’ involvement in bullying in each specific age period according to the Swedish school system. The participants were asked about their views on the reasons for bullying and possible ways of stopping it.
The answers obtained from the respondents were classified into categories, like:
Who Gets Bullied?
- Victim’s appearance, example: thin, fat, ugly;
- Victim’s behavior, example: behaves strangely, talks with a different dialect, shy, insecure; Characteristics of bullies, example: bullies think they are cool, bullies want to feel superior, bullies want to show that they have power;
- Social background, for example, different culture, religion, economic situation.
- Other, examples: bad luck, the victim has no friends, the victim bullies others.
Why Some Adolescents Bully Others?
The most frequent answers were that the bully suffers from low self-esteem and that the bully feels cool.
What Makes Bullying Stop?
The most common response was that the bully matures and that the victim stood up for himself/herself.
“Those who were not involved in bullying during their school years had a much stronger belief that victims can stand up for themselves than did the victims themselves.” (Frisen et al. 749)
The authors sum up that
Swedish adolescents tend to believe that those who are bullied have a different appearance and that those who bully others suffer from low self-esteem. They believe that in order to stop bullying the bully needs to mature. Unfortunately, few mention intervention by adults as a way to stop bullying. (Frisen et al. 759)
The results achieved do not contradict the authors’ expectations about the age of those engaged in bullying and the age of their victims, as well as about the reasons for this phenomenon. In their research, the authors explain how their findings support the previous studies and in what way they contradict them. This makes the investigation sound objective.
The study appears to be quite strong, as it significantly widens the knowledge on the problem of bullying; the data got experimentally is sustained by the theoretical knowledge of the subject under analysis. The overview of the existing literature on the problem that the authors present contributes to the reader’s better understanding of the phenomenon of bullying, as well as the tables suggested in the research that gives a graphical presentation of the problem investigated.
As for the weak points of the research, we believe that mere interrogation of the students is not a sufficient method to achieve the goals of the research. The authors might have used some other ways of obtaining the results as it could make them much more objective.
Still, the paper appears to be useful for everyone engaged in dealing with people from 7 to 20 years, as it gives insights on the problem that appears so common during this age. The paper helps to understand the causes of this phenomenon and inspires for finding ways of stopping it. We believe that further research is needed for finding concrete ways of stopping bullying. The findings of the current paper will serve as a springboard for further investigation of the problem.
Works Cited
Frisen, Ann et al. “Adolescents’ Perception of Bullying: Who Is the Victim? Who is the Bully? What Can Be Done To Stop Bullying?” Adolescence 42.168 (2007): 749-761.