Sunday, April 8, 2012

Start of my Paper on Bullying


There are many things that come to mind when one hears the word “bully”. According to recent statistics, every day many kids in elementary schools, middle schools and high schools are experiencing acts of bullying. These aggressive behaviors often cause social rejection to others, as well as a plethora of different personal effects. The word bully can be defined as a person who is cruel to another, and the act of bullying may take many forms. In more recent years, a term know as “cyber-bullying” has also become more common. While traditional bullying requires face-to face contact between the bully and the person being attacked, cyber- bullying uses technology rather than direct contact.
Although we see the phenomenon of bullying across all ages, there are differences in bullying between elementary school aged students and high school age students. In one study done across three elementary schools in Spain, researchers took a closer look at what types of children were the bullies and what types of children were the victims of bullying. They studied various different factors including gender, race and age as well as other factors such as disability, level of intelligence and impulsivity.
The way that the research was done was quite interesting. Three grade levels were looked at including 4th grade, 5th grade and 6th grade. Students were given the following scale: 0 = not involved in bullying, 1 = bullies (named by at least 25% as an aggressor), 2 = victims (named by at least 25% as a victim) and 3 = bully-victim (named by at least 25% as an aggressor and as a victim). Students had to give each one of their classmates a 0-3. Several complicated formulas were used including the Chi Squared formula to determine the relevance of the findings. 

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