University students’ views on bullying from the perspective of different participant roles

Sixty university students in three different participant roles—perpetrator, the target and the bystander—took part in a role-play incident of bullying. Participants were asked to describe (i) their perspective on the incident; (ii) their views of the target and the perpetrator and (iii) their solution to the problem. The findings suggest that the power of the peer group needs to be fully understood if bullying is to be tackled efficiently. The bystanders tended to blame the victim and were reluctant to intervene, the victim felt let down and marginalized by peers’ indifference and hostility and the bullies failed to acknowledge or understand the consequences of their actions. The study offers ideas for strategies and policies to address the under-researched issue of bullying among university students.