Tackling Bullying: Grounds for Encouragement and Sustained Focus

With the growing recognition over the past 2 decades regarding the harm caused by school bullying on a child’s physical and emotional health, a variety of measures to reduce bullying has been put in place. Given all these efforts, is school bullying trending upward (as many might fear) or downward (as we hope)? What are the current rates of bullying? And, beyond a singular focus on the occurrence of bullying episodes, is the climate in schools improving? The large-sample, 10-year longitudinal study of school bullying by Waasdorp et al1 in this issue of Pediatrics addresses these questions, and does so with commendable rigor. For instance, they used a standard definition of bullying, specifying the attributes of intention, repetition, and power imbalance; the use of this standard definition is not always routine in studies of bullying, making comparisons across studies usually problematic. They also examined a broader age range of students than in other research, improving the generalizability of the findings. Finally, they used a sophisticated longitudinal design that takes into account a number of covariates to better understand trends in bullying and related behaviors over this 10-year period. The good news from the Waasdorp et al … Address correspondence to Stephen S. Leff, PhD, Violence Prevention Initiative, Department of Pediatrics, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Roberts Center for Pediatric Research, 2716 South St, Floor 8, #8323, Philadelphia, PA 19104. E-mail: leff{at}email.chop.edu