SRCD Biennial Meeting April 2003: The stability of victimisation behaviour

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SRCD Biennial Meeting April 2003 The stability
of victimisation behaviour
Sarah Woods, Dieter Wolke and Muthanna Samara
University of Hertfordshire, U.K.
VICTEC Virtual ict with empathic Characters
University of Bristol, U.K.
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Background

• Well documented evidence that social, cognitive,
  behavioural and family factors are concurrently
  related to bullying behaviour (e.g. Wolke et al.,
  2001).
• Few studies have considered the stability of
  victim roles and have instead focused on the
  stability of bully roles.
• Paucity of evidence concerning the risk factors
  associated with remaining, escaping or becoming
  involved in victimisation.

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Background

• Studies have tended to focus on secondary school
  samples rather than primary school.
• Little is known about the stability of relational
  victimisation in comparison to direct
  victimisation.
• Reliance on peer nominations (by class) does not
  allow for comparison of bullying frequency across
  schools.

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Research Questions

• What is the stability of direct and relational
  victimisation behaviour among primary school
  children in the U.K. over 2-4 years?
• 2) What combination of factors predicts
• Remaining involved in victimisation?
• Escaping victimisation?
• Becoming involved in victimisation?
• for both direct and relational
  victimisation.

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Study Design

• Longitudinal Investigation involving 17 primary
  schools in Hertfordshire London, U.K.
• Baseline Assessment Carried out 1996-1998 with
  children aged 6-9 (years 2 4)
• Follow-up Assessment Carried out when children
  were aged 10-11 (year 6) 2 or 4 years after the
  baseline assessment.

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Sample Data
N 666 potential children from 17 schools
Time 1
N 634 Assessed at baseline
N 202 original drop-out (3 non consent, 12
absent, 85 moved school
Time 2
N 432 Longitudinally Assessed
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Instruments Baseline follow-up

• Standard Individual Bullying Interview or Qaire
  (Olweus, 1991)
• TYPE
• Direct Bullying (e.g. hit/beaten).
• Relational Bullying (e.g. exclusion by friends).
• FREQUENCY
• Never bullied rarely/hardly ever bullied
• frequently bullied about once week/few times a
  week.

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Instruments BaselineBehaviour Problems

• Strengths Difficulties Qaire (Goodman, 1997)

1.Emotional Symptoms Total Difficulties 2.Hyper
activity SDQ score 3.Conduct Problems 4.Peer
Problems 5.Prosocial Behaviour
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Instruments BaselineHEALTH

• Health Questionnaire (Wolke et al. 2001)
• 2 sections

7 items about physical health problems (PHP) e.g.
headache, tummy ache, sickness
7 items about emotional health problems (EHP)
e.g. bed wetting, nightmares
7- point scale (0-6 or more times over past 6
mths)
5 point scale (never to most days over past 6
mths)
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Instruments Baseline

• Other variables measured
• Special Educational Needs (SEN)
• No. friends/best friends
• No. rejected children
• Information about siblings
• Childs home situation (biological parents,
  single parent, etc).

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Bullying Classifications

• Children were classified for direct (physical
  verbal) bullying and relational bullying as
• pure bully
• pure victim
• Bully/victim
• Neutral

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RESULTS

• Drop-out analysis and relational bullying.
• Stability of direct and relational victimisation.
• Risk factors predicting remaining,escaping or
  becoming involved in victimisation.

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Relational Bullying status and drop-out rate
P lt .01
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Other factors associated with drop-out rates

• Children who had fewer friends within their
  class.
• Drop-outs rejected fewer children than those who
  remained in the study.

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Risk Analysis
Risk factor
Outcome
Yes (a c)
Yes (a b)
a
c
b
No (b d)
No (c d)
d
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Relative risk and stability of victimisation

• Children classified as direct victims at baseline
  had a two fold increased risk of remaining a
  direct victim at follow-up compared to
  non-victims at baseline becoming victims at
  follow-up.
• No long-term risk for children classified as
  relational victims at baseline to remain a
  relational victim at follow-up.

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Relative risk stability of direct victimisation
Baseline Time 1
Follow-up Time 2
N 37 (38.1)
Victim N 104
Victim N 97
N 60 (61.9)
N 67 (20.0)
Not victim N 335
Not victim N 328
N 268 (80.0)
RR 1.91 95 CI 1.37 2.66, chi-square
13.52, p lt 0.001
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Factors predicting remaining vs escaping direct
victimisation
Model chi-square 30.83 df 11 p lt 0.001, N
52
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Factors predicting remaining vs escaping
relational victimisation
Model chi-square 16.61 df 6 p lt 0.011, N 44
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Factors predicting becoming involved in
victimisation or remaining a non-victim
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Summary of findings Drop-outs

• Relational Drop-outs
• Have fewer friends.
• Are more frequently relational victims or
  bully/victims
• Reject many children.

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Summary Stability of direct vs relational
victimisation

• Direct victimisation is a stable behaviour among
  primary school children over 2 yrs. In contrast
  relational victimisation is not
• Relational bullying becomes more prominent over
  time.
• Falling out with friends is frequent at primary
  school.
• The most affected victims had left the school
  (selective drop-out).

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Summary Risk Factors

• Health problems served as a risk factor for
  prolonged victimisation
• More days absent from school.
• Appear weaker to peers and easy target.
• Friendships are a protective factor
• Allow children to develop adaptive successful
  coping mechanisms.
• Being female
• Females may not have other female or male peers
  to help protect against direct victimisation.

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Conclusions

• Direct victimisation is a stable phenomenon
  already among primary school children.
• Relational victimisation is a less stable
  behaviour among primary school children.
• A lack of friendships, physical and emotional
  health problems and being female all serve as
  risk factors for remaining involved or becoming
  involved in victimisation.

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Future Directions

• Important implications for early recognition of
  victimisation among primary school children.
• Befriending or peer network schemes.
• Early intervention strategies that allow learning
  and adaptive coping.

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A New Intervention Victec
Victec (Virtual ict with Empathic Characters) is
a European funded project which aims to develop a
new and innovative approach to aid the reduction
of bullying problems in schools through the use
of synthetic characters and drama in a virtual
learning environment.
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Scenarios for VICTEC

• Our role is to help design scenarios for the VLE
  about bullying, victimisation and friendship for
  children aged 8-12 years old.

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Victimisation Scenarios

• Work has commenced towards developing scenarios
  comprised of several episodes to depict bullying
  behaviour.
• There will be a maximum of 3 4 characters per
  episode (e.g. bully, victim and bystander).
• The environment to be modelled will focus on the
  school context.

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Real vs Cartoon schools
REAL
CARTOON
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Victimisation Scenarios

• The scenario will begin with an introduction to
  the main character (e.g. victim).
• A tour of the school and classroom will then be
  given highlighting some of the schooling history
  and the other characters.
• The first victimisation event will then occur.
  The victim will ask the user what he/she should
  do?

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Victimisation Scenarios

• Several subsequent episodes will follow depicting
  similar incidents of direct victimisation but
  maybe in different locations.
• Users will be given the opportunity to try out
  different coping responses after each episode.
• Justification questions are to be used throughout
  the VL interaction (e.g. Why did you choose to
  tell the teacher?)

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Victimisation Scenarios

• Theory of Mind (ToM) questions are to be asked at
  some point during the VL interaction to determine
  whether there are individual differences between
  b, v, b/v.
• Possible endings for the scenarios might be to
  give the child a summary story that has been
  generated during the VL interaction.

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The VLE Demonstrator