Overcoming Limitations in Peer Victimization Research that Impede Successful Intervention: Challenges and New Directions

Peer victimization at school is a worldwide problem with profound implications for victims, bullies, and whole-school communities. Yet, the 50-year quest to solve the problem has produced mostly disappointing results. A critical examination of current research reveals both pivotal limitations and potential solutions. Solutions include introducing psychometrically sound measures to assess the parallel components of bullying and victimization; analyzing cross-national datasets; and embracing a social-ecological perspective emphasizing the motivation of bullies, importance of bystanders, pro-defending and anti-bullying attitudes, classroom climate, and a multilevel perspective. These solutions have been integrated into a series of recent interventions. Teachers are professionally trained to create a highly supportive climate that allows student-bystanders to overcome their otherwise normative tendency to reinforce bullies. Once established, this intervention-enabled classroom climate impedes bully-victim episodes. The take-home message is to work with teachers on how to develop an interpersonally supportive classroom climate at the beginning of the school year to catalyze student-bystanders’ volitional internalization of pro-defending and anti-bullying attitudes and social norms. Recommendations include studying bullying and victimization simultaneously, testing multilevel models, targeting classroom climate and bystander roles as critical intervention outcomes, and integrating school-wide and individual student interventions only after improving social norms and the school climate.