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Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice (2016)

Chapter: 7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice

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Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
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7

Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice

The committee was charged with critically examining the state of the science on the biological and psychosocial consequences of bullying and on the risk factors and protective factors that, respectively, increase or decrease bullying behavior and its consequences. The previous chapters in this report have addressed these two primary tasks. Despite the challenges, as detailed in Chapter 2, in deriving consistent prevalence rates for bullying across major national-level surveys, bullying and cyberbullying in the United States is common and warrants commensurate attention at the federal, state, and local levels. Chapter 3 focused on the social contexts that can either attenuate or exacerbate (i.e., moderate) the effect of individual characteristics on bullying behavior. In addition, as described in Chapter 3, bullying does not just affect the children and youth who are most directly involved in the bullying dynamic. Bullying is a group phenomenon in which peers play a number of different complex roles. As discussed explicitly in Chapter 4 and reflected throughout this report, bullying behavior is a serious public health issue with significant negative consequences, in both the short and long term, for the children who are bullied, the children who perpetrate bullying behavior, and children who are both perpetrators and targets of bullying.

As stated in Chapter 5, the committee finds that universal prevention programs do exist that either have demonstrated effectiveness or hold promise for reducing bullying and related behavioral and mental health problems, although the effectiveness of current programs is relatively modest. Multicomponent schoolwide programs appear to be most effective at reducing bullying. Moreover, the committee finds that while federal civil rights and antidiscrimination laws can offer some protections against bul-

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

lying, these laws have important limitations. State anti-bullying laws differ substantially with regard to how bullying is defined and the scope of schools’ authority to respond to bullying, as noted in Chapter 6.

In this chapter, the committee presents its overall conclusions and recommendations as they relate to the study’s statement of task. In addition, the committee provides recommendations for addressing the research needed to improve policy and practice that address bullying behavior. Finally, the committee summarizes a proposed research agenda, in which gaps in the current evidence base are noted.

OVERALL CONCLUSIONS CONCERNING SCIENCE, POLICY, AND PRACTICE

Although the committee identified specific conclusions in each chapter, below are the major overall conclusions for the report.

Definitional and measurement inconsistencies in national datasets lead to a variation in estimates of the prevalence of youth being bullied; considerably less is known about the number of perpetrators, and even less is known about the number of bystanders. The prevalence of bullying at school ranges from 17.9 percent to 30.9 percent of youth, whereas the prevalence of cyber victimization ranges from 6.9 percent to 14.8 percent of youth. However, the prevalence of bullying among some groups of youth (e.g., youth who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender [LGBT], youth with disabilities) appears to be even higher. (Chapter 2)

Youth are embedded in multiple contexts, ranging from peer and family to school and community. Each of these contexts can affect individual characteristics of youth (e.g., race/ethnicity, sexual orientation) in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and being the perpetrator or target of bullying, or both. (Chapter 3)

Bullying behavior has significant negative consequences on physical, mental, and behavioral health and on academic performance. Bullying behavior leads to biological changes, although more research is needed to fully understand how changes in the brain associated with bullying lead to increased risk for mental and physical health problems. (Chapter 4)

Multicomponent schoolwide programs appear to be the most effective approach for reducing bullying and should be implemented along with rigorous evaluations of their effects when applied to large populations of youth. Some widely used approaches such as zero tolerance policies and school assemblies are not effective at reducing bullying and may even be harmful; they should be discontinued with resources redirected to evidence-based programs. (Chapter 5)

Law and policy can play a significant role in strengthening state and

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

local efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to bullying. However, data on how these laws and policies affect the prevalence of bullying and its consequences are extremely limited. (Chapter 6)

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MOVING FORWARD

The committee has developed seven recommendations to make progress in monitoring, preventing, and intervening in bullying. These recommendations are organized around the following four categories: Surveillance and Monitoring, State and Local Policies, Preventive Intervention Programming, and the Social Media Industry. The committee’s recommendations are described in more detail below, and the chapter-specific conclusions that support these recommendations are identified.

Surveillance and Monitoring

The first two recommendations are concerned with addressing the challenges in reliably and ethically measuring the incidence of bullying and surveilling its prevalence.

Recommendation 7.1: The U.S Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, and the Federal Trade Commission, which are engaged in the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention interagency group, should foster use of a consistent definition of bullying. These agencies should

  • Promote wide adoption and use of this definition by all federal surveillance efforts on bullying prevalence, by investigators studying bullying, and by schools and other organizations.
  • Encourage research that compares different methods and operational definitions of bullying to determine the impact of different definitions on prevalence and incidence rates, change over time, or effects of interventions on outcome behaviors.
  • Mandate that prevalence of bullying behaviors be included with other outcome measures in any evaluations of youth violence prevention programs, in order to also determine their effects on bullying.

There are many violence prevention programs that have been implemented to reduce youth interpersonal violence. While these programs may very well have an effect on bullying behavior, few of these programs explicitly measure bullying behavior as an outcome. As described earlier in this

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

report (Chapter 1), bullying behavior is characterized by an imbalance of power, an intention to harm, and repeated perpetration.

Supporting Evidence for the Recommendation:

Conclusion 2.3: Cyberbullying should be considered within the context of bullying rather than as a separate entity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definition should be evaluated for its application to cyberbullying. Although cyberbullying may already be included, it is not perceived that way by the public or by the youth population.

Conclusion 2.4: Different types of bullying behaviors—physical, relational, cyber—may emerge or be more salient at different stages of the developmental life course.

Recommendation 7.2: The U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, and other agencies engaged in the Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention interagency group should gather longitudinal surveillance data on the prevalence of all forms of bullying, including physical, verbal, relational, property, cyber, and bias-based bullying, and the prevalence of individuals involved in bullying, including perpetrators, targets, and bystanders, in order to have more uniform and accurate prevalence estimates.

  • This should include at a minimum all school-age children (ages 5-18) who might be involved in or affected by bullying behavior.
  • This should include nationally representative data on groups that are identified in this report as being at increased risk for bullying behavior (for example, but not limited to, LGBT students, students with disabilities, and youth living in poverty).
  • These agencies should develop mechanisms for sharing bullying data at geographic units of analysis other than the national level (e.g., state and school district level) that will allow communities, organizations, and researchers to evaluate the implementation and impact of policies and programs.

The committee has stated in Chapter 6 that there is much to be learned about the effectiveness of anti-bullying policies and about the factors that can contribute to their successful implementation. The committee also articulated the methodological challenges involved in conducting research on the implementation of anti-bullying policies, including the creation of data structures that permit the evaluation of anti-bullying policies. Sharing data at geographic units of analysis that align with policies and programs (e.g.,

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

state, school district, school) will provide important uniform and economical information that can be used to evaluate the impact of programs and policies, guide investigators and policy makers to high prevalence areas in need of intervention, serve to improve the methodological rigor of the studies, and promote further research in this area.

Supporting Evidence for the Recommendation:

Conclusion 2.1: Definitional and measurement inconsistencies lead to a variation in estimates of bullying prevalence, especially across disparate samples of youth. Although there is a variation in numbers, the national surveys show bullying behavior is a real problem that affects a large number of youth.

Conclusion 2.2: The national datasets on the prevalence of bullying focus predominantly on the children who are bullied. Considerably less is known about perpetrators, and nothing is known about bystanders in that national data.

Conclusion 3.1: Youth are embedded in multiple contexts, ranging from peer and family to school, community, and macrosystem. Each of these contexts can affect individual characteristics of youth (e.g., race/ethnicity, sexual orientation) in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and perpetrating and/or being the target of bullying behavior.

Conclusion 3.2: Contextual factors operate differently across groups of youth, and therefore contexts that protect some youth against the negative effects of bullying are not generalizable to all youth. Consequently, research is needed to identify contextual factors that are protective for specific subgroups of youth that are most at risk of perpetrating or being targeted by bullying behavior.

State and Local Policies

The following recommendation addresses state and local policies.

Recommendation 7.3: The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, the state attorneys general, and local education agencies together should (1) partner with researchers to collect data on an ongoing basis on the efficacy and implementation of anti-bullying laws and policies; (2) convene an annual meeting in which collaborations between social scientists, legislative members, and practitioners

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

responsible for creating, implementing, enforcing, and evaluating antibullying laws and policies can be more effectively facilitated and in which research on anti-bullying laws and policies can be reviewed; and (3) report research findings on an annual basis to both Congress and the state legislatures so that anti-bullying laws and policies can be strengthened and informed by evidence-based research.

The committee believes that state-level laws and policies aimed at reducing bullying should be evidence-based. Establishing best practices for this legislation will involve an iterative process of conducting additional research on and evaluation of anti-bullying laws outlined in this report, followed by fine-tuning of the laws, followed by more research and evaluation. Such an endeavor will also involve more interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral collaborations between social scientists, practitioners, and legislative members than currently exist.

These researchers should come from varied disciplines including public health, justice, law, behavioral health, implementation science, and economics. These public-private collaborations should also focus on the dissemination and sharing of what is learned through their data collection efforts.

Supporting Evidence for the Recommendation:

Conclusion 6.1: Law and policy can play a significant role in strengthening state and local efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to bullying.

Conclusion 6.2: The development of model anti-bullying laws or policies should be evidence-based. Additional research is needed to determine the specific components of an anti-bullying law that are most effective in reducing bullying, in order to guide legislators who may amend existing laws or create new ones.

Conclusion 6.4: Additional research is needed to further evaluate the effectiveness of anti-bullying laws and policies, including determining: (1) whether anti-bullying laws and policies are effective in reducing bullying perpetration; (2) the mechanisms through which anti-bullying laws and policies reduce bullying (e.g., change in perceptions of school safety or norms around bullying); (3) whether anti-bullying laws and policies impact all forms of bullying (e.g., relational, physical, reputational, and cyberbullying) or merely a subset; (4) whether the beneficial consequences of these laws and policies also extend to other forms of youth violence (e.g., weapons carrying, fighting) and risky behaviors (e.g., drug/alcohol use); (5) whether, among those who are bullied, antibullying laws and policies are effective in reducing the adverse sequelae

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

associated with exposure to bullying (e.g., poor academic achievement, depression, suicidal ideation); and (6) subgroups for whom anti-bullying laws and policies are most, and least, effective—and in particular, whether these laws and policies are effective in reducing disparities in bullying.

Conclusion 6.5: Future studies are needed to more fully elucidate the institutional, contextual, and social factors that impede, or facilitate, the implementation of anti-bullying laws and policies. Such studies should be grounded in social science theory and conducted with larger and more representative samples, and with state-of-the-science methods.

Conclusion 6.6: Evidence-based research on the consequences of bullying can help inform litigation efforts at several stages, including case discovery and planning, pleadings, and trial.

Preventive Intervention Programming

The following three recommendations address preventive intervention programming.

Recommendation 7.4: The U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, working with other relevant stakeholders, should sponsor the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based programs to address bullying behavior. These programs should

  • Include the needs of students already involved in bullying, either as individuals who bully, who are targets of bullying, or who are bystanders.
  • Be specifically evaluated to determine their impact on vulnerable populations, including but not limited to children living in poverty and children with disabilities.
  • Include parents, other adult caregivers, and families.
  • Test and incorporate the use of emerging and innovative technologies to reach youth.

Ineffective or harmful programs and practices such as zero tolerance should be immediately discontinued.

These should include programs consistent with a public health approach to bullying, which includes universal, targeted, and indicated prevention programming. It is also important to address the need for more intensive

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

interventions and mental health services for youth already involved in bullying and experiencing behavioral and mental health consequences.

There should be a particular emphasis on research that identifies effective programs for youth who appear to be at elevated risk for involvement in bullying (e.g., youth with disabilities, LGBT youth, and culturally diverse youth). There is also a need for studies that can enhance understanding of the extent to which extant, empirically supported selective and indicated preventive interventions for violence, aggression, and delinquency could be leveraged to meet the needs of students involved in bullying behavior or experiencing the mental and behavioral health consequences of bullying.

Research should also assess the impact of preventive interventions and how these impacts interplay with the factors known to influence bullying behavior (e.g., age, gender, school climate, peers). In addition, it should assess the extent to which novel technologies (e.g., social media), innovative approaches, and youth voice could be leveraged to improve the impact of prevention programs.

Supporting Evidence for the Recommendation:

Conclusion 5.1: The vast majority of research on bullying prevention programing has focused on universal school-based programs; however, the effects of those programs within the United States appear to be relatively modest. Multicomponent schoolwide programs appear to be most effective at reducing bullying and should be the types of programs implemented and disseminated in the United States.

Conclusion 5.5: The role of peers in bullying prevention as bystanders and as intervention program leaders needs further clarification and empirical investigation in order to determine the extent to which peer-led programs are effective and robust against potentially iatrogenic effects.

Conclusion 5.7: Since issues of power and equity are highly relevant to bullying, fully developed prevention models that target these issues as an approach for preventing bullying should be conducted using randomized controlled trial designs.

Conclusion 5.8: Additional research is needed on the effectiveness of programs targeted to vulnerable populations such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgende youth, youth with chronic health problems such as obesity, or those with developmental disabilities (e.g., autism), as well as variation in the effectiveness of universal programs for these subpopulations.

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

Conclusion 5.9: There is a strong need for additional programming and effectiveness research on interdisciplinary collaboration with health care practitioners, parents, school resource officers, community-based organizations (e.g., scouts, athletics), and industry to address issues related to bullying and cyberbullying.

Conclusion 5.10: Regardless of the prevention program or model selected, issues related to implementation fidelity, spanning initial buy-in and adoption through taking programs to scale and sustainability, need careful consideration and an authentic investment of resources in order to achieve outcomes and sustained implementation.

Conclusion 6.7: There is emerging research that some widely used approaches such as zero tolerance policies are not effective at reducing bullying and thus should be discontinued, with the resources redirected to evidence-based policies and programs.

Recommendation 7.5: The U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice, working with other relevant stakeholders, should promote the evaluation of the role of stigma and bias in bullying behavior and sponsor the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based programs to address stigma- and bias-based bullying behavior, including the stereotypes and prejudice that may underlie such behavior.

As noted in Chapter 3 of this report, bias-based bullying due to one or more stigmatized social identities (e.g., race/ethnicity, LGBT, weight, disability status) is understudied in the bullying literature, and the committee believes that greater cross-fertilization between the stigma and bullying literatures is needed to advance the effectiveness of anti-bullying efforts.

Supporting Evidence for the Recommendation:

Conclusion 3.1: Youth are embedded in multiple contexts, ranging from peer and family to school, community, and macrosystem. Each of these contexts can affect individual characteristics of youth (e.g., race/ethnicity, sexual orientation) in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and perpetrating and/or being the target of bullying behavior.

Conclusion 3.2: Contextual factors operate differently across groups of youth, and therefore contexts that protect some youth against the nega-

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

tive effects of bullying are not generalizable to all youth. Consequently, research is needed to identify contextual factors that are protective for specific subgroups of youth that are most at risk of perpetrating or being targeted by bullying behavior.

Conclusion 3.4: Other conceptual models—particularly stigma—have been under-utilized in the bullying literature and yet hold promise (1) for understanding the causes of disproportionate rates of bullying among certain groups of youth, (2) for identifying motivations for some types of bullying (i.e., bias-based bullying), and (3) for providing additional targets for preventive interventions.

Conclusion 3.5: Studying experiences of being bullied in particular vulnerable subgroups (e.g., those based on race/ethnicity or sexual orientation) cannot be completely disentangled from the study of discrimination or of unfair treatment based on a stigmatized identity. These are separate empirical literatures (school-based discrimination versus school-based bullying) although often they are studying the same phenomena. There should be much more cross-fertilization between the empirical literatures on school bullying and discrimination due to social stigma.

Recommendation 7.6: The U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, working with other partners, should support the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-informed bullying prevention training for individuals, both professionals and volunteers, who work directly with children and adolescents on a regular basis.

Training should occur on an ongoing basis (1) to ensure retention of information and to sustain competence, (2) to account for turnover of personnel in these positions, and (3) to promote high quality implementation of evidence-informed bullying prevention practices. The competence of these individuals to address bullying behavior appropriately should be periodically monitored.

These individuals can include educators; education support professionals such as school bus drivers, school resource officers, and others who interact on a regular basis with children and youth; health care professionals, including pediatricians, school nurses, and counselors; and other adults such as youth development staff at after-school programs, sports coaches, religious staff, Scout leaders, camp counselors, and the like. As described in earlier chapters, especially Chapter 5, these paid and unpaid professionals are often at the “front lines” and may witness bullying or want to intervene but feel poorly equipped to do so. In some cases, their interventions

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

may actually be harmful to both the child who is bullied and the child who perpetrates the bullying behavior. A more consistent, intentional, and evidence-based system of training is needed to support these professionals.

Supporting Evidence for the Recommendation:

Conclusion 5.9: There is a strong need for additional programming and effectiveness research on interdisciplinary collaboration with health care practitioners, parents, school resource officers, community-based organizations (e.g., scouts, athletics), and industry to address issues related to bullying and cyberbullying.

Conclusion 5.10: Regardless of the prevention program or model selected, issues related to implementation fidelity, spanning initial buy-in and adoption through taking programs to scale and sustainability, need careful consideration and an authentic investment of resources in order to achieve outcomes and sustained implementation.

Conclusion 6.7: There is emerging research that some widely used approaches such as zero tolerance policies are not effective at reducing bullying and thus should be discontinued, with the resources redirected to evidence-based policies and programs.

Social Media Industry

The following recommendation addresses the social media industry.

Recommendation 7.7: Social media companies, in partnership with the Federal Partners for Bullying Prevention Steering Committee, should adopt, implement, and evaluate on an ongoing basis policies and programs for preventing, identifying, and responding to bullying on their platforms and should publish their anti-bullying policies on their Websites.

This report has illustrated that the majority of U.S. adolescents are online and most use social media sites. Social media sites such as Facebook provide a venue in which adolescents communicate with others, observe peers, build an online identity, and may be exposed to cyberbullying. Some of these social media sites provide bullying reporting options and resources, but little is known regarding how that information is used by the sites and whether their resources are effective. Previous research work confirms that the prevalence of cyberbullying is high, particularly among adolescents, and that being online more is associated with a higher risk of exposure to cyberbullying. Therefore, the online context now appears to be the

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

second most common venue where bullying takes place. Evidence suggests that traditional adult role models such as teachers may not be effective in supporting youth in the online context. Thus, it is important that social media companies, whose platforms provide a venue for bullying, become proactively involved in this issue and provide transparency in their efforts.

Supporting Evidence for the Recommendation

Conclusion 2.4: Different types of bullying behaviors—physical, relational, cyber—may emerge or be more salient at different stages of the developmental life course.

Conclusion 2.5: The online context where cyberbullying takes place is nearly universally accessed by adolescents. Social media sites are used by the majority of teens and are an influential and immersive medium in which cyberbullying occurs.

Conclusion 3.1: Youth are embedded in multiple contexts, ranging from peer and family to school, community, and macrosystem. Each of these contexts can affect individual characteristics of youth (e.g., race/ethnicity, sexual orientation) in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and perpetrating and/or being the target of bullying behavior.

Conclusion 5.6: The role of online resources or social marketing campaigns in bullying prevention or intervention needs further clarification and empirical investigation in order to determine whether these resources and programs are effective.

Conclusion 5.9: There is a strong need for additional programming and effectiveness research on interdisciplinary collaboration with health care practitioners, parents, school resource officers, community-based organizations (e.g., scouts, athletics), and industry to address issues related to bullying and cyberbullying.

RESEARCH NEEDS

Throughout the report, the committee has identified specific research gaps and future needs that will lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the consequences of bullying for the children and youth who are engaged in the bullying dynamic; more fully elucidate the dynamic between the bullying perpetrator and target; and more systematically examine factors that contribute to resilient outcomes of children and youth involved in bullying,

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

whether as the child who bullies, the child who is bullied, or a bystander. Table 7-1 summarizes the research needs identified by the committee.

TABLE 7-1 Research Needs to Inform Policies and Programs to Improve Bullying Outcomes

General Category Specific Research Needs
Behavioral Health Consequences of Bullying Conduct longitudinal research to track children through adulthood in order to more fully understand links among being bullied, substance abuse, and other behaviors including violence and aggression.
Consequences of Bullying on Brain Function Probe how and why bullying alters brain functioning.
Digital Devices and Cyberbullying Better understand usage of digital devices among younger children and how these devices are used in cyberbullying.
Educators and Education Support Professionals Better understand the roles of educators, education support professionals (e.g., cafeteria workers, school bus drivers), and school resource officers in preventing and intervening in bullying.
Epigenetic Consequences of Bullying Investigate epigenetic changes, such as in DNA methylation and bullying.
Genetic Predisposition to Mental Health Outcomes and Bullying Understand the role of genetic influences on both bullying and victimization; for example, studies that examine bullying perpetration in relation to serotonin transporter polymorphisms.
Health Care Professionals Investigate evidence-based practices for integrating content on bullying preventive interventions into curricula for health care professionals.
Law and Policy
  • Conduct systematic evaluation of local policies to: (1) understand which components of anti-bullying policies must be included in an anti-bullying law to ensure a positive impact; (2) determine the full range of remedies available under state and local laws and policies; and (3) assess the capacity of federal antidiscrimination laws to address various forms of bullying.
  • Investigate state civil rights laws, the balance between schools’ authority and students’ rights to freedom of expression and privacy, and moderating factors to more fully understand for whom antibullying policies are most and least effective, including whether they are effective in reducing disparities in bullying.
  • Investigate anti-bullying policy implementation.
Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×
General Category Specific Research Needs
Media
  • Understand the risks and opportunities associated with media-focused campaigns and social-norms-based interventions in relation to bullying.
  • Conduct research on cyberbullying prevention programs.
  • Track bullying incidents and conduct research on the effectiveness of media companies’ policies in addressing cyberbullying.
Neuroendocrinology of Stress
  • Examine the relation between bullying, sleep, learning/memory, and cortisol dysregulation.
  • Explore how testosterone and cortisol interact together in relation to being a target or perpetrator of bullying, or both.
Parents
  • Explore the role parents play in helping youth navigate social challenges and adapting to stress.
  • Support additional research and evaluation of programs developed specifically to prevent bullying.
Peers as a Context Explore the effects of peers on bullying, especially peers as bystanders and as leaders of anti-bullying programming.
Physical Health Consequences of Bullying Examine the physical health consequences for children and youth who bully and for those who both bully and are bullied, including how outcomes vary over time for different groups of youth, why individuals with the same bullying and victim experiences may have different physical health outcomes, and how physical and emotional health outcomes intersect over time.
Prevalence of Bullying Study the disparities in prevalence between different groups (e.g., LGBT youth, overweight/obese youth, youth with specific developmental disabilities, socioeconomic status, immigration status, minority religious status, youth with intersectional identities, urbanicity).
Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×
General Category Specific Research Needs
Preventive Interventions
  • Understand the role of social-cognitive and emotion regulation processes as targets for preventive interventions.
  • Conduct more large-scale, rigorous studies on the combined effects on bullying of multi-tiered programs.
  • Develop systematic studies to assess the impacts of selective and indicated programs on bullying.
  • Investigate evidence-based interventions that are targeted toward youth from vulnerable populations (e.g., LGBT youth, youth with chronic health problems, and youth with developmental disabilities) to reduce bullying-related disparities.
  • Study how to improve the adoption and implementation of evidence-based programs, including testing models to better understand what works for whom and under what conditions.
Protective Factors and Contexts
  • Identify contexts that are uniquely protective for subgroups of youth, particularly those who are vulnerable to bullying.
  • Explore more fully the ways in which school ethnic diversity can be a protective factor, the contextual factors that make teachers more or less likely to intervene; and the role(s) of school diversity clubs, extracurricular programs, acculturation, virtual and media contexts, and the policy context.

CONCLUSION

While the study of bullying behavior is a relatively recent field, much has been learned over the past few decades that has significantly improved evidence-based knowledge of what bullying behavior is, how it can be measured, and the contexts that can ameliorate or potentiate the association between individual characteristics and being a bully, a target of bullying, or a bystander to the behavior. This research has established that bullying negatively impacts the child who is bullied, the child who is the bully, the child who is both a bully and a victim, and the bystanders. Finally, the research is beginning to show ways in which law and policy can play an important role in strengthening state and local efforts to prevent, identify, and respond to bullying. This is a pivotal time for bullying prevention, and there is not a quick fix or one-size-fits-all solution. Nevertheless, science and

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×

policy have provided, and will continue to improve, tools needed to tackle this complex and serious public health problem.

Reducing the presence and impact of bullying in the lives of youth will involve multifaceted efforts at the level of federal and state governments and agencies, communities, schools and families, health care, media and social media. The committee believes the recommendations laid out in this report are an important roadmap for achieving this goal.

Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
×
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Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
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Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
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Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
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Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
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Suggested Citation:"7 Future Directions for Research, Policy, and Practice." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2016. Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/23482.
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Bullying has long been tolerated as a rite of passage among children and adolescents. There is an implication that individuals who are bullied must have "asked for" this type of treatment, or deserved it. Sometimes, even the child who is bullied begins to internalize this idea. For many years, there has been a general acceptance and collective shrug when it comes to a child or adolescent with greater social capital or power pushing around a child perceived as subordinate. But bullying is not developmentally appropriate; it should not be considered a normal part of the typical social grouping that occurs throughout a child's life.

Although bullying behavior endures through generations, the milieu is changing. Historically, bulling has occurred at school, the physical setting in which most of childhood is centered and the primary source for peer group formation. In recent years, however, the physical setting is not the only place bullying is occurring. Technology allows for an entirely new type of digital electronic aggression, cyberbullying, which takes place through chat rooms, instant messaging, social media, and other forms of digital electronic communication.

Composition of peer groups, shifting demographics, changing societal norms, and modern technology are contextual factors that must be considered to understand and effectively react to bullying in the United States. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts and each of these contexts interacts with individual characteristics of youth in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and bullying perpetration or victimization. Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, this report evaluates the state of the science on biological and psychosocial consequences of peer victimization and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease peer victimization behavior and consequences.

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