Sociation Today

Literature Survey

    It is clear that bullying is a hot topic in schools today. The media coverage of suicides due to bullying has skyrocketed in the past few years, making people like Tyler Clementi (2010) and Rebecca Sedwick (2013) household names. There has been a lot of data collected about bullying and harassment prevention, although a lot of the prevention programs start in the 8th grade. It was a fairly new concept when Bruce Taylor, Nan Stein, Dan Woods and Elizabeth Mumford implemented a prevention program for 6th and 7th graders (2006). Bullying and harassment starts before 8th grade and that now needs to be addressed. These researchers looked at what could be done at the beginning of middle school to curb the rise in harassment.

     In 2006, Taylor and Stein conducted a study called, "Evaluation of Gender Violence and Harassment Prevention Programs in Middle Schools in Cleveland, Ohio." The study took place in three school districts, including seven schools and 123 classrooms. There were 1,639 sixth and seventh grade students participating in the study. The study included an 'interaction-based curriculum' that focused on relationships, communication, boundaries and the role of bystander. 28 classrooms were assigned this treatment, once a week for five weeks. The next treatment focused on justice, talking about laws and penalties for harassment and gender violence. 29 classrooms were given this intervention, also once a week for 5 weeks. 66 classrooms were used as control. Surveys were given to measure results first as a baseline, then immediately after the study had concluded, and again in six months (Taylor et al. 2006). These same researchers looked at their results from Cleveland, took the most successful parts of their study and implemented them in New York.

     Starting in 2009, they conducted a study called, "Shifting Boundaries: Final Report on an Experimental Evaluation of a Youth Dating Violence Prevention Program in New York City Middle Schools." They looked at the effectiveness of multiple approaches to harassment prevention. The study was made up of 30 public middle schools in New York City. The sample included 58 sixth grade classes and 59 seventh grade classes, with 1,266 students in 6th grade and 1,388 students in 7th grade. They ranged from 10-15 years old, although most of the sample (94.5%) was 11-13. 54% of all students were girls and the remaining 46% were boys. The sample of students was 34% Hispanic, 31% African American, 16% Asian, 13% white and the remaining students falling into an 'other' category.

    The study was presented in four groups. One group, across seven schools and 28 classrooms, was given intervention in both the classroom and building level. Another group, including six schools and 23 classrooms, was given just classroom intervention. A third group, with eight schools and 30 classrooms, was given just building-level intervention, with no classroom intervention. The last group, having 9 schools and 36 classrooms, received neither treatment.

     Progress was measured with surveys that were given before the program, directly after the program ended and around 6 months after the program ended. It was found that both building intervention and building/classroom combination intervention was successful in changing student attitudes and knowledge about harassment and violence in a positive fashion (Taylor et al. 2009).

    Foshee (1994) has done extensive research on harassment, bullying and violence in schools. He has looked at multiple areas and variables, but his studies are starting at 8th grade. In 1994, he did a study on 8th graders in rural North Carolina in 10 different schools. Not only was the study small, but also only focused on one grade level.

    His study involved a control group and a group that was exposed to Safe Dates. Safe Dates involved ten 45 minute lessons and a theater production about the issues of dating violence and sexual harassment. Data was collected one month, one year, and with parental consent for continuation, two, three and four after the study as well. If the students continued in the data collection, they were broken into two more groups, one being given a booster. This booster was a newsletter with information and worksheets about Safe Date. The booster group was also contacted by a health educator. It was found that Safe Date did have promise for preventing violence but the booster did not (Foshee 1994).

    I am interested in the rural school aspect of this study, as this is where I will be teaching for the next two years, possibly longer. But, I do not like that this study only looked at 8th graders since prevention must start earlier, as the problem starts earlier. I am also going to teach 6th grade, so my interest lies there. I want to see if a study like Taylor and Stein's would transfer and have the same success in a rural area, like was presented in Foshee's study.

     If this study was done in a rural area, many variables would be different. The ethnic and racial breakdown of the sample would be less diverse. If done here in rural North Carolina, where I will be teaching next year, the sample would be mostly African American. Not only that, but the amount and type of harassment the sample has experienced would differ. I want to know if the results would still be the same if the sample had changed. The researchers concluded that their study would transfer results successfully to other cities, but I want to investigate a non-city application of this study.

    Dan Olweus' method first used successfully in Norway is still used in schools in the United States today. He used schoolwide, classroom and individual intervention to help combat bullying (Bauman 2008). Although he had success, the method has gotten mixed results. A large scale study was done in rural South Carolina using this method and the results were mixed there as well (Bauman 2008). The study was done by Smith and Ananiadou in 2003 and they found that 25% fewer students reported bullying others after intervention (where the control group increased) but there was no difference in the number of students being bullied (self-reported) which is a hugely important aspect of bullying intervention. I want to see if using Taylor's study could have more success in a rural environment than past attempts.

    To do this, I plan to use the 2011 National Crime Victimization Survey: School Crime Supplement. This is done by the United Stated Department of Justice in order to obtain information about school-related bullying/harassment and overall victimization. This study asks students a series of questions about their school, how safe they feel and the safety precautions put in place by administrators and teachers. It asks students if they have ever been bullied or harassed and what kind of victimization they had experienced. It specifies where the incident occurred and how often. The interesting thing about this study is it also specifies if the student lives in an urban or rural area as well as their grade level. I can filter the results to see the differences between rural 6th graders and urban ones, as well as rural 7th graders vs urban 7th graders. This can help me to pick out the differences between urban and rural bullying and harassment to see if the above program could possibly transfer to a rural environment or if changes would have to be made.

    Bullying and harassment can have extremely detrimental effects on youth, including "poorer mental/physical health, more 'high‐risk'/deviant behavior, and increased school avoidance (Howard, Wang, and Yan 2007; Gruber and Fineran 2008)" (Taylor et al. 2009). As a future teacher, knowing that I can successfully prevent/cut down on the amount of bullying is invaluable. I want my students to feel that school is a safe place and somewhere they want to be. Bullying prevents that from happening. Knowing I can take these findings and apply them to a rural setting where I might teach is a great tool. That is why I want to research this topic further.

Methodology

    For this research project I will be looking into the differences between urban and rural middle schools in regards to bulling, harassment and victimization. The data for this research will be coming from the 2011 National Crime Victimization Survey: School Crime Supplement. This data was collected by the United States Department of Justice. The Department of Justice gathered their data using a questionnaire. If possible, people were interviewed in person, and if that was not doable given a certain circumstance, the questionnaire was given as a web-based survey. The Department of Justice included children aged 12-18 who were currently enrolled in an educational program leading to a high school diploma. This could be elementary, middle or high school.

    This research is done because it is believed that victimization and bullying in school can "act as a significant barrier to the education process" (Dept. of Justice, 2011). This survey is completed to help policy makers and educators make decisions about prevention and intervention programs to implement. This is the ninth such survey looking at school victimization on a national scale. The unit of analysis in this survey was the individual, since the questionnaire was given to each student. Their time-method was cross-sectional.

    There were 6,428 variables used in this data set. I plan to look at urban and rural differences in middle school bullying. Therefore, bullying will be my dependent variable while location (rural vs urban) will be my independent variable. I will also look at grade level (6th, 7th and 8th) as another independent variable. I want to see if location affects the type or amount of bullying and harassment in schools. I also know that most data on this subject has been looking at 8th grade prevention, but I want to see how much bullying goes on in 6th and 7th grades as well. Using location and grade level as my independent variables and bullying as my dependent variable, I can successfully research the differences in bullying and better understand how to address those differences when I become a teacher myself.

    I want to see if a prevention method like the one used in New York could be effective in a rural environment. If there is no significant difference in the amount and type of bullying among these categories, I believe a prevention program like that of Stein and Taylor's could be used in a rural setting. I plan to run cross-tabulations to determine statistically significant relationships between the variables.

    For the purpose of this research, the answer categories "Residue," "Refused" and "Don't know" have been combined into one category in all tables. Together they never add up to more than 1.5% of total answers and are not significant to the findings or purpose of this study. Furthermore, in order to compare grade level differences, grades nine through twelve as well as the categories of "Fifth or under", "Other", "College/GED/Post-graduate/Other noneligible", "Residue", "Refused", "Don't Know" and "Blank" were removed. This made it possible to compare the statistical significance of only grades six, seven and eight to get a true understanding of bullying differences in middle school grades alone.

Findings

This data set had 10,341 respondents. Of these, 8,293 were from an urban setting and the remaining 2,048 were from a rural area. This is 80.2 and 19.8% respectively. Any person aged 12-18 could participate in the study, but I am only interested in those in 6th, 7th and 8th grade. In this study there were 534 sixth graders, 908 seventh graders, and 917 eighth graders. This is 8.9, 15.1 and 15.2% of the total sample respectively.

It was found that 17.0% of all urban students who participated in this study answered yes to the following question: "During the school year, has another student: made fun of you, called you names, or insulted you, in a hurtful way?" 20.3% of rural students answered the same.

Table 1
"During this school year, has another student:
Made fun of you, called you names, or insulted you, in a hurtful way?"

	Urban N	Urban %	Rural N	Rural %	Total N	Total %
Yes	812	17.0	222	20.2	1034	17.7
No	3900	81.9	859	78.6	4759	81.3
Residue/Refused or Don't know	52	1.1	12	1.1	64	1.0
Total	4764	100.0	1093	100.0	5857	100.0

χ2 =16.643, df=4, p=.002; Cramer's V=.053

As seen in Table 1, p=.002 (p<.05) and V=.053. This means environment is statistically significant for this type of bullying, showing that students from rural schools experience significantly more name calling than students in urban schools.

Fewer students, both urban and rural had experienced being threatened with harm by another student during the school year. 4.9% of urban students and 6.2% of rural students answered yes when asked the question, "During this school year has another student: threatened you with harm?"

Table 2
"During this school year, has another student:
Threatened you with harm?"

	Urban N	Urban %	Rural N	Rural %	Total N	Total %
Yes	232	4.9	68	6.2	300	5.1
No	4480	94.0	1012	92.6	5492	93.8
Residue/Refused or Don't know	52	1.1	13	1.2	65	1.1
Total	4764	100.0	1093	100.0	5857	100.0

χ2=9.941, df=4, p=.041, Cramer's V=.041

With a χ2 of 9.951, this gives us a p value of .041 (p<.05) and V of .041, making this a statistically significant relationship as well, with rural students experiencing significantly more of this type of bullying. This means we can assume environment once again has a significant effect on this type of bullying.

The third type of bullying however was found to not have a statistically significant relationship with land use. When asked the question, "During this school year has another student: pushed you, shoved you, tripped you, or spit on you?" The χ2 value was 4.997, giving a p value of .288. This means there is no difference in the amount of this type of bullying when location is taken into consideration. 7.9% of urban students and 7.7% of rural students reported having dealt with this type of bullying. This is the only category where urban students exceed rural in percentage, but this time not significantly.

Table 3
"During this school year, has another student:
Pushed you, shoved you, tripped you, or spit on you?"

	Urban N	Urban %	Rural N	Rural %	Total N	Total %
Yes	378	7.9	84	7.7	462	7.9
No	4332	90.9	996	91.1	5328	91.0
Residue/Refused or Don't know	54	1.2	13	1.2	67	1.1
Total	4764	100.0	1093	100.0	5857	100.0

χ2 =4.997, df=4, p=.228; Cramer's V=.029

I can conclude that the majority of students that encounter bullying deal with name calling as opposed to threats or physical violence, but all three have been reported in grades six through eight. Knowing that two of the three kinds of bullying are affected by location, I want to see if grade level has an effect on the amount of bullying as well. As noted, most research has only been done for 8th grade students, but younger students also experience bullying. I want to see if the same prevention methods could be used for all three grades, or if there is a significant difference in the amount and type of bullying experienced by each middle school grade.

When looking at the question, "During this school year, has another student: made fun of you, called you names, or insulted you, in a hurtful way?", a significant difference was found among the grade levels. As the table below shows, sixth graders answered yes 27.0% of the time, followed by seventh graders with 22.0% and then eighth graders with 21.0%. This is especially interesting because most prevention research done to date has looked at 8th graders as their youngest members of the sample, but it shows here that sixth and seventh graders actually experience more of this bullying. With a χ2 value of 16.873, a p of .031 (p<.05) and a V of .060, I know this is a statistically significant difference. Significantly more sixth graders deal with name calling than eighth graders.

Table 4
"During this school year, has another student:
Made fun of you, called you names, or insulted you, in a hurtful way?"
by Grade Level

	6th N	6th %	7th N	7th %	8th N	8th %	Total N	Total %
Yes	144	27.0	200	22.0	193	21.0	537	22.8
No	382	71.5	704	77.5	716	78.1	1802	76.4
Residue Refused or Don't know	8	1.5	4	0.5	8	0.9	20	0.8
Total	534	100.0	908	100.0	917	100.0	2359	100.0

χ2=16.873, df=8, p = .031, Cramer's V=.060

For the second type of bullying in this research, being threatened with harm, the grade disparity was less severe. Seventh graders experiences the most threats, with 6.6% answering yes, followed by 5.5% of eighth graders and 4.9% of sixth graders. Although there is only a difference of 1.1% between seventh and eighth grade, 7th graders still experience the most bullying in this category, which again is counter intuitive to previous research. Chi-square for this bullying type was 10.567 giving a p value of .227. This shows me it is not a statistically significant relationship, but when we look at the percentages, we still see a slight difference.

Table 5

"During this school year, has another student:
Threatened you with harm?"
by Grade Level

	6th N	6th %	7th N	7th %	8th N	8th %	Total N	Total %
Yes	26	4.9	60	6.6	50	5.5	136	5.8
No	500	93.6	841	92.6	859	93.7	2200	93.3
Residue Refused or Don't know	8	1.5	7	0.8	8	0.8	23	0.0
Total	534	100.0	908	100.0	917	100.0	2359	100.0

χ2=10.567, df=8, p = .227, Cramer's V=.047

The last type of bullying, which asks the question, "During this school year has another student: pushed you, shoved you, tripped you, or spit on you?", the grade level difference was again less noticeable than the first type. 12.4% of 6th graders experienced this kind of bullying compared to 12.2% of 7th graders and 11.0% of 8th graders.

Table 6

"During this school year, has another student: Pushed you, shoved you, tripped you, or spit on you?"
by Grade Level.

	6th N	6th %	7th N	7th %	8th N	8th %	Total N	Total %
Yes	66	12.4	111	12.2	101	11.0	278	11.8
No	460	86.1	790	87.0	808	88.1	2058	87.2
Residue Refused or Don't know	8	1.5	7	0.8	8	0.9	23	1.3
Total	534	100.0	908	100.0	917	100.0	2359	100.0

χ2=9.404, df=8, p=.309, Cramer's V=.045

Although this gives us a chi-square value of 9.404 and a p value of .309 (signifying no statistical significance), the differences are still important to take note of. Once again, eighth graders experience the least bullying of this type. The previous prevention methods that did not take 6th and 7th grade into account were missing a vital piece of prevention. Sixth and seventh graders experience the most bullying and there is relatively little research done to help prevent that.

     This leaves not only a gap in the literature, but a gap for educators and administrators who want to help prevent bullying in their schools. There is no literature on a successful prevention method for a rural area starting in the sixth grade. Since the differences in urban and rural bullying were significantly different, I can be sure that Taylor and Stein's prevention method would not translate to a rural environment. The types and amounts of bullying experienced by students in urban and rural settings is not the same, therefore the same prevention method would not be appropriate.

    By the same logic, Foshee's study could not translate to younger grade levels because there are differences in the type and amount of bullying each grade level goes through. It was found that the most students, both urban and rural, experienced name calling the most. As seen above, 20.3% of rural and 17.0% of urban students experienced this type of bullying. This is significantly more than the other two types of bullying for both areas. This means it should be the focus, or at least a very large part, of any prevention method. But, this is also the type of bullying that has a statistically significant difference among the grade levels. This implies that the same prevention method used in eighth grade might not be as successful in sixth and seventh grade.

     To further test this point, I took my cross tabulation of grade level vs. bullying and controlled for allocated land use. That is to say, I looked at only rural areas to see if grade level was still statistically significant when urban landscapes were taken out of the equation. I found the results did change. The grade differences in name calling became insignificant when controlling for land use. 27.6% of rural 6th graders experienced name calling, while 26.7% of 7th graders and 23.6% of 8th graders experienced the same thing. This gave a p value of .666. Compared to the p value of .031 when land use was not controlled for, this is much larger. This means there is not as big a difference between the grade levels when only looking at rural schools. But, even so, sixth graders do still experience 4% more name calling than eighth graders.

Table 7
Rural Respondents to the Question
"During this school year, has another student: Made fun of you, called you names, or insulted you, in a hurtful way?"
by Grade Level

	6th N	6th %	7th N	7th %	8th N	8th %	Total N	Total %
Yes	29	27.6	46	26.7	37	23.8	112	25.8
No	76	72.4	126	73.3	119	75.8	321	74.0
Residue Refused or Don't know	0	0.0	0	0.0	1	0.6	1	0.2
Total	105	100.0	172	100.0	157	100.0	434	100.0

χ2=2.380, df=4, p = .666, Cramer's V=.052

But when asked about being threatened with harm, the disparity becomes larger when land use is controlled for 11.0% of rural seventh graders say they have been threatened with harm, compared to 5.7% of eighth graders and only 1.9% of sixth graders. This gives a significance level of .054. This is much less than the p of .227 without land use control. This means there is a bigger discrepancy (8.9%) between the highest and the lowest percentages when only looking at a rural setting. So, that would have to be taken into consideration when a prevention program is tested. When controlling for land use, the p value changes from .227 to .054, showing us a somewhat greater grade level difference in rural areas. More importantly, 25.8 percent of the rural students answered yes to the question, while, overall, the figure drops to 22.8%.

Table 8
Rural Respondents to the Question

"During this school year, has another student:
Threatened you with harm?"
by Grade Level

	6th N	6th %	7th N	7th %	8th N	8th %	Total N	Total %
Yes	2	1.9	19	11.0	9	5.7	30	6.9
No	103	98.1	15.2	88.8	147	93.6	402	92.6
Residue Refused or Don't know	0	0.0	1	0.6	1	0.6	2	0.5
Total	105	100.0	172	100.0	157	100.0	434	100.0

χ2=12.358, df=6, p=.054, Cramer's V=.119

When looking at overall bullying, sixth graders experienced the most physical violence, but when looking only at the rural sample, seventh graders actually experience the most. 14.0% of rural seventh graders have experienced physical violence as a form of bullying. 10.5% of sixth graders and 8.9% of eighth graders have experienced the same, although the p (.485) shows us that the differences are not statistically significant.

Table 9
Rural Respondents to the Question

"During this school year, has another student:
Pushed you, shoved you, tripped you, or spit on you?"
by Grade Level

	6th N	6th %	7th N	7th %	8th N	8th %	Total N	Total %
Yes	11	10.5	24	14.0	14	8.9	49	11.3
No	94	89.5	147	85.5	142	90.4	383	88.2
Residue Refused or Don't know	0	0.0	1	0.6	1	0.6	2	0.5
Total	105	100.0	172	100.0	157	100.0	434	100.0

χ2=5.469, df=6, p=.485, Cramer's V=.079

Discussion and Conclusions

     There needs to be a prevention method tested for sixth and seventh grade in rural areas. Before testing a method, other researchers might want to try controlling for gender and socio-economic background of the students, which can both have effects on the type of bullying students' experience. Anyone trying to implement a prevention program will have to keep in mind the results from this research. This data set has proven that there is a significant difference between urban and rural bullying, with reported bullying on in the rural areas being somewhat higher than in the urban sample.

     There is a difference among grade levels as well. When looking at rural middle school bullying, prevention needs to be given to all three middle schools grades, 6th, 7th and 8th. Sixth grade prevention should focus more on name calling (27.6% of 6th graders experiencing that) and less on threatening with harm (only 1.9% of students experienced that), with moderate prevention for physical violence (with 10.5% of students experiencing that bullying type). Seventh grade prevention should focus more on name calling as well (with 26.7% experiencing that) with moderate prevention given for both threatening (11.0%) and physical violence (14.0%). Eighth grade prevention should also primarily focus on name calling prevention (23.6% of rural 8th graders have experienced that), with less focus on threatening (5.7%) and physical violence (8.9%). Although all three grades experience name calling the most, and should be the main focus of all three prevention methods, the next two categories of bullying will be of differing importance for each grades prevention method.

     It is my belief after doing this research that each grade level should get its own prevention program, specifically targeted toward the bullying they experience the most. That will be the most beneficial and I think most successful prevention method possible in rural schools. It is open for another researcher to decide how best to implement a prevention program in a rural area, using this data to assist them in decision making.

     Researchers should keep in mind things that have been found successful by past researchers when approaching a new method. Sharon Padgett and Charles E. Notar believe that teachers need to be more aware of bullying. It has been found in many studies that teachers are unaware of the amount of bullying happening in their schools (Padgett et al. 2013). In fact, "70% of teachers in one study (Charach, Pepler, & Ziegler, 1995) believed that teachers intervene 'almost always' in bullying situations, whereas only 25% of the students agreed with their assessment" (Bauman 2008). That is a huge discrepancy that must be changed in an intervention program. Teachers must be made aware of the situation and how to handle it. Intervention needs to involve more than just the students.

     It is also important to note that zero-tolerance policies have had mixed results and may not be as successful as one might think. Zero-tolerance means there is no explanation needed, if you are caught bullying or fighting, you will be punished. That can end up hurting the bullying victim if they are trying to fight back in self-defense (Milsom et al. 2006). These are just a few parts of intervention to keep in mind when making a successful program for rural middle school bullying.