This article discusses a study of 99 interviews with pupils from two secondary schools in the UK on their views and experiences of the peer counselling for bullying service set up in their school. They were asked about various things concerning the characteristics of the service and service providers that they valued and their reasons for not using the service.

This article discusses a study of 485 pupils aged 10-11 (from 11 junior schools in the UK) and levels of, and associations between, physical, verbal, and social exclusion victimization, fear of future victimization, and disrupted classroom concentration.

This article discusses how disrupted concentration and attention to school work due to bullying can impact on academic success. Using pupil perceptions as the source of data, the two main aims were to quantify the proportion of pupils affected by bullying in this way, and to solicit their views on possible solutions. Subsidiary aims were to test for gender and school year differences in these variables. Among the 485 participants as a whole, only modest levels of disruptions attributable to bullying were evident but more disturbing was the finding that on nine out of eleven separate questions, around one in twenty pupils reported that this happened ‘lots of times’.

This study tested transactional models to explain the short-term longitudinal links between self-perceptions and involvement in bullying and victimization among 115 9- to 10-year-old children.

This article discusses a study of 429 pupils (aged 9 - 11 years) in the UK which examined concurrent and short-term longitudinal associations between peer victimization (physical, malicious teasing, deliberate social exclusion, and malicious gossiping) and two measures of school adjustment (school liking and recess liking), and test if these associations were moderated by year and sex.

This study examined three main issues among 364 primary school children: (1) self‐reported levels of perceived safety in classroom and playground, and relationship with teacher, (2) associations between perceived safety in the two contexts and peer reported levels of being bullied, and (3) if relationship with teacher moderated the associations between peer reported levels of being bullied and perceived safety in classroom and playground.

Bullying among school children is a social phenomenon that is now recognised as a widespread and serious problem across the globe. While decades of research have generated valuable insights as regards prevalence, main correlates and detrimental health consequences, many questions and gaps remain. For instance, it is unclear why the great majority of peer bystanders not intervene to support victims in a bullying conflict despite holding anti-bullying beliefs. Furthermore, great efforts have been made in the area of peer support and anti-bullying initiatives however there is still no intervention that has shown to be effective long term and cross-culturally. This thesis consists of two empirical studies. To advance knowledge of factors that influence pupils’ victim support behaviour, the first study examined the role of perceived friend and peer consequences in predicting intentions to three types of help: provide emotional support, help to stop the bully and get adult support. Structural equation modelling revealed that perceived friend consequences were significantly associated with each of the victim support behaviours studied. Additionally, perceived peer reactions predicted intentions to get adult help. These findings suggest that friends play a more important role than peers in affecting victim support. Some significant gender effects emerged, showing that the overall pattern of associations held for boys, but not for girls. The findings highlight the concerns children hold with regard to their (dis)approving views related to victim support. Outcomes further suggest that victim defending should not be regarded as a broad homogeneous construct. The second study assessed the effectiveness of a cross-age teaching of social issues intervention (CATS) on enhancing pupils’ knowledge on three victim support behaviours, and their awareness of the value of helping. In small cooperative groups older pupils were invited to step into the tutor role to prepare a lesson and teach it to two years younger tutees. An experimental-control group design was employed to test participants’ performance at three time points over a six to eight week period. CATS tutors significantly improved their knowledge and awareness of the provictim behaviours studied while no positive changes were evident for participants in the control group. Furthermore, children who participated in the project expressed high satisfaction with the intervention. Based on the positive findings it was concluded that CATS is a viable technique for enhancing pupils’ knowledge and awareness on prosocial topics. Helping children to see the value of supporting victims of bullying, in any of the ways studied, could help them avoid anticipating negative reactions from friends and peers, and in turn make it more likely that they would choose to help if the need arose.

50 users of pupil peer counselling for bullying services rated their most helpful and their least helpful experiences of these services on five counselling process variables.

This article discusses a study of 582 students aged 23+ years at two universities in the UK which tested for associations between adults' recall of four common subtypes of childhood bullying victimization and their current social anxiety. It also provided the first test of whether coping moderated those associations, if they were indirect effects through self-blame, and if sex differences existed.

This article discusses the extent to which self, peers, and teachers regard victims as having poorer social skills than non-victims across 20 behaviours/competencies. The finding that victims are percieved by three different sources to have poor social skills has implications for interventions to support victims of bullying.