Students’ Reasons for Why They Were Targeted for In-School Victimization and Bullying

Abstract

The efficacy of youth violence prevention policies, programs, and practices partly depends on understanding the reasons for why students are targeted for victimization. However, what is known about why some students are targeted for victimization over others is limited to researcher-generated reasons and therefore may risk ecological validity. This study used a qualitative opencoding content analyses to make sense of 8531 students' open-ended responses about the reasons why they were targeted for victimization at school. Results identified 35 commonly reported reasons, many of which are underrepresented in previous literature. Students primarily reported reasons related to relational dynamics, physical characteristics, non-physical personal characteristics, and characteristics external to themselves. These results portray reasons for being targeted as a social phenomenon with both individual and contextual components. Implications for theory, research, and practitioners are discussed.

‘Because I am me': school bullying and the presentation of self in everyday school life

“…These findings offer support to research demonstrating links between personality, behaviour and bullying (e.g. Bosacki, Marini, and Dane 2006;Warrington and Younger 2011;Gardella et al 2020), but also illustrate that someone may be bullied for being too quiet or not quiet enough, or for being too shy or too playful. This highlights the importance of the social context of bullying relations, wherein the bodies that students bring to social situations are categorically identified and located within a social structure (Goffman 1990), and illustrates the relevance of dominant normative orders (Ellwood and Davies 2010).…”

“…Walton, 2011; Horton 2019) by drawing attention to the ways in which people are located within a 'cross-cutting grid' of social structures (Goffman 1983, 14). While Gardella et al (2020) only found a few cases where social structures were put forward by participants as a reason for why they were bullied, our study found such reasoning to be more commonplace. For example, explanations dealing with opinions illustrate the links between bullying and broader social structures and how someone may be bullied for being perceived as anti-racist or racist, or proor anti-LGBT rights.…”

“…While there have been relatively few studies focussing on students' understandings of their own bullying experiences, these have also suggested that victims of bullying might view themselves as a reason for the bullying (e.g. Wong, Cheng, and Chen 2013;Side and Johnson 2014;Gardella et al 2020), that they sometimes internalise the expressions and views of those doing the bullying and position themselves in similarly negative ways (Thornberg et al 2013), and that they articulate selfblame (Tenenbaum et al 2011;Chen and Chen 2019;Tholander, Lindberg, and Svensson 2020). A recent study of students' perceptions of why they were bullied pointed to the importance of relational dynamics, physical characteristics and non-physical personal characeristics (Gardella et al 2020).…”

Forms of Bullying and Associations Between School Perceptions and Being Bullied Among Finnish Secondary School Students Aged 13 and 15

“…Being 'a teachers' pet' might well be a reason for becoming a target of bullying. Gardella et al (2019) stated that if students were favoured by teachers, they were more likely victimised. Santinello et al (2010) found an association between bullying and teacher unfairness was found with students who bullied others but not with victims of bullying.…”

Governing the Risks of Cyber Bullying in the Workplace During the Era of Covid-19

“…According to Kim and Choi (2021), cyberbullying in the workplace may involve a power imbalance between the parties in which the target is unable to defend themselves, such as supervisors bullying their subordinates. Along the same lines, Gardella et al (2019) argue that lowwage workers are more vulnerable to workplace harassment and violence and that these workers almost never seek justice against their violators.…”