STABILITY AND CHANGE OF BEHAVIOR IN CONNECTION WITH BULLYING IN SCHOOLS - A 2-YEAR FOLLOW-UP

The stability of participant roles in the bullying process was explore d during a 2-year period among 189 eighth-grade students in 17 school classes in Finland. This was a subsample of students taking part in an earlier study [Salmivalli et al., 1996a]. In addition to studying sta bility per se, the impact of social environment on adolescents' behavi or was explored. This was done, first, by comparing a group of adolesc ents who had moved to a new class with others whose current class cons isted of their former classmates, with respect to stability in their s ocial behavior. Second, regression analyses were conducted in which th e behavior of adolescents' current peers was used as a possible predic tor of their social behavior, along with their own sixth-grade behavio r. The results showed a moderate consistency in the participant roles the students take on. Some gender-related findings emerged: for instan ce, the occurrence of bullying showed more stability among boys than a mong girls, and girls but not boys showed consistency in the tendency to defend the bullied victims. Especially among girls, the behavior of current peers was in many cases an even better predictor of how they tended to behave in bullying situations in the eighth grade than was t heir own former behavior. (C) 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.