Swedish and English secondary school pupils' attitudes towards, and conceptions of, bullying: Concurrent links with bully/victim involvement

Thirteen and fifteen year old Swedish and English secondary school pupils ( n = 210) completed a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes towards, a nd conceptions of, bullying. The older participants also provided peer nomi nations of classmates thought to be bullies and victims. Significant differ ences between pupils from the two countries, between younger and older pupi ls, and between girls and boys emerged on a number of these variables. For example, a significantly larger percentage of English pupils than Swedish p upils indicated that name calling is bullying, whereas the reverse was true for leaving somebody out. These results suggest that findings concerning i ncidence of, and beliefs about, bullying may not generalise from one group of pupils to another. Overall, participants tended to express anti-bullying attitudes. The present results also add to the small but growing set of fi ndings which suggest that pupils' attitudes concerning bullying and their a ctual involvement in bullying are associated concurrently. Attitudes were f ound to significantly predict involvement in bullying even after the varian ce shared with participants' sex had been controlled. Specifically, those p upils that expressed the weakest anti-bullying attitudes were found to be m ost often nominated by peers as a bully. The implications of these results for anti-bullying interventions were discussed.