COOPERATIVENESS AND BULLY VICTIM PROBLEMS AMONG AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLCHILDREN/

The relationship was examined between the self-reported cooperativenes s of Australian secondary-school students and their involvement in pee r abuse at school, both as bullies and as victims. An 18-item Likert-t ype measure, the Cooperativeness Scale, was developed, and its reliabi lity and concurrent validity were supported by the results of its appl ication to two samples of Australian students (N = 176 and N = 763, re spectively) attending different coeducational secondary schools, the f irst in a predominantly middle-class area and the second in a lower cl ass socioeconomic area. At both schools, girls scored higher in cooper ativeness than boys. Students at the second school also anonymously co mpleted multiple measures of the extent of their involvement during th e current year in bullying, victimization, or both. As predicted, corr elations and multiple regression analyses supported the hypothesis tha t relatively low levels of cooperativeness were characteristic, not on ly of both boys and girls who engaged in bullying, but also, to a less er extent, of those who were frequently victimized by their peers at s chool.