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Teenagers’ Explanations of Bullying

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Abstract

The aim of the present study was to explore how teenagers explain why bullying takes place at school, and whether there were any differences in explaining bullying due to gender and prior bullying experiences. One hundred and seventy-six Swedish students in Grade 9 responded to a questionnaire. Mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative methods) were used to analyze data. The grounded theory analysis generated five main categories and 26 sub categories regarding accounts of bullying causes. Results indicated that youth tended to explain bullying in terms of individualistic reasons (bully attributing and victim attributing) than in terms of peer group, school setting, or human nature/society reasons. Girls were more likely to attribute bullying causes to the bully and much less to the victim, compared to boys. Moreover, youth classified as bullies were more likely to attribute the reason for bullying to the victim and much less to the bully, compared to victims, bystanders, and victims/bullies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, SE-581 83, Linköping, Sweden

    Robert Thornberg & Sven Knutsen

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  1. Robert Thornberg
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  2. Sven Knutsen
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Correspondence to Robert Thornberg.

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This study was a part of a Swedish research project, “School bullying as a social process”, supported in part by grants from the Swedish Research Council.

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Thornberg, R., Knutsen, S. Teenagers’ Explanations of Bullying. Child Youth Care Forum 40, 177–192 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-010-9129-z

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