Abstract
Little is known about adolescents’ expectations around how victims of bullying might retaliate following victimization. These expectations are important as they may inform adolescent’s own behaviors, particularly intervention behaviors, in regard to bullying and potential retaliation. This study investigated adolescents’ retaliation expectations and expected bystander reactions to retaliation following physical and social bullying. Participants included 6th grade (N = 450, Mage = 11.73 years, SD = 0.84) and 9th grade (N = 446, Mage = 14.82 years) adolescents (50.2% female, 63.3% European American, 22.9% African American, 3.9% Latino/a, 7% Multiracial, 2.9% Other) from middle-to-low-income U.S. public schools. Participants responded to open-ended prompts about victim responses to bullying, rating retaliation acceptability, and likelihood of engaging in bystander behaviors. ANOVAs were conducted to examine differences in retaliation expectation by type of aggression. Further, linear regressions were used to explore what factors were related to participants’ expectations regarding bystander intervention. Participants expected victims to retaliate by causing harm and expected the type of retaliation to match the type of bullying. Younger participants were more specific and males were more likely to expect physical harm than females. Finally, acceptability of retaliation predicted bystander interventions. Adolescents expect aggressive retaliation suggesting that intervention might focus on teaching them ways to respond when they are bullied or observe bullying.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the many middle and high school students who completed the survey and the administration of those middle and high schools for their cooperation with the study. The authors would also like to thank the many research assistants who helped code and organize the data.
Authors’ Contributions
C.M. prepared the data for analyses, ran all statistical analyses, interpreted the findings, and drafted the manuscript; S.G. helped conceive of the study, participated in its design, coordination, and interpretation of data, and helped prepare the data set; K.L. conceived of the study, participated in its design, coordination, and interpretation of data, and helped draft the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
This project was supported by Award No. 2016-R2-CX-0056, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.
Data Sharing and Declaration
The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available in the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) repository, https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/studies/37644.
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The study had institutional review-board approval from the University of South Carolina (Pro 00061766) with North Carolina State University providing inter-institutional agreement to rely on the University of South Carolina approval.
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IRB approved opt-out consent letters were sent home to families of all 6th and 9th graders at the schools approximately one week prior to data collection, and all students who had parental consent also assented to participate.
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Marlow, C., Gönültaş, S. & Mulvey, K.L. Adolescents’ Expectations for Types of Victim Retaliation Following Direct Bullying. J Youth Adolescence 52, 533–546 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01710-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-022-01710-5