Bully/victim problems in school

Abstract

Bullying among schoolchildren is certainly a very old phenomenon. The fact that some children are frequently and systematically harassed and attacked by other children has been described in literary works, and many adults have personal experience of it from their own school days. Though many are acquainted with the bully/victim problem, it was not until fairly recently – in the early 1970s – that the phenomenon was made the object of more systematic research (Olweus, 1973a, 1978). For a number of years, these efforts were largely confined to Scandinavia. In the 1980s and early 1990s, however, bullying among schoolchildren attracted attention in other countries such as Japan, Ireland, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Australia, Canada and the USA. There are now clear indications of an increasing societal as well as research interest into bully/victim problems in several parts of the world.