The study appears in the April 25, 2001, Journal of the American Medical Association. Overall, 10 percent of children said they had been bullied by other students, but had not bullied others. Another 6 percent said that they had both been bullied themselves and had bullied other children. Another 13 percent of students said they had bullied other students, but had not been bullied themselves.
"Being bullied is not just an unpleasant rite of passage through childhood," said Duane Alexander, M.D., director of the NICHD. "It's a public health problem that merits attention. People who were bullied as children are more likely to suffer from depression and low self esteem, well into adulthood, and the bullies themselves are more likely to engage in criminal behavior later in life."
The NICHD researchers surveyed 15,686 students in grades six-through-10, in public, parochial, and other private schools throughout the U.S. The nationally representative survey was part of the U.S. contribution to the World Health Organization's Health Behavior in School Children survey, an international effort in which many countries surveyed school-age children on a broad spectrum of health-related behaviors.
For this study, researchers defined bullying as a type of behavior intended to harm or disturb the victim, explained the study's first author, Tonja R. Nansel, Ph.D. This behavior occurs repeatedly over time and involves an imbalance of power, with the more powerful person or group attacking the less powerful one, Dr. Nansel added. Bullying may be physical, involving hitting or otherwise attacking the other person; verbal, involving name-calling or threats; or psychological, involving spreading rumors or excluding a person.
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