"For two years, Johnny, a quiet 13-year-old, was a human plaything for some of his classmates. The teenagers badgered Johnny for money, forced him to swallow weeds and drink milk mixed with detergent, beat him up in the restroom and tied a string around his neck, leading him around as a `pet'. When Johnny's torturers were interrogated about the bullying, they said they pursued their victim because it was fun." (Excerpt from a Norwegian newspaper article cited in Olweus, 1993.)

Bullying among schoolchildren is certainly a very old phenomenon, though it was not until the early 1970s that it was made the object of systematic research. Though this research originally focused on Scandinavia, by the 1980s bullying among schoolchildren had attracted wider attention in countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

A broad definition of bullying is when a student is repeatedly exposed to negative actions on the part of one or more other students. These negative actions can take the form of physical contact, verbal abuse, or making faces and rude gestures. Spreading rumours and excluding the victim from a group are also common forms. Bullying also entails an imbalance in strength between the bullies and the victim, what experts call an asymmetric power relationship.

Our surveys of more than 150,000 students show that some 15% of pupils in elementary and lower secondary/junior high schools (roughly corresponding to ages 7 to 16) in Scandinavia are involved in bully/victim problems with some regularity -- either as bullies, victims or both. Approximately 9% are victims, and 7% bully other students with some regularity. A relatively small proportion (15-20%) of the victims are themselves bullies of other pupils.

These figures probably underestimate the problem, and there are indications that the level of bullying has risen over the last 10-15 years. More worrying, it is the more frequent and severe forms of bullying that have increased most.

Scandinavia is clearly not the stable rock of peace and calm it is often portrayed to be. Still, bullying may be more prevalent in other countries. For example, one British study of over 6,700 students shows that more than a quarter (27%) of primary school students reported being bullied with some regularity; this figure was 10% for secondary school students. With regard to bullying other students, corresponding figures were 12% for primary and 6% for secondary school students (Smith & Sharp, 1994).

These are the raw data, but what about the background? There is considerable research literature on the characteristics, family backgrounds, long-term outcomes for victims and bullies, mechanisms and group processes involved, and some of the key titles are included in the reference section of this article (for...