Peer Harassment in School: The Plight of the Vulnerable and Victimized

Abstract

Peer Harassment in School: The Plight of the Vulnerable and Victimized edited by Jaana Juvonen and Sandra Graham New York, NY, The Guilford Press, 2001, 440 pp, $50.00. If one is looking for a comprehensive and critical review of both the research and research methodologies that demonstrate that the victims of peer harassment are at risk for long-term adjustment problems, one is unlikely to find a better resource than this book. After an introductory overview, the book contains 17 chapters written by an international group of researchers. The first part of the book is a section on conceptual and methodological issues, which includes five chapters. The chapters cover issues such as how to define and measure victimization and bullying. In addition, these chapters discuss the child characteristics as well as the family, peer, school, and community factors that influence both the occurrence of harassment and its outcome. For researchers, the diversity of methodologies and complexity of factors that influence bullying and victimization will likely suggest many areas in need of further investigation. For clinicians, some principles that can be applied in a clinical setting do become evident, but that is not the focus of this book. Part II of the book includes five chapters that discuss subtypes and age-related changes in peer harassment. I found the discussion of aggressive victims in Chapter 6 to be one of the most interesting in the book. These children, who are both victims and bullies, are among the most highly rejected children and are at high risk for internalizing disorders and poor school performance. The suffering of these misunderstood children is very evident, and helping them is a challenge to all of us who concern ourselves with the behavioral health of children. Other chapters in this section make it clear that peer harassment occurs as early as the preschool period and varies across age, gender, and developmental level. In Chapter 7, an intervention program for kindergarten children is reviewed and serves to highlight the challenges of interpreting data regarding the effects of interventions. For example, one of the goals of an intervention may be to increase teachers’ awareness of victimization, but this is likely to increase teacher reports of victimization. Chapters 8 and 9 summarize research on indirect or relational victimization (exclusion from the group, spreading rumors, threatening to expose shared secrets, etc). The often covert nature of relational aggression makes intervention particularly difficult because adults are often unaware of its occurrence. In one study teachers of adolescent girls were often not aware of excluded girls until the girls were so miserable that they contemplated suicide. Chapter 10 primarily presents the results of a single study of the complex interaction between peer victimization and issues of adolescent development. Part III of the book begins with two chapters that discuss the similarities and differences between peer rejection and peer harassment in terms of their correlates and consequences. A compelling argument is made for the fact that, although there is overlap between these groups (most victims of harassment are also rejected), there are enough differences that they should be considered independently. Chapter 13 begins with a discussion of the emotional and physical health consequences of bullying. The last four pages of this chapter are unique in that they are practically the only place in the book that provides a summary and some brief guidelines for how to develop interventions to decrease bullying within a school. Many clinicians (including me) might wish that the editors had dedicated a chapter to this type of discussion. The final section of the book is titled “Beyond the Bully/Victim Dyad” and consists of three chapters that consider peer harassment within the context of the group and discusses theories about how groups function. The discussion of the research findings about how groups function is somewhat different than earlier chapters, although many similar research findings have been discussed earlier in the book. In summary, this book provides a state-of-the-art summary of research on peer harassment in schools written primarily for those doing research in the field. In most chapters, authors discuss the methods used in at least one of their own studies and the results of the study. Clinicians who want a solid understanding of the research in this field are also likely to find many chapters to be helpful, but this book is not for those who want a concise summary of the field. In addition, although to some extent it may reflect the current state of the field, there is disappointingly little discussion about how to help the bullies, their victims, or schools that want to limit problems in this area.