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By Carrie Marovich
Monday, October 21, 2013
A recent study in the Journal of Criminology attracted national attention last week, finding that anti-bullying policies in schools actually increase student on student incidents – but a closer look reveals that the key data are eight years out of date and fails to consider today’s more pressing issues around cyber-bullying.
That said, there seems to be growing consensus among experts that anti-bullying programs as currently employed in most districts don’t achieve their objectives.
“The findings reveal that students attending schools in which bullying prevention programs are implemented are more likely to have experienced peer victimization, compared to those attending schools without bullying prevention,” said Seokjin Jeong of the University of Texas and Byung Hyun Lee at Michigan State University, in the report that utilizes data from the 2005-06 administration of the Health Behavior in School-aged Children.
HBSC is a cross-national survey conducted every four years by the World Health Organization and administered in the U.S. to a national sample of students in grades six through 10. The survey is funded by the U.S. Department of