CHAPTER 5

BULLYING AT SCHOOL
Long-Term Outcomes for the Victims and
an Effective School-Based Intervention
Program

DAN OLWEUS

INTRODUCTION

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 efforts were made to study it
systematically (Olweus, 1973a, 1978). For a considerable time, these at-
tempts were largely confined to Scandinavia. In the 1980s and early 1990s,
however, bullying among schoolchildren has received some public atten-
tion in Japan, England, Australia, the United States, and other countries.
There are now clear indications of an increasing societal as well as re-
search interest into bully/victim problems in several parts of the world.

DAN OLWEUS • Department of Psychosocial Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, 5007,

Norway.
Aggressive Behavior: Current Perspectives, edited by L. Rowell Huesmann. Plenum Press,
New York, 1994.

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In the first part of this chapter I report on a study that examines the
possible long-term consequences of regular bullying or victimization by
peers in school. The latter part of the chapter is mainly concerned with
the effects of the school-based antibullying intervention program that
we developed and evaluated in 42 schools in Norway. (For more details
about these studies, see Olweus, 1993b, for the first study, Olweus,
199t for the second.) Before embarking on these studies, however, I
will give a brief definition of what I mean by the terms bullying or
victimization. In addition, I will report some prevalence data and briefly
provide a profile of typical victims and bullies as a general background.
(For more comprehensive overviews, see Olweus, 1978, 1984, 1991,
1993a).

A DEFINITION OF BULLYING

I define bullying or victimization in the following general way: A

person is being bullied or victimized when he or she is exposed, repeat-
edly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other
persons.
The meaning of the expression negative actions must be further de-
fined. It is a negative action when someone intentionally inflicts, or
attempts to inflict, injury or discomfort upon another-basically what is
implied in the definition of aggressive behavior (Olweus, 1973b). Nega-
tive actions can be carried out by physical contact, by words, or in other
ways, such as making faces or obscene gestures or refusing to comply
with another person's wishes.
It must be stressed that the terms bullying or victimization are not (or
should not be) used when two persons of approximately the same
strength (physical or psychological) are fighting or quarrelling. In order
to use the term bullying, there should be an imbalance in strength (an
asymmetric power relationship): The person who is exposed to the negative
actions has difficulty in defending him or herself and is somewhat help-
less against the harasser or harassers.
It is useful to distinguish between direct bullying/victimization-with
relatively open attacks on the victim-and indirect bullying/victimization
in the form of social isolation and exclusion from a group. It is important
to pay attention also to the second, less visible form of victimization.
In the present chapter the expressions bullying, victimization, and
bully/victim problems are used synonymously.