Bullying as a Group Process: Investigation of Participant Roles in Terms of Social Status and Gender

Abstract

This study mainly aims to test the participant roles approach on Turkish sample suggesting that bullying is a group process. In this regard, students' ways of involving in bullying and the extent to which children are aware of their participant roles and whether these participant roles differentiate in terms of gender and social status was investigated. A total of 774 students (384 females and 390 males), from 6(th), 7(th) and 8(th) grades of 11 different primary schools in Ankara participated in the study. The results showed that 74% of all children involved in one of the participant roles as bully (11.5%), assistant-reinforcer (10.9%), defender (21.1%), outsider (20.9%) and victim (9.7%). The examinations of the relations between self-reported and peer-reported scores of participant roles revealed that children were aware of their roles in the bullying situations, however, they significantly underestimated their roles in bully and assistant-reinforcer scales while overestimated their roles in the defender and outsider scales. Boys are more actively involved in bullying process than girls; boys participated most frequently in the roles of bully, assistant-reinforcer and victim while girls participated most frequently in the defender and outsider roles. In terms of the findings related to social status, victims were the least accepted and most rejected group among their peers although they did not differentiate from bullies and assistant-reinforcer in this sense. Besides, the victims were