Peer relationships and bullying victimization among elementary school children in Rotterdam

School bullying is a form of children*s aggression manifested in systematic,
repeated, and deliberate negative actions, which are directed at children who
often find it difficult to defend themselves [1, 2]. School bullying is a
prevalent and serious problem in most countries, including the Netherlands.
More than 16% of Dutch school children of 9 to 11 years old reported being
bullied regularly, and about 40% of children at this age group had experienced
bullying at least once or twice [3]. It appears that bullying among younger
children is rather prevalent too. Recent research findings show that bullying
exists already at kindergarten-age, and its nature corresponds to that of among
school-aged children [4, 5].

The consequences of bullying can be very harmful to health and behavior of
children involved in its processes [6]. Apart from poorer physical health,
victimization is strongly associated with the loss of self-esteem, and risk of
developing psychosomatic symptoms, depression, and suicidal ideation [2, 7, 8].
Children involved in bullying exhibit poorer psychosocial adjustment, as
compared to those not involved [9, 10]. Physical and relational victimization
among preschoolers contribute to later school adjustment problems [10, 11].
Early involvement in bullying is a precursor of children*s feelings of
loneliness and school avoiding behavior [5, 12]. It was reported that despite
the pre-existing behavioral and school difficulties, being victimized by
bullying during first 2 years at school uniquely contributes to an increase in
adjustment problems among victims and bully/victims [11]. Furthermore, bullying
can also undermine academic achievements, and it is associated with delinquency
and crime involvement in youth [2, 9, 13, 14].

In the context of school bullying it is important to try to prevent its
occurrence or to identify it as early as possible. It is recommended to
intervene at the start of the elementary school [7]. The duration of the
victimization experience is associated with the magnitude of the school
maladjustments [7, 22]. Therefore, problem of bullying has to be adequately
addressed already at the start of the elementary school.

However, parents and teachers often sturggle with their attempts to tackle
bullying. It is rather *hidden* from adult supervision and it often remains
unnoticed because it usually happens at the least well supervised locations [2,
27]. Also, children can be rather reluctant to report bullying. Up to half of
the involved children reported not telling adults about being bullied [2, 3]
and therefore, parents and teachers may often be unaware of the full extent of
the problem. This all can make it rather difficult to assess the problem just
by day-to-day observation and it certainly makes it challenging to deal with
bullying effectively. The usual methods such as questionnaires are not suitable
for children whose reading skills are not fully developed yet (e.g. children in
grades 2 and 3 of the elementary school). Because of these complications it is
rather challenging to diagnose bullying among young children. A suitable for
this goal instrument is currently lacking. Therefore, an age-appropriate
instrument should be developed that would allow studying bullying among young
children in a simple and efficient manner.

Currently there is no instrument available that could be used to identify
bullying among young children. An instrument that is developed within this
study, however, can fulfill this goal. The developed program can be used to
analyze the situation in a class and to provide a tailored, evidence-based
feedback to the teachers. With the help of this tool it is easy to detect
whether there is a problem in a class and to what extent it is a problem.

Questionnaires that have been widely used for bullying research up till now are
not suitable for 6-7 year-old children. Usually, parent or teacher reports are
used to assess bullying among young children, but children themselves are asked
very seldom. The proposed in this study instrument, on the other hand, is based
on cumulative experience of researchers working on bullying problem among young
children [4, 5, 21, 28, 29] and it can be used for self-report of bullying
victimization among young children. A specifically designed for young children
computer task will be used in this study to collect data on peer interactions
among elementary school children in Rotterdam. Children are asked to nominate
classmates by whom they are bullied. With the help of this program it will be
possible to measure to what extend bullying is prevalent among young elementary
school children and what patterns of peer relationships are common among these
children. Because this tool is easy to utilize, it can later be used
independently by any school interested in diagnosing the situation in a class.

The primary research questions of the study are:
1. What percentage of children report bullying victimization?
2. Which form of bullying is the most common among elementary school children?
3. What is the structure of the social networks among elementary school
children?

Furthermore, using the tool for monitoring of the peer relationships in a class
is also beneficial for prevention purposes. Such information can help to
improve an understanding of the relationships among children in a class, and it
can help to prevent dangerous patters of peer relations turning into severe
chronic problems at a later stage.

Apart from creating an instrument to study bullying victimization, this study
will also look at the role of the early risk factors for maladaptive relations
among elementary school children. This secondary goal can be achieved by
combining an extensive data about early developmental factors of children
participating in the Generation R study with the data on bullying and peer
relationships collected in this study. Within the Generation R project a wide
range of data has been collected about children*s behavioral problems, parental
psychopathology, family functioning, parenting, and social demographic data
[33]. This approach will contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the
bullying processes among young children.

Secondary goals of the research aim to answer the following research questions:
1. Which early developmental risk factors are related to maladaptive relations
among elementary school children?
2. Which early developmental risk factors can predict victimization and
bullying among young elementary school children?

This is an observational, cross-sectional study during which children report
information about their relationships with classmates. The data is collected by
means of a computer program in a form of a computer game. The computer test is
approximately 15 minutes in duration and children are asked to complete the
task once, at school, under usual for them circumstances. Several children can
do the task at the same time.

The demo version of the computer program can be viewed on the following
website: www.pestenopbasisscholen.nl. This website has been created
specifically for this project. It contains information about the project but
also useful materials about bullying among young schoolchildren. Teachers and
parents can visit this website in order to obtain more information about this
research project, and they can try the test version of the computer program or
watch a demo movie about the program on this website.

It is expected that the proposed computer test holds minimum burden for
children participating in the study because children are asked to report the
information that they know implicitly already. Children answer questions about
their relationships with the classmates and are not confronted with a new for
them information. The entertaining nature of the computer test makes it easy
and fun for most of the children to answer the questions.