90% of Elementary School Kids Are Bullied: Survey

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The percentage of children who said they had been bullies themselves did not vary significantly between grades. By contrast, fewer fifth graders said they had been a victim of bullying, compared to children in the other grades.

The findings are published in the April issue of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.

Tarshis, who is now director of the Bay Area Children's Association in Cupertino, Calif., and Huffman suggested that the new test seems to be a useful and easy-to-administer tool to help educators get a quick handle on the degree of bullying going on in schools. It can also be used to spark discussion among students on what appears to be a widespread problem, the researchers said.

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"We need to shift the mindset that being bullied in school is OK, because we know that kids who are victimized and bullied have poor outcomes in the future," he said. "And, in reality, it's affecting a majority of kids in our schools."

"So, we need to increase awareness, and parents need to talk to their kids about what's going on in school," Tarshis said. "Children and their peers, teachers and school staff, and parents and guardians, all need to be involved."

But Dr. Christopher Lucas, associate professor of psychiatry at New York University's Child Study Center and director of its Early Childhood Service, thinks the problem of bullying may not be quite so pervasive as the new survey suggests.

"I'm very skeptical about nine out of ten," said Lucas. "That number is huge. But you have to keep in mind that when little kids self-report, there tends to be a lot of over-reporting. And my suspicion is that they may well be including behaviors that wouldn't be regarded by most people as bullying in terms of either frequency or intensity."

Lucas' own research suggests considerably lower levels of bullying -- along the lines of 50 percent saying they've been bullied and 15 percent saying they've bullied themselves.

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