The prevalence of bullying worldwide is high (UNESCO, 2018). Over the past decades, many anti-bullying interventions have been developed to remediate this problem. However, we lack insight into for whom these interventions work and what individual intervention components drive the total intervention effects. We conducted a large-scale individual…

Bullying varies in frequency, intensity, duration and hence severity, and contributes uniquely and directly to mental health problems, with severe and long-lasting consequences. Almost a half of school-age students report being bullied in the past year. All school staff, especially school counsellors, are uniquely positioned to reduce student…

Bullying is an issue that continues to represent a significant challenge to the provision of pastoral care in schools. In more recent decades, it has evolved in its complexity to include forms of bullying often referred to as cyberbullying or online bullying. Reflecting a wider discourse on pastoral care, recent analysis of how schools have been…

The Cyber Friendly Schools Project was an innovative longitudinal study which engaged young people themselves in the process of developing and implementing whole-school strategies to reduce cyberbullying-related harm in Australian schools. This postscript describes how our research has developed since our findings were published in 2015, and…

This study examined the opinions of influential, authoritative employees from the education and legal systems, regarding their perceptions of the role of the law and cyberbullying in Australian schools. Participants were asked whether they thought a specific law for cyberbullying should be introduced, what particular behaviours, if any, should be…

Peer bullying increases in times of school transition, influenced by changing peer and friendship groups, new schooling environments and greater stress. Covert forms of bullying, including cyberbullying, become more common in secondary school and cause considerable distress and long-term harm. The period of transition to secondary school is…

The aim of this study was to add to the emerging knowledge about the role of bystanders in cyberbullying. To differentiate online versus offline bystander behaviors, 292 Australian children (mean age = 15.2; female = 54.4%) reviewed hypothetical scenarios experimentally manipulated by bystander sex, relationship to target and perpetrator, and…

Background: Despite decades of research, bullying in all its forms is still a significant problem within schools in Australia, as it is internationally. Anti-bullying policies and guidelines are thought to be one strategy as part of a whole school approach to reduce bullying. However, although Australian schools are required to have these…

Increasingly, researchers are required to obtain active (explicit) parental consent prior to surveying children and adolescents in schools. This study assessed the potential bias present in a sample of actively consented students, and in the estimates of associations between variables obtained from this sample. Students (n = 3496) from 36…

Parents can significantly affect children's peer relationships, including their involvement in bullying. The authors developed and evaluated ways to enhance parents' knowledge, self-efficacy, attitudes, and skills related to parent-child communication about bullying. The 3-year Friendly Schools Friendly Families whole-school intervention included…

Covert bullying behaviours are at least as distressing for young people as overt forms of bullying, but often remain unnoticed or unacknowledged by adults. This "invisibility" is increased in schools by inattention to covert bullying in policy and practice, and limited staff understanding and skill to address covert behaviours. These…

Problem Behaviour Theory suggests that young people's problem behaviours tend to cluster. This study examined the relationship between traditional bullying, cyberbullying and engagement in problem behaviours using longitudinal data from approximately 1500 students. Levels of traditional victimisation and perpetration at the beginning of secondary…

Purpose: This three-year group randomized controlled trial assessed whether a multi-age, multi-level bullying prevention and intervention with staff capacity building, can reduce bullying among primary school children. Methods: This study comprised two intervention and one comparison conditions. Student self-report data were collected from 2552…

This study reports on a three-year group randomized controlled trial, the Cyber Friendly Schools Project (CFSP), aimed to reduce cyberbullying among grade 8 students during 2010-2012. In each year, 14-15 year old student "cyber" leaders acted as catalysts to develop and implement whole-school activities to reduce cyberbullying-related…

The current study used developmental trajectories to examine the relationship between internalising and externalising behaviours and victimisation over the transition period from primary to secondary school. Data were collected using a self-completion questionnaire four times over 3 years from 3,459 students aged 11-14 years. Students were tracked…