Implementing the KiVa antibullying program

Educational Psychology An International Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology

ISSN: 0144-3410 (Print) 1469-5820 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedp20

Implementing the KiVa antibullying program: recognition of stable victims Anne Haataja, Miia Sainio, Mira Turtonen & Christina Salmivalli To cite this article: Anne Haataja, Miia Sainio, Mira Turtonen & Christina Salmivalli (2016) Implementing the KiVa antibullying program: recognition of stable victims, Educational Psychology, 36:3, 595-611, DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2015.1066758 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2015.1066758

Published online: 22 Jul 2015.

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Date: 06 April 2016, At: 02:15

Educational Psychology, 2016 Vol. 36, No. 3, 595–611, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2015.1066758

Implementing the KiVa antibullying program: recognition of stable victims Anne Haataja*, Miia Sainio, Mira Turtonen and Christina Salmivalli Department of Psychology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

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(Received 23 February 2015; final version received 24 June 2015) Teachers do not always recognise students who are victimised by their peers. In this study, we examined the recognition of stable victims in 76 schools beginning to implement the KiVa antibullying programme. We focused on 348 victims (9–15 years) who reported victimisation at the pretest and still at wave 2, after five months of programme implementation. Only 24% of these stable victims received the attention of school personnel during the school year. Multilevel logistic regression analyses revealed that male victims were recognised more often than female victims, but only in elementary school level. Peer reputation as a victim, as well as telling an adult about one’s plight increased the likelihood of recognition by school personnel, whereas bullying others (in addition to being victimised) decreased it. The study emphasises the importance of encouraging school personnel to put more effort in reaching the victimised students. Keywords: antibullying programme; victimization

indicated

intervention; recognition;

Teachers have an important role in preventing and intervening bullying among peers at school. Several studies have shown that teachers’ increased actions against bullying are related to reduced levels of victimisation (Fekkes, Pijpers, & Verloove-Vanhorick, 2006; Garandeau, Poskiparta, & Salmivalli, 2014; Haataja et al., 2014; Olweus & Kallestad, 2010; Salmivalli, Kaukiainen, & Voeten, 2005). Although greater efforts are, on average, likely to lead to better outcomes, there is a high concern related to a substantial number of bullied students who remain unrecognised and, therefore, not helped by school personnel. Knowing the wide range of concurrent and long-term adjustment problems experienced by victims of bullying (e.g. Biggs et al., 2010; Kochel, Ladd, & Rudolph, 2012; Reijntjes, Kamphuis, Prinzie, & Telch, 2010; Reijntjes et al., 2011; Ttofi, Farrington, Lösel, & Loeber, 2011), it is clear that continued victimisation overlooked by teachers is a serious concern that deserves attention. In the framework of KiVa (an acronym for Kiusaamista Vastaan, ‘against bullying’) antibullying programme, we examined factors that either facilitated or prevented teacher recognition of victimised students in their schools. We focused on a group of stable victims of bullying, who no doubt should have raised concern among school personnel during the implementation of the KiVa programme.

*Corresponding author. Email: anmahaa@utu.fi © 2015 Taylor & Francis


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Flaws in the recognition of victimised students Adults often fail to intervene when bullying takes place. Using naturalistic observations, Craig, Pepler, and Atlas (2000) demonstrated that adults intervened in less than 20% of bullying episodes at the time they occurred. However, when teachers are aware of bullying, they are likely to intervene (Fekkes, Pijpers, & Verloove-Vanhorick, 2005; Novick & Isaacs, 2010). One of the obvious challenges in antibullying work is thus the recognition of victimisation in the first place. One indication of the failure to recognise victimisation is the fact that teachers often underestimate the prevalence of bullying (Bradshaw, Sawyer, & O’Brennan, 2007; Craig et al., 2000; Smith & Shu, 2000). For instance, Bradshaw and colleagues (2007) demonstrated that more than 90% of teachers estimated the prevalence rates of frequent victimisation being much lower than what was reported by students. Accordingly, Wienke Totura, Green, Karver, and Gesten (2009) found that many middle school students who perceived themselves as victims were unidentified by teachers. Overall, the correlations between self-reported and teacher-reported victimisation were low to moderate. Which factors might facilitate teacher recognition of victimised students? It is possible that peer reports of victimisation reflect behaviours or incidents that are more salient to observers. Such incidents are also more likely to be recognised by teachers. The findings from two cross-sectional studies (Bouman et al., 2013; Graham & Juvonen, 1998) and a recent longitudinal study (Scholte, Burk, & Overbeek, 2013) showed that especially convergent victims, those scoring high on both self-reported and peer-reported victimisation had emotional (e.g. anxiety and low self-worth) as well as social (e.g. peer rejection) adjustment problems. Thus, students who have a peer reputation of being victimised (in addition to their subjective experience of negative treatment) may be more severely and visibly bullied, and thus more likely to be recognised by teachers as well. Disclosing one’s plight to adults is another factor likely to facilitate recognition. Novick and Isaacs (2010) demonstrated that students’ willingness to tell about their situation to school personnel or parents was the strongest predictor of getting help. Unfortunately, students do not often inform adults and seek their help (Fekkes et al., 2005; Olweus, 1993; Smith & Shu, 2000). They may believe that telling adults about victimisation will not lead to effective solutions or will even worsen the situation (Fekkes et al., 2005; Newman & Murray, 2005; Smith & Shu, 2000). Also peer cultures often discourage tattling to adults (Oliver & Candappa, 2007). Teacher recognition can be related to the forms of victimisation as well. Research findings suggest that teachers do not identify non-physical aggression as bullying compared to situations in which physical harm is involved (Boulton, 1997; Craig, Henderson, & Murphy, 2000; Hazler, Miller, Carney, & Green, 2001; Mishna, Scarcello, Pepler, & Wiener, 2005). Also, teachers may perceive indirect and relational aggression (harming the target’s friendships, social status or self-esteem) less serious than direct bullying (Bauman & Del Rio, 2006; Ellis & Shute, 2007; Yoon & Kerber, 2003). Therefore, we can expect targets of indirect bullying to be less likely to be recognised than the cases in which bullying happens directly (either verbally or physically). Recognition of victimisation may also depend on victims’ own behaviour. For instance, if misbehaving and antisocial students are targeted by peer aggression,


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teachers may perceive them responsible for their own situation, and expect children to resolve conflicts on their own (McAuliffe, Hubbard, & Romano, 2009). Accordingly, it is possible that victims who are also perpetrators of bullying themselves are less likely to receive help from school personnel. Recognition of victims might become more difficult in middle school as compared with elementary school, as the tendency to tell about bullying decreases from elementary to middle school (Boulton & Smith, 1994; Oliver & Candappa, 2007; Smith & Shu, 2000). Moreover, victimisation can become more hidden in middle school as compared with elementary school; although victimisation in general seems to decrease as a function of age (Pellegrini & Long, 2002; Solberg, Olweus, & Endresen, 2007), relational victimisation becomes more frequent with increasing age (Crick, Casas, & Nelson, 2002; Wolke, Woods, & Samara, 2009; Yang & Salmivalli, 2013). School level (elementary vs. middle school) might influence teachers’ perceptions even independently of the likelihood of telling or the forms of victimisation experienced. Recently, Hektner and Swenson (2012) examined teachers’ beliefs associated with victimisation among students in elementary and high school. They found that teachers reported higher levels of empathy towards younger victims, and their intentions to intervene were higher in case of younger as compared with older students. Considering gender differences, it is well established that boys are more likely to experience physical victimisation than girls (e.g. Crick & Bigbee, 1998; Cullerton-Sen & Crick, 2005; Martin & Huebner, 2007; Pellegrini & Long, 2002; Yang & Salmivalli, 2013). However, gender differences in experiencing relational victimisation are less clear. Whereas some scholars have found girls to experience more relational victimisation than boys (Crick & Bigbee, 1998; Cullerton-Sen & Crick, 2005), there are contradictory findings showing boys being victimised more by all (including relational) forms (Martin & Huebner, 2007; Yang & Salmivalli, 2013). If the forms of victimisation among boys and girls are different, that might affect the likelihood of recognition of their plight. However, there are also other reasons why recognition of boy vs. girl victims may be different. First, girls are found to seek help from adults more likely than boys (Hunter, Boyle, & Warden, 2004; Newman, Murray, & Lussier, 2001; Oliver & Candappa, 2007; Smith & Shu, 2000). Second, victimised boys are more often aggressive themselves than victimised girls (Pellegrini, Bartini, & Brooks, 1999; Solberg et al., 2007; Yang & Salmivalli, 2013), which may decrease the likelihood of identifying them as victims. Third, teachers may view bullying to be more normative (‘part of growing up’) among boys as compared with girls (Hektner & Swenson, 2012). Whereas it is known that school personnel tend to overlook victimisation, very little attention has been paid to the school context and how it might be linked to teachers’ perceptions. Although larger school communities do not increase the risk for victimisation (Saarento, Kärnä, Hodges, & Salmivalli, 2013; Wolke, Woods, Stanford, & Schulz, 2001), we may ask whether school size affects the recognition of victimised students’ plight. Moreover, limited attention has been paid to recognition of victims in schools implementing an antibullying programme (Ryan & Smith, 2009; Ttofi & Farrington, 2010). It is plausible that school personnel’s motivation to engage in programme delivery is related to better recognition of victims.


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The KiVa programme: to reach victimised students KiVa is a nationwide research-based antibullying programme developed in Finland. It provides schools with concrete materials for their antibullying work (for details, see Salmivalli, Kärnä, & Poskiparta, 2010). The KiVa antibullying programme includes universal interventions directed at all students, such as student lessons on the mechanisms of bullying and on bystander responsibility to put an end to it. In addition, KiVa involves indicated interventions directed at bullies and victims when a suspected case of bullying comes to the attention of school personnel. Each case is first screened and then tackled either by classroom teacher (if it turned out to be something else than systematic bullying) or by the school KiVa team (in case of systematic bullying) who organise/s a series of discussions with bullies, victims and several prosocial classmates of the victim, aimed at stopping the bullying immediately. Notably, the KiVa programme has been demonstrated to be successful in reducing victimisation and bullying in schools (Kärnä et al., 2011). Importantly, a large majority of victimised students (98%) who had been recognised at school and whose cases had been tackled by KiVa teams felt that their situation had improved significantly or bullying had stopped completely (Garandeau et al., 2014). However, considering the (high) prevalence of self-reported victims in schools and the (low) number of cases handled by KiVa teams, it is evident that not all victims are recognised by the school personnel.

The present study The present study focuses on factors that facilitate or prevent the recognition of continuously victimised students in schools beginning to implement an antibullying programme. Unlike previous research that has often utilised information collected from a single source (e.g. teacher reports only, see Bauman & Del Rio, 2006; Dedousis-Wallace, Shute, Varlow, Murrihy, & Kidman, 2014; Hektner & Swenson, 2012; Novick & Isaacs, 2010), the present study links individual students’ reports on their plight to teacher-reported recognition of these particular cases. Importantly, teacher recognition is reported throughout the school year rather than at a single point in time, and the sample of victimised students is selected on the basis of two measurement waves to ensure that they represent stable victims who no doubt should have raised adults’ concern at some point during the year. First, we expected stable victims’ recognition to be more likely when they had peer reputation as victims, i.e. also peers reported them to be targets of bullying. Second, we expected recognition to be more likely if a child had told an adult about being bullied. Third, we expected students targeted by direct bullying to be more likely to be recognised than the targets of indirect bullying. Fourth, we expected the victims’ own bullying behaviour to decrease the likelihood of teacher recognition. Given the age and gender differences in the above-mentioned factors, we controlled for grade level, student age and gender in the analyses. However, we also considered that age and gender could have unique effects on recognition, so that elementary school victims would be more likely to be recognised than victims in middle school, and that male victims would be more often recognised than female victims. Finally, we expected school size to be unrelated to, but schools’ commitment to active implementation of the KiVa antibullying programme to be positively related to, recognition of victimised students.



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Method Sample We examined the recognition of stable victims in 76 schools implementing the KiVa antibullying programme in the context of a one-year randomised controlled trial taking place, depending on the school, either in 2007–2008 or 2008–2009. The Finnish basic education concerns grade levels 1–9 (ages 7–15 years), and the original sample consisted of students in these grades. Students in Grades 1 and 2 were excluded from the present sample as peer-reported victimisation was assessed only from Grade 3 onwards. Also, Grade 7 students were excluded because due to elementary to middle school transition between Grades 6 and 7, there was no T1 (pretest) data available for them. Additionally, there were 30 schools that failed to document bullying cases during the KiVa intervention (i.e. had no recognition data), 10 schools in which none of the students met the criteria of stable victimisation, and 859 students who did not return active parental consent. Thereafter, we had data from 76 schools implementing KiVa with 9075 students (49.8% boys; 58.0% in middle school). We utilised a subsample of students identified as stable victims. We used a standard cut-off criteria on victimisation scores recommended by Solberg and Olweus (2003) and other researchers (e.g. Nansel et al., 2001). Accordingly, students who reported that they had been bullied two times a month or more often during the past couple of months at T1 (in May) and again at T2 (in December) were considered as stable victims. The final sample of 348 stable victims (60.3% boys, 33.6% in middle school) represented 3.8% of all students in the sample. The reason for the selection criterion of the victim subsample was as follows: if we included T1-only victims, a possible reason for them not being recognised at school might have been that they were not victimised any more when the new school year (during which recognition data were collected) begun. By including T2only victims, on the other hand, we would have missed students who were victimised in the beginning of the school year but not any more in the end of fall term, when T2 data were collected (perhaps because they were recognised and had received help some time during the fall term). By focusing on stable victims, we were able to gain insight into the recognition of students who no doubt should have been recognised as victims. Naturally, many other students (some of them reporting being victimised only at T1, only at T2, or at neither assessment point) were recognised as victims by the school personnel during the school year and received help. These students, however, were out of the scope of the present study; by including them, we could not have distinguished ‘false positives’ (nonvictimized but recognised as victims) and ‘false negatives’ (victimised but unrecognised) from students who were recognised as victims with a good reason. Procedure The schools implementing the KiVa programme were asked to document all suspected cases of a student being bullied by filling out a screening form every time such a case came to the attention of the school personnel. Cases of repeated systematic victimisation (being bullied) were directed to the school KiVa team (a group of three teachers or other members of school personnel) responsible for indicated intervention). In the present study, we considered all the incidents that came to the


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attention of the school personnel and were screened for appropriate action as recognised. Whether or not the case was eventually directed to the school team, recognition always led to some actions to support the victim (i.e. either by the KiVa team or by classroom teacher who tackled the cases of less systematic aggression). Students filled out internet-based questionnaires in their school computer labs during regular school hours. They were supervised by teachers, who had been provided detailed instructions about the data collection process. Teachers distributed the individual passwords to the children who had parental permission to participate in the study. Students were informed of the strict confidentiality of their answers. The order of the questions, the individual items and the scales (for self- and peer reports) used in this study were randomised by the survey programme so that the order of presenting the questions would not have any systematic effect on the results. The term bullying was defined to the children in the way formulated in the Revised Olweus’ Bully/Victim questionnaire (Olweus, 1996), which emphasises the repetitive nature of bullying and the power imbalance between the bully and the victim. Several examples covering different forms of bullying were given. Moreover, an explanation of what is not bullying (teasing in a friendly and playful way; a fight between children of equal strength or power) was provided. Teachers read the definition out loud while children could read it on their computer screens. Additionally, to remind the children of the meaning of the term bullying, a shortened version of the definition appeared on the upper part of the computer screen when children responded to any bullying-related question. Measures Stable victims Students were asked ‘Have you been bullied at school during the past couple of months’. They responded in five-point scale (0 = not at all, 1 = only once or twice, 2 = two or three times a month, 3 = about once a week, 4 = several times a week). In dichotomizing the measure, students who reported being victimised at least two or three times a month, or more often both at T1 (before summer break, in May) and T2 (after 4–5 month of implementing KiVa programme, in December–January) were considered as stable victims. Recognition of victims A student was considered as a recognised victim when a screening form was filled out by a member of the school personnel indicating that the student had been identified as a target of peer aggression during the KiVa evaluation study (during the school year, i.e. from mid-August to the end of May) This variable was dichotomous (0 = had not been recognised, 1 = had been recognised). Self-reported direct and indirect victimisation To examine the effect of the forms of victimisation (Olweus, 1996) on recognition, self-reports from T1 were used. Students were prompted by asking ‘Have you been bullied at school during the past couple of months in this way?’ They responded in five-point scale (0 = not at all, 4 = several times a week). Four items measured direct victimisation: ‘I was called mean names, was made fun of or teased in a


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hurtful way’; ‘I was hit, kicked, or shoved’, ‘I was stolen money or things from or my things were broken’, ‘I was threatened or forced to do things I didn’t want to do’. Two items measured indirect victimisation: ‘Other students ignored me completely or excluded me from things or from their group of friends’, ‘Other students tried to make others dislike me by spreading lies about me’. Results from factor analyses supported a two-dimensional structure of the victimisation items as opposed to being a unidimensional construct. Cronbach’s alphas were .66 and .69 for the indirect and direct scales, respectively. Peer-reported victimisation In order to measure peer-reported victimisation at Time 1, students were asked to nominate an unlimited number of classmates who they perceived as being bullied in the following ways: ‘S/he gets shoved and hit’, ‘S/he is called names and made fun of’ and ‘Rumours are spread about her/him.’ Peer nominations received were totaled and divided by the number of classmates responding which resulted in a score ranging from .00 to 1.00 for each individual student on each item. The proportion scores were averaged across three items. In the present sample, Cronbach’s alpha was .80 for the victimisation scale. Bullying others In order to measure bullying others, students answered to a question at T2 (Olweus, 1996): ‘How often have you bullied another student during the past couple of months?’ They answered on a five-point scale (0 = not at all, 4 = several times a week). Telling an adult about the victimisation At time 2 students were asked if they had told anyone about the victimisation, and if so, who. The alternatives were ‘the teacher’, ‘another adult at school’, ‘mom, dad, or guardian’, ‘sibling’, ‘a friend’ and ‘someone else’. In dichotomizing the measure, the first three options were considered to indicate telling an adult (0 = has not told an adult, 1 = has told an adult). School’s commitment: proportion of lesson booklets returned Besides reporting the suspected cases of bullying coming to attention, the teachers responsible for delivering the antibullying curriculum (KiVa lessons) involved in the programme had been asked to fill in booklets where they documented the delivery of each lesson. Lesson booklets returned from each school were totaled and divided by the number of expected booklets from that school resulting in a score ranging from .0 to 1.0. This variable was used as an indicator of school-level commitment to the KiVa intervention as whole as well as to predict recognition at the school level. In our sample the average proportion of returned booklets was .79 (SD = .24). Overview of the analyses First, we provide the prevalence of stable victims in the target sample by gender, age and level of schooling (elementary vs. middle). Second, we report the mean


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differences in the study variables between the recognised and unrecognised stable victims. Third, we provide the correlations among the study variables for the sample of stable victims. Finally, the main analyses are done using multilevel logistic regression analyses. In the main analyses, we examined which factors facilitate or prevent recognition of stable victims including both individual level factors (gender, age, level of schooling, telling an adult about victimisation, bullying others, peer-reported victimisation and the forms by which the student was bullied). After testing the main effects of these variables, we tested whether any of them interacted with gender or level of schooling. We chose an alpha level < .05 to test significant interaction effects. Also, given the nature of the KiVa antibullying programme (including indicated and universal components), we examined whether school-level factors (school size, commitment to KiVa programme) were associated with the recognition of stable victimisation. Class level was not included in the multilevel modelling because the KiVa team worked at the school level. Moreover, many classrooms consisted of single cases of stable victims. We calculated the design effects (Muthén & Satorra, 1995) at the classroom and school levels. Only at the school level, the design effect was greater than 2, indicating that the clustering in the data needs to be taken into account during estimation in order to avoid underestimations of standard errors (Muthén & Satorra, 1995). Results Stable victims We identified 348 stable victims from 76 schools. Boys were more often stable victims than girls (4.5% of boys vs. 2.9% of girls), χ2(1) = 15.72, p < .001). Students in elementary school grades were more often stable victims than students in middle school (5.6% of elementary grades vs. 2.2% of middle grades, χ2(1) = 72.52, p < .001). Recognised vs. unrecognised stable victims Based on the screening forms from the school personnel, 23.6% of the 348 stable victims had been recognised at schools during the nine-month intervention.1 Table 1 provides descriptive statistics comparing recognised and unrecognised victims. Boys were more often recognised than girls. Recognition was equally likely in elementary and in middle schools. Recognised victims had told an adult more often than unrecognised victims (19.5% vs. 8.6%). Victims who were recognised by school personnel scored higher on peer-reported victimisation than the ones who remained unrecognised (M = .22 vs. M = .15, p < .01). Finally, recognised victims were bullying others less than unrecognised victims (M = .73 vs. M = .99), although this mean difference was only marginally significant (p = .06). Correlations As seen in Table 2, direct and indirect forms of victimisation were statistically significantly associated (r = .58, p < .001), indicating an overlap of different types of victimisation among chronically victimised students. Both forms were also


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Table 1. Means and standard deviations on recognised and unrecognised stable victims.

Boys Age Middle school Telling T2 Bullying T2 Peer-reported victimisation T1 Direct victimisation T1 Indirect victimisation T1

Recognised (n = 82)

Unrecognised (n = 266)

M

M

73.2% 11.95 30.5% 19.5% 0.73 0.22 1.35 1.61

(SD) (2.09) (0.89) (0.18) (0.91) (1.34)

Difference test

(SD)

56.4% 12.14 34.6% 8.6% 0.99 0.15 1.18 1.29

χ2(1) = 7.38** t(346) = 0.71 χ2(1) = 0.47 χ2(1) = 7.43** t(346) = 1.86† t(117) = −3.18** t(346) = −1.54 t(120) = −1.93†

(2.18) (1.15) (0.15) (0.85) (1.16)

†


p < .07; **p < .01.

Table 2. Correlations between independent variables (n = 348). Variable Boy Age Middle Bullying Telling Peer-reports Direct victimisation Indirect victimisation

Boy

Age

Middle

– .04 – .03 .89*** – .26*** .15** .13* −.00 .05 −.03 .10† .18** .17** .22*** −.09 −.02 .11†

.11†

.12*

Bullying

Telling

– −.03 −.00 .10†

– .09 .07

.03

.09

Peer-reports

–

Direct

.22***

–

.28***

.58***

†

p < .10; *p < .05; **p < .01; ***p < .001.

associated with peer-reported victimisation and with gender (being a boy). Grade level (middle school) and student age were both positively associated with bullying others, being victimised indirectly, and being perceived as a victim by peers. Logistic regression analyses: recognition of stable victims The intraclass correlation (ICC = .30) that resulted from testing the unrestricted model (i.e. intercept-only model) indicated that 30% of the variance in the recognition of stable victims could be attributed to the schools; 70% was due to individual differences between victims. Thus, some schools were more effective in recognition than others. The coefficients and the odds ratios (OR) for the final multilevel logistic regression model are reported in Table 3. Peer-reported victimisation (OR = 14.72) and telling an adult (OR = 2.25) increased the likelihood of being recognised as a victim. Every unit increase in selfreported bullying behaviour, in turn, resulted in a 31% decrease in the likelihood of recognition (OR = .69). The forms by which the student was victimised and student age did not significantly predicted recognition. Boys were more likely to be recognised than girls (OR = 4.42), although statistically significantly only in elementary schools as indicated by the Boy × Middle School interaction (p = .03). There were

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Table 3. Two-level logistic regression on recognition of stable victims within KiVa schools: parameter estimates, standard errors, odds ratios and 95% confident interval for odds ratios.

Level 1 Boy Age Middle school Boy × Middle school Telling adult T2 Bullying T2 Peer-reported victimisation T1 Direct victimisation T1 Indirect victimisation T1 R-Square Level 2 Lesson booklets provided School size R-Square

Est

Std. Est

SE

OR

95% CI

1.49** −0.11 1.56 −1.34* 0.81* −0.37* 2.69* −0.20 0.24 0.21**

.73 −.12 .76 −.66 .40 −.20 .21 −.09 .14

(0.21) (0.19) (0.54) (0.29) (0.20) (0.07) (0.08) (0.13) (0.12) (0.07)

4.42 0.89 4.74 0.26 2.25 0.69 14.72 0.82 1.27

[1.78, 10.96] [0.62, 1.28] [0.51, 44.26] [0.08, 0.90] [1.02, 4.94] [0.51, 0.93] [1.77, 122.63] [0.44, 1.51] [0.90, 1.81]

1.76* −0.00 0.22

.34 −.29

(0.15) (0.28) (0.21)

1.40 0.75

[1.11, 1.70] [0.20, 1.30]

Notes: Nlevel 1 = 348 and Nlevel 2 = 76. Est = unstandardised coefficient and Std. Est = standardised coefficient. *p < .05; **p < .01.

no other significant two-way interactions between student characteristics (i.e. gender and level of schooling) and behavioural variables, and these were not included to the final models due to collinearity problems. At the school level, there was a positive significant effect of implementation commitment (as measured by the proportion of booklets returned) on the recognition of victims (OR = 1.40). School size, in turn, was unrelated to recognition. Discussion Students’ expectations of teacher interventions are discouraging (Fekkes et al., 2005), and raise a substantial concern about teachers’ ability to recognise peer victimisation. This study aimed at extending the knowledge about the aspects that affect recognition of chronically victimised students in schools implementing the KiVa antibullying programme, which has been found to be effective in decreasing victimisation and bullying (Kärnä et al., 2011, 2013). It was disconcerting that a vast majority of self-reported stable victimisation escaped teachers’ attention – only about one fourth of the chronic victims were recognised. This demonstrates clearly that recognition was challenging for school personnel even when a structured antibullying programme was implemented. Peer reports provided us with an opportunity to garner information about the extent to which victimisation was known by classmates. Notably, the perspective of peers played an important role in the likelihood of teacher identification too. In fact, peer reputation as a victim was the strongest predictor of teacher recognition. It is possible that convergent victims, who are victimised both according to themselves and their peers, are victimised more severely, or by more students. Moreover, in the light of previous research (Bouman et al., 2013; Graham & Juvonen, 1998; Scholte et al., 2013), convergent victims may also be the most maladjusted (i.e. rejected and low self-esteem), having no one taking their side (Sainio, Veenstra, Huitsing, &



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Salmivalli, 2011), thus raising concern among adults. In some cases, ongoing bullying may have come to teachers’ attention through peers. The student lessons implemented as part of the KiVa antibullying programme might have encouraged students to talk to teachers about their peers’ negative situation. As hypothesised, telling an adult about victimisation was a significant predictor for recognition (Novick & Isaacs, 2010). Consistently with earlier research (Fekkes et al., 2005; Smith & Shu, 2000), we found that less than half of the victims had told adults about their plight. Unfortunately, with respect to stable victims, only 20% had told an adult. It is possible that these stable victims had lost their trust in teachers’ capability to solve bullying problems. Students’ reluctance to tell may be associated with a concern that doing so can exacerbate the situation; they would be perceived as socially weak, and there might be reprisals from the perpetrator (Newman et al., 2001). Somewhat surprisingly, recognition of stable victims was not dependent on the form of victimisation (direct vs. indirect). It is possible that the measures used did not reach the pure forms of indirect (or hidden) vs. direct victimisation. However, it can well be that teachers in KiVa schools consider all forms of victimisation equally severe due to pre-implementation training offered to the schools. Moreover, as shown by Craig et al. (2000), direct bullying happens more often out of teachers’ sight whereas indirect bullying is more likely to take place in the classroom. Thus, direct bullying might be equally hidden from adults as indirect bullying. In contrast, we found that bullying others decreased the likelihood of teacher recognition. Victims who also bully others (having a bully–victim role) are known to have numerous social-emotional adjustment problems (O’Brennan, Bradshaw, & Sawyer, 2009; Schwartz, 2000; Toblin, Schwartz, Hopmeyer Gorman, & Abouezzeddine, 2005). From the teachers’ perspective, they may appear disruptive and hyperactive, and have difficulties controlling their anger when provoked by peers (Schwartz, 2000) which might lead teachers to feel less empathy and provide less support (Hughes, Cavell, & Willson, 2001). Empathy has been found as an important factor explaining teacher intentions to intervene (Dedousis-Wallace et al., 2014). Finally, boys were overrepresented in our sample of stable victims (see also, Camodeca, Goossens, Terwogt, & Schuengel, 2002). Based on the correlations between the forms of victimisation and gender, boys experienced both direct and indirect victimisation more frequently than girls. Thus, among stable victims, there was a gender difference in the frequency of victimisation, regardless of the form. Past research (Murray-Close, Ostrov, & Crick, 2007; Wolke et al., 2009) suggests that peer victimisation becomes more relational also for boys in early adolescence. Male victims were more likely to be recognised than female victims even when taking into account the other factors (telling an adult, forms of victimisation, and bullying others). The interaction by grade level (elementary vs. middle) revealed, however, that the gender difference in being recognised was true only in elementary school (Grades 3–6 in our study). Teachers in middle school had probably limited opportunities to detect hurtful social processes and inequalities in peer relationships. In practice, elementary school teachers spend more time with the students relative to middle school teachers, who teach each class of students for few hours per week. Finally, at the school level, a stronger commitment to implement the KiVa programme was related to a higher likelihood of recognition of stable victims. Although documentation activity is not a direct measure of implementation activity,

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the measure can be taken as an indicator of the motivation level of the personnel to work against bullying. Recognition was unrelated to school size, just as the prevalence of victimisation has been found to be (Saarento et al., 2013; Wolke et al., 2001). Limitations and directions for further research The study had a number limitations including the selection of stable victims on the basis of self-reported experiences, which inherently can be criticised for biasing the results (Card & Hodges, 2008; Vaillancourt et al., 2008). However, it can also be argued that when a child perceives to be victimised over a prolonged period of time, she or he needs adult attention and support no matter how subjective the perception is. By using peer-reported victimisation as a predictor of recognition, we found that victimisation experienced by the student that is not salient to outside observers (peers) is not easily recognised by adults either. This does not mean, however, that victimisation is not taking place when peers do not report it. Educators should try to think of ways in which even less salient cases could be brought into daylight. On the basis of the results obtained with the selected sample of stable victims (students reporting victimisation in two waves of data), direct comparisons with past research are limited. It should also be kept in mind that the focus of our study was not in the likelihood of recognising victimised students as such, but in the factors influencing the likelihood of recognition of stable victims. Thus, our study did not aim to identify all cases in which a victimised student was (or was not) detected, differentiating ‘false positives’ and ‘false negatives’ from correctly identified victims. All victims identified in the present study can be considered correctly identified, but there are probably many other correctly identified victims who were not included in our subsample. Thus, the subsample selection resulted in the exclusion of large part of antibullying work done by school KiVa teams who obviously tackled many bullying cases not included in the present study (see, Garandeau et al., 2014). Finally, the reliabilities of the direct and indirect victimisation scales were less than ideal. Moreover, using T1 data for some constructs (the forms of victimisation peer reported victimisation) instead of T2 measures was not optimal considering the time during which teachers provided data on recognition. Unfortunately, these constructs were not measured at T2 for most grade levels, whereas other independent variables were. Therefore, our conclusions about the forms of victimisation not being related to the recognition of stable victims should be interpreted with caution. This study included multiple informants of victimisation and related factors. Due to the limited data, we were not able to examine whether the victims’ own perceptions of their emotional and social adjustment were related to their identification. We can only speculate whether these factors influenced getting help from teachers. Future empirical investigations of these individual features related to psychosocial well-being are warranted. There were two major shortcomings at the school level. First, we had to remove about 25% of the schools from the final analysis due to missing information about the formal use of indicated intervention. One may ask why this proportion of schools failed to report the cases they handled. Findings on school-based prevention research have shown significant implementation differences between schools (influenced by factors such as school climate and teachers’ collaboration) (Ahtola, Haataja, Kärnä, Poskiparta, & Salmivalli, 2013; Durlak & DuPre, 2008). It is


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possible that some schools were not motivated to use the indicated intervention, or they used this component of KiVa without keeping the record of incidents as instructed. A comprehensive examination of factors explaining differences between schools was not possible in the present study. Future studies could systematically assess organisational norms and policies, teacher–teacher collaboration, or practices that make reporting victimisation easier for students and relate them to the recognition of victimisation. Implications The low recognition rate of stable victims is a serious concern. This study demonstrated that only 24% of chronically victimised students had been recognised despite the schools were using a structured antibullying intervention. Our findings implied that especially girl victims, middle school students and victims who themselves behave aggressively may remain unnoticed. As teachers rarely observe bullying directly (Atlas & Pepler, 1998; Craig et al., 2000), it is important to encourage schools to consider factors that prevent teachers from recognising targeted students, or make it easier for students to report experienced or witnessed victimisation. Telling about victimisation is key for the support, and this is encouraged in the KiVa programme. However, 80% of frequently victimised withheld disclosing their harmful experiences for several months. This alarming proportion of students remaining silent clearly demonstrates that establishing and maintaining a confidential reporting system of bullying should be improved. Acknowledgement The authors thank the whole KiVa research team for support.

Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [grant number 134843].

Note 1. Based on the returned screening forms, a total of 381 students in the target sample were recognised as victims by school personnel during the year. Our focus sample, that is stable victims accounted 21.5% of these recognised students. The rest of recognised students (i.e. non-stable victims) were out of scope of this study, including students reporting victimisation only at T1, or at T2 (accounting for 11.0 and 13.1% of the recognised victims, respectively), and those who did not report victimisation either at T1 or T2 (accounting for 54.3% of recognised victims). In general, there were statistically significant differences between stable victims recognised vs. non-stable victims found in school team reports: stable victims scored higher on both direct (M = 2.07 vs. M = .60, t (107.29) = 11.37, p < .001) and indirect (M = 1.61 vs. M = .44, t(94.73) = 7.60, p < .001) victimisation, bullying others (M = .73 vs. M = .44, t(119.67) = 2.73, p = .007) and telling about victimisation (64% vs. 36% (χ2(1) = 11.65, p = .001). They received more peer nominations as being victimised than non-stable victims (M = .22 vs. M = .12, t(108.18) = 4.77, p < .001).

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