Choosing to be a defender or an outsider in a school bullying incident: Determining factors and the defending process

Abstract

This study examined the determinants of students’ willingness to intervene in bullying incidents, as well as the process underlying students’ defending behaviors. The participants were 24 students (12 defenders and 12 outsiders) recruited from six secondary schools in southern Taiwan. The study used semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative data and a grounded theory approach to analyse the data. The results showed that bystanders in bullying situations tended to assess the perceived severity of a bullying incident, personal responsibility, affective factors, victim characteristics, relationship with the victim, and other factors before committing to an intervention. This study found four possible phases of defending behavior: a) personal assessment affects a bystander’s decision to act as a defender or an outsider; b) a defender evaluates the severity of a situation and the relationship with the bully to determine strategies for defending; c) defenders who come forward to intervene are interrogated or threatened by bullies; and d) defenders then reassess whether to intervene again. The results of this study suggest that bystander intervention programs can encourage students’ personal responsibility, awareness of the severity of school bullying, improvement of interpersonal relationships, and self-efficacy to raise bystanders’ willingness to defend a victim.

Keywords

bystander defender defending process participant role school bullying willingness to intervene

Students involved in school bullying can be divided into six participant roles: Bully, assistant, reinforcer, defender, outsider, and victim (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Björkqvist, Österman, & Kaukiainen, 1996). Researchers have found that others’ defending the victim is associated with reduced frequency of bullying in the classroom, whereas reinforcing the bully is positively and strongly related to increased bullying (Salmivalli, Voeten, & Poskiparta, 2011). That is, if the bystanders are more prone to play a role as defender in a school bullying case, it will reduce the frequency of school bullying.

However, studies have shown that fewer than 20% of students act as defenders to help victims (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001). Thus, inquiry into how to encourage students to intervene in bullying situations and research exploring the factors affecting their willingness to intervene have become of significant interest to researchers and educators.

Researchers have attempted to study the connections of different variables with active defending behaviors. Results derived from quantitative research show that empathy (Choi & Cho, 2013), high personal responsibility (Pozzoli & Gini, 2013), high self-efficacy (Pronk, Goossens, Olthof, De Mey, & Willemen, 2013), and low moral disengagement (Thornberg & Jungert, 2014) are associated with students’ assuming a defender role and engaging in defending behaviors. Taken together, personal and situational factors can influence defending or helping behaviors.

Results of qualitative research show that students with a sense of social justice, high assertiveness, and good coping strategies, as well as the perception that bullying occurs with high frequency and severity all contribute to the intention to intervene in school bullying (Cappadocia, Pepler, Cummings, & Craig, 2012; Craig, Pepler, & Blais, 2007; Lodge & Frydenberg, 2005; Rigby & Johnson, 2005). Factors preventing students from intervening in school bullying include a lack of effective intervening strategies, fear of retaliation, perception that the bullying behaviors are not serious, perception that bullying is not relevant to oneself, blaming victims, fear of peer rejection, lack of friendship with the victim, compliance with peer norms, diffusion of responsibility, and the belief that victims should defend themselves (Cappadocia et al., 2012; Lodge & Frydenberg, 2005; Rigby & Johnson, 2005; Thornberg & Jungert, 2014). However, some above-mentioned studies have been limited by their research methods. For example, some authors provide little description in terms of their data analysis (e.g., Lodge & Frydenberg, 2005). There is a continuing need for researchers to examine whether previous findings can be validated in new studies.

In addition to the determinants of bullying intervention, the process by which one engages in defending behaviors also merits further analysis. Studies have analysed the process by which the roles of bullies and of victims develop. For example, Lam and Liu (2007) divided the development of bullies into four phases: Rejecting, performing, perpetuating, and withdrawing. Thornberg, Halldin, Bolmsjö, and Petersson (2013) divided victimizing into four phases: Initial attacks, double victimizing, bullying exit, and the after-effects of bullying. To date, however, no reported study has examined the process underlying defending behaviors.

In the current study, we sought to understand the determinants of students’ interventions in school bullying, including verbal, relational, and physical bullying. It also aimed to explore the process underlying students’ defending behaviors. A greater understanding of the determinants of students’ intervention in bullying can be used to strengthen the willingness of bystanders to intervene. Understanding the process underlying defending behaviors will help to clarify the contexts and actions that lead to defenders’ intervention behaviors.

Methods

Participants

We recruited 24 secondary school students from southern Taiwan. Of these, 12 were deemed defenders (50%), and 12 were outsiders (50%). The participants were eight boys (33.3%), and 16 girls (66.7%). Six students were in Grade 7, 14 in Grade 8, and four were in Grade 9. The ages ranged from 13- to 15-years-old, with the mean age of the participants being 13.9 years. We selected participants from different schools to avoid the limitations of a single school campus culture. The students were recruited from six junior high schools: Three urban, one suburban, and two rural schools. The socio-economic status of the school zones in this study ranged from medium-low to medium-high socioeconomic status.

Data collection

The first author contacted school representatives via telephone and invited each school to join the project. All procedures and instruments were reviewed by each school. School permission was received from each school. Classroom teachers assisted in seeking informed consent from parents. After obtaining parental consent and the personal consent of the students, the teachers administered a short version of the Participant Role Questionnaire (PRQ; Salmivalli & Voeten, 2004) to the students. Students were asked to nominate other students who satisfied the criteria for defender behavior or bystander behavior. The sum of each student’s peer-assigned scores on each scale was divided by the number of nominators to yield a standardized score. Students who received the highest score on the defender or outsider subscales in each class were invited to participate voluntarily in an individual interview with the first researcher. The roles of defender and outsider were selected for this study because they represent typical figures who are willing or who are unwilling, respectively, to intervene in a bullying situation.

Classroom teachers assisted with arranging interview times and sites to conduct semi-structured interviews with individual students. The interviews took place in an empty classroom and were scheduled during rest time after lunch. The researcher briefly described the purpose of the research and explained participants’ personal rights and the principles of confidentiality and anonymity at the beginning of each interview. The interview included the following questions: (1) ‘Please give an example of a school bullying incident you have witnessed personally’; (2) ‘Have you ever provided assistance to a victim? Why?’; (3) ‘Have you witnessed any school bullying incident in which you did not want to intervene? Why?’; (4) ‘There are some students who are willing to help a victim; do you know why they would do that?’; and (5) ‘Some students choose to be bystanders without intervening; do you know why they do this?’.

After the interview, the researchers wrote a memo including ideas about coding, the conceptual categorization of coding, and the theoretical framework. The first researcher checked the accuracy of each verbatim transcription. Member checking, which provides participants with transcripts to be checked for content accuracy, was also used in this research to assure the quality of the transcription (Barusch, Gringeri, George, 2011).

Data analysis

Each verbatim transcript was coded by two coders who had received professional training in coding. After each interview recording was transcribed into a verbatim transcript, each coder coded the transcripts individually, and the coders discussed the coding content and coding rules periodically. The inter-coder agreement was .92.

Ground Theory approach (GT) was used for data analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). GT was chosen for its emphasis on process analysis, which can be used to analyse associations among the contexts, actions, and results of a defending behavior in a bullying incident. During the open coding phase, codes were compared, merged, and then sorted into categories and subcategories. At the axial coding phase, the researchers proposed a hypothetical theoretical framework to integrate the disparate categories. The hypothetical relationships among categories were considered provisional until they were repeatedly verified by incoming data. Theoretical sampling was implemented by including questions about unclear ideas in subsequent interviews for clarification. For example, we proposed the question, ‘What is the impact of being interrogated or threatened by bullies when someone comes forward to help?’ to clarify whether the defenders would still help a victim after being interrogated by bullies. During the selective coding phase, we emphasized integrating and streamlining the categories and used a storyline to summarize what we knew.

ATLAS.ti 6.0 software was used for data analysis, assistance with data coding, searching, category establishment, memo taking, and case retrieval. During the process of data analysis, the researchers constantly reminded themselves to acknowledge their own possible impact on the data analysis through their implicit attitudes (Mauthner & Doucet, 2003).

A peer-debriefing method was adopted during the last part of the research procedure (Barusch et al., 2011). We invited colleagues from other fields to provide different perspectives on the study’s provisional theoretical framework and research results. Additionally, the researcher also presented the theoretical framework to the participants and asked them to discuss any differences between the analytical results of the study and their actual campus situation.

Results

According to the data collected, we classified the defending process into four phases: Personal assessment, selection of defending strategies, being interrogated by bullies, and reassessment.

Personal assessment

When students witness a bullying incident, they assess different factors to determine whether to intervene in the incident. These factors, according to the interview, include the perceived severity of the bullying, their sense of responsibility, affective factors, the victim’s characteristics, and their relationship with the victim (Table 1).

Table 1.

Determinants of willingness to intervene in bullying incidents.

	Personal factors			Interpersonal factors		Other factors
	Perceived severity	Responsibility	Affection	Victim’s characteristics	Relationship	Other factors
Willing to intervene	Serious	Sense of justice Class leaders	Empathy	Innocent Character- strengths	Friend or classmate	Class- climate
Not willing to intervene	Not serious	Irrelevance	Dislike Fears	Provocation	Not friends	Self- efficacy

The severity of the bullying incident influenced students’ assessment of whether intervention was necessary. Seventeen students (71%) mentioned that they are willing to intervene when the bullying incident was serious, and nine (38%) stated their unwillingness to intervene when the bullying incident was not serious. As P19O said, ‘I did not come forward to help her because it was not that serious’. P20D defined what he thought was serious: ‘Too serious means when someone hits another and others step in’. That is, if it is physical bullying, P20D would intervene as a defender.

Students determined whether they should intervene based on their personal responsibility. This personal responsibility might come from students’ sense of justice. P9D said: ‘Owing to a sense of justice, that’s why I want to help the victim’. Seven students (29%) mentioned a sense of justice and felt like helping the victim. It might also come from the students’ responsibility as a class leader: ‘Class leaders in charge of classroom order should take care of these bullying incidents since they have the responsibility’. (P1O). Five students (21%) mentioned that class leaders have an obligation to help the victim. However, when students concluded that an incident was none of their business or did not want to get into trouble, they did not want to intervene. As P14O said: ‘I don’t want to be involved if it’s not my business’.

Students also mentioned that their willingness to defend victims can be affected by emotional factors. Twelve students (50%) mentioned that empathy or sympathy for a victim in a situation would cause them to offer help: ‘The reason why I helped her is because I felt sympathy for her’. (P4D). However, if the students were affected by negative emotions, they tended not to intervene, such as seven students (29%) who mentioned disliking a victim, nine students (38%) who perceived threats to their personal safety, and 12 students (50%) who mentioned fear of peer ostracism.

If someone hits her and I come forward to intervene, he (the bully) might come at me, and I am afraid of that. (P19O)

You could be disliked by peers because those boys teasing her might treat you as an informer. (P17O)

The results also showed that students take into consideration the behaviors and characteristics of the victim in determining whether intervention is necessary. Seven students (29%) mentioned that they would want to help if a victim is innocent and had not made a mistake. As P15D said: ‘She did not do anything wrong and she was innocent. Then she got bullied, and Peer C would come forward to save her’. On the other hand, ten students (42%) mentioned that if victims made a mistake by agitating others and brought a bullying situation on themselves, they would blame victims and have no intention to help: ‘No one would want to get involved if she [the victim] made a mistake herself.’ (P5O)

Students consider interpersonal relationships as they determine whether an intervention is needed. Twelve students (50%) mentioned that they would help if the victim was a friend of theirs. Nine students (38%) stated they would help even if they were only classmates with the victim. However, two students (8%) stated their unwillingness to intervene if the victim was not a friend.

I would help Peer A because we are sort of friends. This could be due to some kinds of sympathy. (P21D)

We are all classmates, and I don’t understand why someone would bully others. Classmates should help each other. (P19O)

Regarding other factors, some students would defend a victim to maintain a good class climate. Five students (21%) mentioned they would want to defend the victim to maintain a good classroom climate or class cohesion. P16D said: ‘I don’t like to have a negative classroom climate in our class. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all get along well? Why do we have to be mean to each other?’. Low self-efficacy could prevent students from helping the victim. Seven students (29%) mentioned their unwillingness to help due to their belief that their actions would not help in any way (P14O): ‘I don’t want to help because I don’t think it works. It could work this time but not the next time’.

Selection of defending strategies

The second phase of the defending process involves the selection of defending strategies. Coping with bullies can be divided into direct intervention and private communication. Direct intervention would include pulling two parties apart or making bullies calm down to reduce the level of threat in a situation. Informing teachers refers to telling teachers about an incident immediately so that teachers can intervene in time. Fifteen students (63%) mentioned using forms of coping with bullies, while seven (29%) mentioned that they would inform teachers. Based on P1O’s observation, ‘It depends on whether we could stop the bullies from being mean. She (the defender) likes to joke and distract the bully’s attention while others directly report to our teacher’.

Private communication would entail trying to privately persuade bullies to stop when they are not angry. Talking to the victim refers to helping a victim by different means, such as giving private comfort to assuage the agitated emotions of a victim, advising a victim to change behavior before provoking others again, or becoming friends with a victim. Ten (42%) mentioned talking to a victim, trying to comfort them or suggesting they change behavior or attitude that might cause bullying:

I heard they said mean things to him, and I would tell them not to do it. If the bullies continued, I would comfort the victim in private (P21D).

I try to encourage her to change her attitude and behavior. For example, I would tell her to clean up her messy drawer, or if some guys excluded her from the peer group, I would tell them not to do so (P4D).

The type of intervention strategy adopted varies according to the severity of the situation and one’s relationship with the bully. If the incident is not considered serious, students try to handle the situation themselves. However, if the incident is too serious, they inform teachers. Additionally, students intervene when they are friends with the bullies or are not afraid of being ostracized. However, when students are not friends with the bullies or are afraid of being ostracized by their peers, they choose to comfort the victim privately.

If it is serious, like having a backpack thrown into the garbage can or one’s pants being taken off, I would probably stop the bullies with the help of others, and then some students would report the incident to the teacher. (P23D)

I would comfort the victim privately. In my class, you would be challenged and even disliked by bullies if you speak out against them in public. (P21D)

Being interrogated by bullies

The third phase of the defending process is being interrogated or intimidated by bullies. Twelve students (50%) mentioned bullies’ interrogating them as to why they were helping a victim. The defender would be warned by the bullies not to help the victim.

Bullies usually insult others with nasty words. If I came forward to defend a victim or tried to stop bullies when I witnessed such a situation, I might be intimidated or even be beaten up by them. (P23D)

They would say something like, ‘Don’t help him’ and ‘What can you do about it?’. They would say something provocative. Then I just looked at them without saying anything further and sat down (P21D).

Reassessment

The fourth phase of the defending process is reassessment. Ten students (42%) mentioned reassessing the situation to determine whether an intervention should be continued. Here, the defender might take into consideration factors in the first two phases, such as whether he or she feels a sense of responsibility, a strong sense of justice, or a wish to help others, or whether the victim or the bully is a friend. According to our data, the defender continues the help notwithstanding fear of intimidation or interrogation.

I am afraid of being intimidated, but as I could not tolerate this act (bullying), I overcame my fear and helped him (P21D).

I would continue to help even if I am threatened by the bullies. Everyone would make up eventually, and I don’t need to be afraid of them. My friendship with them would be restored in the end (P20D).

This (intimidation) happens all the time, so I don’t think it should matter. Even if I am intimidated by bullies, I would abide by my obligation as a friend to defend a victim (P23D).

Of course, there are still cases where the defenders worry about their own safety and fear peer exclusion. Therefore, they may step back, deciding not to intervene again or to assist the victim in private.

Peers B and C (defenders) are afraid of being intimidated and do not dare to help in public. They might be afraid of being excluded from peer groups. (P21D)

Sometimes they (the defenders) are afraid of being beaten up or intimidated, so they are unwilling to help again. (P9D)

Theoretical model of the defending process

Figure 1 shows a theoretical model of the defending process. After bystanders witness a bullying accident, they conduct a personal assessment (phase one) to determine whether to intervene in bullying. If bystanders take the following factors into consideration, they may choose to intervene as defenders: whether the incident is assessed as serious, feeling a personal responsibility to defend the victim, feeling empathy for the victim, believing the victim is innocent, being a friend or a classmate of the victim, and wishing to maintain a welcoming classroom climate. If an incident is assessed as not serious or none of the defender’s business, if the subject dislikes the victim or fears injury, if the victim is blamed for a situation, if the victim is not a friend or the bystander has low self-efficacy regarding the incident, then the bystander may not intervene in bullying. The result of the personal assessment determines whether a bystander acts as a defender or an outsider.

Figure 1.

The theoretical model of the defending process comprises four phases: Personal assessment, selection of defending strategies, being interrogated by bullies, and reassessment. Personal assessment affects the bystander’s determination to act as a defender or an outsider. The defender takes into consideration the perceived severity of a situation and the relationship with the bully in determining the defending strategy. A defender coming forward to help may be interrogated or threatened by bullies, which causes the defender to reassess whether to continue helping.

Defenders take into consideration the severity of the issue and their relationship with the bullies in determining their intervening strategy (phase two). If the incident is not serious and the bully is the defender’s friend, the defender may choose to use coping skills with the bully. If an incident is considered serious, the student is likely to choose to comfort the victim or inform teachers.

The defender may be interrogated and intimidated by bullies after an intervention (phase three), and this leads the defender to engage in a reassessment (phase four). The defender may continue to intervene due to a sense of responsibility and friendship with a victim. Alternatively, the defender may provide private assistance or become an outsider in the situation due to fear for his or her personal safety or fear of social exclusion.

This model presents variations in the defender role depending on the bullying situation. The same victim bullied under different situations may differentially affect students’ willingness to intervene. If the victim is innocent, the defender may want to help, but if the victim is blamed for a situation, a defender is less likely to come forward to help.

I think sometimes I would intervene, but not always. Sometimes it is, in fact, the bullies’ fault and not the victim’s fault. In this case, I would help him [the victim]. But if it’s the fault of the victim, I think he deserves it, and if he pisses off others and does not think it is his fault, I would not care about him. (P21D)

Discussion

In this study, we aimed to explore factors that influence students’ willingness to intervene in school bullying and to further examine the process underlying defending behaviors. The results showed that different determinants in the personal assessment phase might affect bystanders’ willingness to intervene in a bullying situation, including perception of high severity of the case, high sense of personal responsibility, high empathy, and friendship with a victim. These findings are consistent with prior studies (Choi & Cho, 2013; Craig et al., 2007; Pozzoli & Gini, 2013; Pronk et al., 2013). Similar findings can be observed in Sokol, Bussey, and Rapee’s (2015) study; they found that passive victims evoked more sadness and empathy of bystanders, and that bystanders were more likely to report bullying incidents or express intentions to assist sad victims compared to confident victims.

In contrast, a perception that the bullying is of low severity, a belief that it is irrelevant to oneself, dislike of a victim, fear of retaliation or ostracism, regarding the bullying as the victim’s fault, a lack of friendship with the victim, and low self-efficacy are factors that can lead to students’ becoming bystanders. This finding provides supporting evidence for prior research findings (Cappadocia et al., 2012; Lodge & Frydenberg, 2005; Rigby & Johnson, 2005; Sokol, Bussey, & Rapee, 2015).

In addition, this study found that students were likely to help a victim if they placed particular emphasis on a classmate relationship with a victim, or if they wished to maintain a good classroom climate. If a victim was not a friend, some students were still likely to help the victim because of a classmate relationship. We believe that students mentioned these factors regarding classmate relationships and maintenance of the classroom climate because of the impact of the collectivist culture in which this study was conducted. In Taiwan, secondary school students are assigned to given classes by school administrators. Students study together and interact all day long in a same classroom. Educators and students tend to value group cohesion and classmate relationships in a given class. This result suggests that students’ perspectives on determinants of defending behaviors may exhibit cultural differences.

The results of this study showed that perceived severity was one of the primary determinants of students’ willingness to intervene in bullying. Approximately 70% of the students mentioned they might intervene in bullying when it became too serious. Prior studies have shown that perceived severity of bullying affects teacher intervention (Mishna, Scarcello, Pepler, & Wiener, 2005). This study takes the perspective of students in providing supporting evidence for the association between students’ perception of bullying severity and their willingness to intervene. This study also showed that perceived severity affected students’ selection of defending strategies. For example, students were more likely to inform teachers when they perceived an incident as very serious. This finding suggests that teachers should enhance their skills to manage serious bullying incidents, for example, by showing more interpersonal behaviors with high levels of control and closeness (van der Zanden, Denessen, & Scholte, 2015). In addition, prior studies have indicated that teachers’ intervention strategies are related to their perception of the severity of bullying incidents (Ellis & Shute, 2007). This study further supported that students’ perception of the severity of bullying also affected their selection of defending strategies.

Limitations and future directions

First, some determinants of defending behaviors mentioned in this study, such as the maintenance of classroom climate, may not appear in Western schools. Future studies should further explore whether some determinants of defending behaviors can be found across cultures, while others are only found in certain cultures. Second, we provide the number of students who mentioned certain concepts in the Results section. These numerical counts should not be used to evaluate the impact of each determinant on defending behaviors. Future studies should try to evaluate the weight of different determinants and to identify which determinants have greater impact on defending behaviors. Third, the defending process proposed in this study is a result of an exploratory qualitative study conducted in Taiwanese secondary school students. Further investigations of the interpretation of this model in different educational settings and cultures are needed.

Practical implications

The results of this study have several implications. First, students assess different factors, including personal, interpersonal, and other factors, to determine whether to intervene in bullying incidents. Bystander intervention programs can emphasize students’ personal responsibility, improvement of interpersonal relationships, and enhancement of self-efficacy through bullying intervention to raise bystanders’ willingness to defend a victim. Second, if a bullying incident is perceived as not serious, students are likely not to want to intervene. As most students perceive verbal bullying as less serious than physical bullying (Chen, Liu, & Cheng, 2012), such behavior is easily neglected or tolerated by students. For greater bullying prevention, students’ awareness of bullying severity should be enhanced so that bullying and the injuries that may result from it are not overlooked.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors received the financial support by National Science Council, Taiwan. No. NSC 101-2410-H-110-082-MY2

Author Biographies

Li-Ming Chen, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Center for Teacher Education, National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), Taiwan. He specializes in school bullying research and the grounded theory approach. His research interests cover school bullying, psychology of wisdom, and Rasch measurement techniques. He is currently Director of the Division of Student Exchange at NSYSU and the Secretary General of Taiwan Education Research Association.

Lennon Y. C. Chang, PhD, is a Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. He is interested in researching crime and governance of cyberspace – cybercrime, cyber terrorism, and cyber warfare. He is particularly interested in the regulation and governance of cyberspace in the Asia-Pacific region. His book Cybercrime in the Greater China Region: Regulatory Responses and Crime Prevention (Edward Elgar, 2012) is about the nature and range of responses to cybercrime between China and Taiwan. He is also undertaking research into cybercrime and cyber-deviance among Hong Kong juveniles.

Ying-Yao Cheng, PhD, is Professor at the Institute of Education, National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), Taiwan. He was previously the Director of the Education Bureau of Kaohsiung City Government, Dean of Students’ Affairs, Dean of College of Social Sciences, Director of the Institute of Education, Director of the Center for Teacher Education, and Administrative Vice President of National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU). He has long directed and executed research projects funded by the National Science Council and the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. His research focus includes development of creative thinking for teachers, critical thinking, students’ and teachers’ thinking styles, creative teaching materials for science education, school bullying, experimental teaching, and development and revision of measurement scales. He has so far published more than 40 journal articles and 70 conference papers.

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