Comparative analysis of differential socioemotional variables among those involved in bullying. Study of a bully-victim case.

Abstract

The assessment of bullying must include both actors, the doer of the acts of aggression or bully, and the recipient of such acts, or victim, with all personal, social and environmental elements of the subjects involved being taken into account, but also, we must include socioemotional aspects of the group of peers (Sutton and Smith, 1999). This paper is focused on the assessment of aspects regarding the perception of these situations by members of school groups, especially by the participants involved, as well as on the analysis of the socioemotional differences between these behaviours, establishing comparisons between those who are not involved and each of the subgroups affected: bully, victim and bully-victim, through the Bull-S test (Cerezo, 2000). The sample consists of five Primary Education classroom groups, aged between 7 and 13 years; 52.3% of the subjects are boys and 47.7% girls.

The results revealed that 34.6% of students were directly involved in bullying situations (43% of the boys and 25.5% of the girls), as well as significant differences between non-involved students, bullies, victims and bully-victim (B-V) – those who participate as bullies and also as victims – in social evaluation in the classroom group, the B-Vs being the worst regarded of the entire student body. In general, they stand out for being the most rejected and disliked, followed by victim students. In the perception of social evaluation, only the B-Vs are aware of the social rejection they provoke, which does not occur among victims or bullies. As regards the perception of dangerousness and security in the Centre, there are no differences in general, and the whole sample regards these situations as not very dangerous. This way of perceiving the maltreatment problem along with the helplessness of the bullied subjects may be interpreted as elements conducive to bullying within a school context. The paper includes an approach to the assessment and intervention in a B-V case.