Bullying in Greek primary and secondary schools

ABSTRACT The problem of school bullying among Greek primary and secondary school children was investigated by using a translated version of the Olweus Questionnaire with a total of 1,758 students, mainly aged 10–14, from 20 schools in the greater Thessaloniki area. Overall, 8.2 percent of all students were victims, 5.8 percent were bullies and 1.1 percent were bully/victims. In line with earlier findings, more boys were identified as bullies, whereas no sex differences emerged for rates of victimization. Separate results for primary school pupils revealed that boys and girls were equally self-identified as bullies. Younger students were more at risk of being bullied. The most common type of bullying was ‘general name-calling’. Significant sex differences in types of victimization emerged only for physical bullying, which was more common in boys, and for spreading malicious rumours, which was more common in girls. Survey results were similar to those of other countries with regard to class and gender of the bully and location of bullying. Surprisingly, almost 25 percent of victims reported being victimized in the gym class. KEY WORDS: age differences; bullying; gender differences; prevalence; victimization Bullying has attracted worldwide research interest since the pioneer-ing work of Olweus (1978, 1993) in the Scandinavian countries, mainly due to its negative effects on the children involved (Farrington, 1993; Hawker and Boulton, 2000; Slee, 1995). Recognized as a subset of aggressive behaviour, bullying is further characterized by repetition and an inability on behalf of the victim to defend him or herself (Farrington, 1993). It can be verbal (name calling), physical (hitting, kicking) or relational (deliberate exclusion from a group, spreading of malicious rumours). The prevalence of school bullying has been investigated in many countries and victimization rates range from 5 percent to 41.6 percen