[2] This led to an explosion of research attempting to assess bully-victim relationships and related players, what leads victims to experience negative outcomes and how widespread this problem was.
Studies of peer victimization have also been conducted in the context of research investigating childhood relationships in general and how they are associated with school adjustment and achievement.
With the development of technology and the widespread access it gives to children and teenagers, peer victimization has become more prevalent through the Internet and cell phones than in years past.
Researchers started by determining the prevalence of peer victimization believing this would allow for the comparison of the problem over time, populations and after interventions.
[9] Unfortunately, results show that in many contexts, the percentage of children that are victimized have fallen in a range between 5-90%[11][12] Bullying strand research also focuses on the type of families that those who are victimized come from and what types of parenting styles they experienced[2] Finally, a limited number of studies today focus on impacts of being bullied in a school setting and how it relates to achievement, truancy, and drop-out.
Experimenters have also been interested in how early victimization effects individuals over time, focusing on school-related outcomes.
People who hold incremental theories of personality endeavor towards mastery-oriented goals, focusing on learning and cultivating competence since as they believe their attributes are malleable.
When thinking about self-evaluation, implicit theories should affect the degree to which children base their self appraisals on peer judgements, determining whether negative social interactions undermine their well-being.
[17] Hawker and Boulton (2001) have used the rank theory of depression to explain the relationship between forms of victimization and types of maladjustment.
Another study by Sinclair (2011) examined the relationship between physical and relational peer victimization with negative and positive self-cognitions as well.
The study found that girls benefited significantly from having stronger, reliable peer friendships in coping with victimization, while boys did not.
Research seems to show that there is drastic difference in the way both genders (at least in children) respond to victimization from peers.
The magnitude of the effect on their behavior and mental health is heavily correlated with the situation of the victimization and the child's social environment at the time.
Indeed, they found that peer victimization in middle childhood was associated with behavioral maladjustment on both a concurrent and prospective basis.
Seals & Young (2003) investigated relationships between bullying and victimization with gender, grade level, ethnicity, self-esteem, and depression.
[28] An interest in aspects of bullying sprouted in the 1990s due to media coverage of student suicides, peer beatings, and school shootings.
After the tragedy, details emerged showing that Harris and Klebold had been bullied for years by classmates, with little to no intervention by school officials.
Specifically, the news has recently highlighted many cases of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) students who have committed suicide in response to peer victimization.
One such incident is the case of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, a Rutgers University student who was secretly videotaped by his roommate, Dharun Ravi, having sexual intercourse with another man.
[29] Over half of LGB participants were verbally abused when they were in high school, and 11% were physically assaulted in a study by D’Augelli et al. (2002).
Negative outcomes such as mental health problems and poor school performance have been associated with high incidence of victimization of LGB students.
A study by Goodenow et al. (2006) was one of the first to examine which school-related factors were associated with lower rates of victimization and suicidality in this population.
Lower levels of victimization and suicidality of LGB students was also associated with large school size and urban locale.
Youth from communities with higher as opposed to lower proportions of adults with college degrees also reported less victimization.
[34] They collected baseline data for the frequency of bullying as well as victim and bystander responses and then implemented the program across these school for approximately 8–12 weeks.