Dan A. Olweus

University of Bergen | UiB · Department of Health Promotion and Development

Several meta-analyses have demonstrated that bullying prevention programs are successful in reducing bullying. However, scant research addresses if and how such anti-bullying efforts affect long-term internalizing health problems and even less on later use of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. This study explores how the school-based Olweus Bullyin...

The effectiveness of bullying prevention programs has led to expectations that these programs could have effects beyond their primary goals. By reducing the number of victims and perpetrators and the harm experienced by those affected, programs may have longer-term effects on individual school performance and prevent crime. In this paper, we use No...

After sketching how my own interest and research into bullying problems began, I address a number of potentially controversial issues related to the definition and measurement of such problems. The importance of maintaining the distinctions between bullying victimization and general victimization and between bullying perpetration and general aggres...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) in reducing specific forms of bullying—verbal bullying, physical bullying, and indirect/relational bullying, as well as cyberbullying and bullying using words or gestures with a sexual meaning. This large-scale longitudinal study, which invo...

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to evaluate a large-scale implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program with children and youth in grades 3-11 in the U.S. Two major sets of analyses are presented, one following 210 schools over two years (Study 1; n = 70,998 at baseline) and the other following a subsample of 95 schools...

Research on cyberbullying is plagued by inconsistent findings and exaggerated claims about prevalence, development over time, and effects. To build a useful and coherent body of knowledge, it essential to achieve some degree of consensus on the definition of the phenomenon as a scientific concept and that efforts to measure cyberbullying are made i...

Problem med utvalg av skoler med høye mobbetall

In the present article, we used IRT (graded response) modeling as a useful technology for a detailed and refined study of the psychometric properties of the various items of the Olweus Bullying scale and the scale itself. The sample consisted of a very large number of Norwegian 4th-10th grade students (n = 48 926). The IRT analyses revealed that th...

Randomized Controlled Trials are often considered the “gold standard” for evaluation of the efficacy or effectiveness of intervention programs, also when applied to complex social organizations. As has been pointed out in the research literature (Chatterji, 2007; Wolff, 2000), however, the key assumptions underlying RCTs, originally developed for a...

A large body of research is presented which shows that the experience of being bullied by peers, as a pure victim or a bully-victim, is strongly and consistently associated with a number of serious mental health problems clearly implying personal distress and the opposite of emotional well-being. The associations are very robust, being documented i...

On a daily basis over 25% of school children are victims of bullying. It is a factor in school absenteeism, diminished learning capacity in school, childhood depression, teen suicides, school-based violence, and teenage drug and alcohol use. Bullying is a significant public health issue that has been associated with violence. Each time a child bull...

After sketching how my own interest and research into bullying problems began, I address a number of potentially controversial issues related to the definition and measurement of such problems. The importance of maintaining the distinctions between bullying victimization and general victimization and between bullying perpetration and general aggres...

In this article, I discuss many of the points raised in the thoughtful comments by Hinduja and Patchin (2012, this issue), Menesini (2012, this issue), and Smith (2012, this issue) on my original article “Cyberbullying: An overrated phenomenon” (Olweus, 2012, this issue). After having seriously considered the arguments of my commentators, I still t...

The paper argues that several claims about cyberbullying made in the media and elsewhere are greatly exaggerated and have little empirical scientific support. Contradicting these claims, it turns out that cyberbullying, when studied in proper context, is a low-prevalence phenomenon, which has not increased over time and has not created many “new” v...

To examine whether being a bully at school predicts later criminality. Longitudinal, prospective associations are reported between bullying and later criminality over the 8-year period from age 16 to 24. Bullying in early adolescence strongly predicted later criminality. The former school bullies were heavily overrepresented in the crime registers....

For two years, Johnny, a quiet 13-year-old, was a human plaything for some of his classmates. The teenagers badgered Johnny for money, forced him to swallow weeds and drink milk mixed with detergent, beat him up in the rest room and tied a string around his neck, leading him around as a "pet". When Johnny's torturers were interrogated about the bul...

The nature and extent of bullying among school children is discussed, and recent attention to the phenomenon by researchers, the media, and policy makers is noted. The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) is a comprehensive, school-wide program that was designed to reduce bullying and achieve better peer relations among students in elementary,...

This study focuses on how specific parent–child relationship variables may function as mediators of the association between two postdivorce family structures and antisocial behavior and substance use. Five parent–child relationship variables (mother/father–child conflict, parental monitoring, and mother/father–child closeness) were tested as potent...

„Zwei Jahre lang war Johnny, ein stiller 13-jähriger Junge, für einige seiner Klassenkameraden ein lebendi- ges Spielzeug. Die Teenager nahmen Johnny Geld ab, zwangen ihn, Unkraut zu essen und Milch zu trinken, die mit Putzmitteln gemischt war. Sie schlugen ihn in den Toilettenräumen zusammen und banden ihm ein Seil um den Hals, um ihn als „Haustie...

Using a theoretically guided contrast analysis approach (see Furr & Rosenthal, 2003; Rosnow & Rosenthal, 2002) and data from a relatively large community sample (2550 students in grades 7-9), different sets of hypotheses dealing with adolescents' adjustment in four post-divorce family structures were tested. Most of the hypotheses matched with the...

The reported prevalence of bully-victims and aggressive/provocative victims varies quite considerably in previous research, and only a few studies have reported prevalence rates across grades. There is also a lack of detailed analyses of the extent to which victims are also bullies, and bullies are also victims. To study the prevalence of male and...

The research reported in this chapter was supported by Grants from the William T. Grant Foundation, the Norwegian Research Council for Social Research (NAVF), the Swedish Delegation for Social Research (DSF), and in earlier phases, from the Norwegian Ministry of Education, which is gratefully acknowledged.

A fairly common view holds that children's risks of negative outcomes associated with family dissolution are generally small or even nonexistent in Scandinavia, and clearly smaller than what is usually found in the United States. This view was empirically examined in a recent large-scale study of 4,127 12-15-year-old children in Norway, of whom 623...

Gang membership is repeatedly reported to be one of the strongest predictors of antisocial behaviour. However, whether this association primarily reflects a selection effect or whether it primarily is related to a facilitation of antisocial behaviour within the gang has scarcely been an object of empirical study. This paper examines how antisocial...

The article presents the logic and other characteristics of an “extended selection cohorts” quasi-experimental design. Possible threats to the validity of conclusions based on this kind of design are discussed. It is concluded that chances are good that conclusions about the effects or non-effects of school-based intervention programs will be rough...

A limited number of mostly cross-sectional studies have examined the possible effects of power sports on aggressive and antisocial involvement in children and youth. The majority of these studies have serious methodological limitations, and results are partly contradictory. Longitudinal studies with representative, reasonably large samples and adeq...

The need for evidence-based intervention programmes As bully/victim problems have gradually been placed on the official school agenda in many countries, a number of suggestions about their handling and prevention have been proposed. Some of these suggestions and approaches seem ill-conceived or maybe even counter-productive, such as an excessive fo...

Posted October 1, 2003. Little is known about factors that predict or affect differences in teachers' and schools' implementation of school-based intervention or prevention programs. The main purpose of the present project was to study this important issue in a sample of 37 schools and 89 teachers who provided data at 2 points in time, separated by...

Purpose. The aim of this study was to examine whether a scale including frequency scores of antisocial behaviour is a more sensitive and better measure of antisocial involvement than a variety scale.Methods. Data from a representative sample of 1,292 Norwegian students aged 13 and 14 years was used to compare a 17-item variety scale with two versio...

The key aim of the present research was to study the “functionality” of two global variables in the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire and to examine the appropriateness of different cutoff points of these variables for prevalence estimation. Several empirical and conceptual analyses strongly attested to the functionality of the two selected variabl...

Background/AimsThis article describes the development of a new self-report instrument, the Bergen Questionnaire on Antisocial Behaviour, for the measurement of antisocial behaviour in preadolescence and early adolescence, and presents a number of substantive results derived from a multiple-cohort, longitudinal study involving 2430 Norwegian student...

The main goals of the study were to examine age trends and sex differences in empathic responsiveness, particularly empathic concern for others in distress. It was based on four cohorts of Norwegian students aged 13 to 16, comprising a total of 1193 boys and 1093 girls. The key measurement instrument was a partly new questionnaire on empathic respo...

Teachers’ emphases on six general educational goals were analysed in two different samples separated by two years. A majority of the teachers (about 80%) reported having a high emphasis on both school achievement and more social or developmental goals. Considerably less emphasis was placed on social equalization and the goal of making the school ‘a...

Using a set of data derived from 42 schools at two points in time and a widely accepted definition of organizational climate, a number of methodological and substantive issues relating to school climate were explored. Via principal component analysis, four dimensions of school climate were identified. In approaching the key issue, under what condit...

Bully/victim problems among school children are a matter of considerable concern in Scandinavia and, more recently, in a number of other countries as well. Estimates based on the author’s large-scale surveys indicate that some 9% of the students in grades 1 through 9 are fairly regular victims of bullying and that 6–7% engage in bullying others wit...

Bully/victim problems among school children are a considerable concern in Scandinavia and, more recently, in a number of other countries as well. Estimates based on the author's large-scale surveys indicate that 9% of the students in Grades 1 through 9 are fairly regular victims of bullying and that 6–7% engage in bullying others with some regulari...

give a brief definition of . . . bullying or victimization / report some prevalence data and draw a sketchy portrait of typical victims and bullies as a general background report on a study that examines the possible long-term consequences of regular bullying or victimization by peers in school [drawing from a follow-up study of men at age 23, so...

Bullying among schoolchildren is certainly a very old and well-known phenomenon. Though many are acquainted with the problem, it was not until fairly recently-in the early 1970s-that the phenomenon was made the object of more systematic research (Olweus, 1973; Olweus, 1978). For a number of years, these efforts were largely confined to Scandinavia....

explores the extent to which patterns of peer bullying and victimization [in school] persist from childhood into young adulthood and explores the consequences for the bully and victim / using data from his massive Norwegian study [involving 2 S groups: 6th graders with 3 and 7 yr followup, and 4th–7th graders at 1 and 2 yr followups], Olweus argues...

Bullying among schoolchildren is certainly a very old phenomenon. The fact that some children are frequently and systematically harassed and attacked by other children has been described in literary works, and many adults have personal experience of it from their own school days. Though many are acquainted with the bully/victim problem, it was not...

A cohort longitudinal design with four adjacent cohorts of students (n = 1689) followed over two years was used to study key issues identified in the research literature on the development of self-evaluations in early adolescence. There was no clear relationship between age/grade and self-evaluations. We found no support for a "stressful periods" h...

This chapter reviews some basic research findings on bully/victim problems among school children. This mainly confines the results of the two recent large-scale studies commissioned by the Ministry of Education. A number of findings concerning developmental antecedents of bullying problems, characteristics of typical bullies and victims, and the ve...

This volume focuses on methods of data treatment, emphasising the importance of careful matching of methodology to the substantive problem under consideration. It deals particularly with concepts of stability and change which are central to personality and developmental research. Contributions to this volume explore the methodology and scope of lif...

In epidemiology, the concepts of prevalence and incidence are central (Bradford Hill, 1977; Last, 1983; Morris, 1975). Basically, prevalence (or prevalence rate) refers to the number of diseases or spells of disease existing at a particular point in time or within a specified time period related to the total number of persons exposed to risk (a pop...

Empirical analyses conducted within a causal-analytic framework (path analysis) on a sample of normal adolescent human males suggested that circulating levels of testosterone in the blood had a direct causal influence on provoked aggressive behavior (self-reports): A high level of testosterone led to an increased readiness to respond vigorously and...

A special problem in the study of self-esteem is the use of quite different instruments for subjects at different age levels. In the present paper the primary goal was to construct a scale that could be used to assess global self-evaluations in children as well as in adolescents and adults. The scale presented (GSE) based mainly on Rosenberg's Self...

A sample of Chinese children in Grade 4 (155 boys and 135 girls with an average age of 10.3 years) completed Olweu' Aggression Inventory, an instrument developed for the assessment of aggressive and aggression controlling behavior tendencies in a Western culture. Results indicated that the questionnaire gave quite meaningful information when used w...

The present paper gives an overview of research on stability (continuity or longitudinal consistency) in two broad forms of social incompetence or maladjustment and related behavior patterns. One refers to aggressive, disruptive, acting-out behavior, the other to withdrawn, anxious, and inhibited reaction patterns. Different authors have used somew...

Recent studies of the relationship between plasma testosterone levels and aggressive and antisocial behavior in the human male have yielded somewhat conflicting results. Positive associations have been found between testosterone levels and some of the aggressive and antisocial/criminal dimensions studied (Doering, Brodie, Kraemer, Moos, Becker, and...

A considerable body of evidence is presented showing a substantial degree of longitudinal as well as cross-situational consistency in the motive area of aggression. These data demonstrate that the influential conclusions with regard to consistency drawn by Mischel in his evaluative review (1968, 1969) are not supported by existing empirical evidenc...

On the basis of previous knowledge and theoretical considerations, a causal model was formulated and tested by path analysis on 2 representative samples of Swedish boys––76 13-yr-olds and 51 16-yr-olds. Ss' habitual aggression levels were assessed through peer ratings. Data on early rearing conditions and temperamental characteristics were obtained...

Fifty-eight normal adolescent Swedish boys, aged 16, provided two sets of blood samples for plasma testosterone assays as well as data on a number of personality inventories and rating scales assessing aggression, inpulsiveness, lack of frustration tolerance, extraversion, and anxiety. Physical variables such as pubertal stage, height, weight, ches...

Forty male delinquent recidivists had a slightly higher mean plasma testosterone (T) level than a group of normal adolescents of the same age and pubertal stages. Delinquents who had committed armed robbery tended to have higher mean T levels than less violent offenders. Age at onset of delinquency showed no correlation with T levels. On self-repor...

Reviews 16 studies on the stability of aggressive behavior and reaction patterns. There is great variation among the studies in sample composition, definition of variables, method of data collection, and the ages and intervals studied. Generally, the size of a (disattenuated) stability coefficient tends to decrease linearly as the interval between...

2 longitudinal studies covering a 1-year and a 3-year interval, respectively were conducted on 2 samples of boys aged 13 years (N1=85, N2=201). On the basis of an adaptation of multimethod-multivariable analysis and other analyses it was found that information contained in the 4 rating dimensions under study to an overwhelming degree reflected char...

Presents data from 5 empirical studies involving approximately 1,000 12–16 yr old boys. The incidence of bullies and whipping boys among these groups was found to be high. Aspects considered include facets of the aggressive personality and social-psychological mechanisms that cause boys to take part in the oppression. Factors that determine predisp...