Michael J Boulton

• Professor (Full) at University of Chester

Cross-age tutoring and co-operative group work have been shown to help student tutors and tutees acquire academic and non-academic skills and knowledge. A novel intervention (Cross-Age Teaching Zone, CATZ) that combined them was tested for its effects on student tutors’ thinking skills associated with (i) dealing pro-socially with peer provocations...

Given the crucial role of bystanders in combating bullying in schools, there is a need to understand the reasons why children may or may not intervene on behalf of a victimised peer. The aim of the present study was to explore the association between children’s expectations of general peer reactions versus the reactions of their friends on three su...

Bullying is a considerable problem among school students, and school-wide positive behaviour support interventions are regarded as helpful in addressing it. One approach is the CATZ Cross-age Teaching Zone anti-bullying intervention. The present study assessed the social validity of the CATZ anti-bullying intervention among a sample of 9–15-year-ol...

Background Bullying victimization is a risk factor for social anxiety and disrupted classroom concentration among young people. Self‐esteem has been implicated as a protective factor, but extant literature is sparse. Aims Aim of present study was to test if a new measure of authentic self‐esteem can buffer the negative effects of bullying victimiz...

Background: A large theoretical and empirical literature indicates that parenting practices affect young people’s well-being and resilience, but there is much still to learn about psychological mechanisms, especially beyond infancy/early childhood. A recent model of authentic self-esteem argues that it arises out of experiences of challenge situati...

In tackling the widespread problem of bullying victimisation, researchers have acknowledged the value of focusing on changing bullying-related beliefs and using peer-based interventions. In three studies (N = 419, 237 intervention and 182 controls), we tested the effectiveness of the CATZ cross-age teaching programme by inviting small groups of 11-...

The aim of this study was to compare prisoners (n = 772), community adults (n = 1201), university students (n = 2080), and adolescents (n = 472) on four sets of psychopathic traits (affective responsiveness, cognitive responsiveness, interpersonal manipulation, and egocentricity), using a psychopathy measure which does not index criminal/antisocial...

Children are spending increasing amounts of time online prompt-ing practitioners and parents to raise concerns about their onlinesafety. However, the impact of children’s subjective versus objec-tive knowledge on their perceived online safety and attitudestowards e-safety education remain unclear. Questionnaires wereused to assess children’s (N = 3...

Children are spending increasing amounts of time online prompting practitioners and parents to raise concerns about their online safety. However, the impact of children’s subjective versus objective knowledge on their perceived online safety and attitudes towards e-safety education remain unclear. Questionnaires were used to assess children’s (N =...

Young people are frequently exposed to bullying events in the offline and online domain. Witnesses to these incidents act as bystanders and play a pivotal role in reducing or encouraging bullying behaviour. The present study examined 868 (47.2% female) 11-13-year-old early adolescent pupils’ bystander responses across a series of hypothetical vigne...

This study investigated children's (N = 329) perceived online safety, subjective and objective knowledge of online safety/dangers, and attitudes to e-safety education. Participants completed a questionnaire that measured these constructs, and responses were shown to have satisfactory internal and test-retest reliability. While participants on the w...

Background: Traditional and cyberbullying has been a concern amongst educators. Bystanders contribute a significant role between the bullying dyad, providing an active or passive influence on the (cyber) bullying outcome. The current study aimed to explore bystander behaviour according to the type of bullying (traditional vs cyber), bullying severi...

The current study aimed to explore bystander behaviour according to the type of bullying (traditional vs cyber), bullying severity (mild, moderate & severe) and bystander empathy. Gender was also explored. A total of 868 adolescent pupils’ (males: N = 458, females: N = 410) across two year groups (year 7: N = 405, year 8: N = 463) participated in t...

Bullying is common among school students, and some victims hold self-blaming attributions, exhibit low self-esteem, anddo not seek social support. A wait-list control pre-/post-test experimental design, with random allocation, was used to assess the effects of a novel cross-age teaching of social issues (CATS) intervention on the latter 3 variables...

The current study aimed to explore bystander behaviour according to the type of bullying (traditional vs cyber), bullying severity (mild, moderate & severe) and bystander empathy. Gender was also explored. A total of 868 adolescent pupils’ (males: N = 458, females: N = 410) across two year groups (year 7: N = 405, year 8: N = 463) participated in t...

Many adolescents choose not to tell teachers when they have been bullied. Three studies with 12–16 year-old English adolescents addressed possible reasons. In study 1, students (N = 411, 208 females/203 males) identified reasons with no prompting. Three perceived negative outcomes were common; peers would disapprove, disclosers would feel weak/unde...

Children are heavy users of the Internet and prior studies have shown that many of them lack a good understanding of the risks of doing so and how to avoid them. This study examined if the cross-age teaching zone (CATZ) intervention could help children acquire important knowledge of online risks and safety. It allowed older students to act as CATZ...

Despite the promise of being effective in tacking bullying and conduct disorder, cognitive-behavioral (C-B) interventions are underused by teachers. Little detailed information exists as to why this is the case. The current study with junior school teachers in the U.K. (N=249) confirmed this low reported usage and showed that while teachers tended...

The studies refered to have all been done at just one or trro schools, and there may be considerable variations between cht1 dren of different cultural and social class backgrounds. Further research is needed in these areas. So far as we can tell at the moment, r…t is primarily a friendly and playful aclivty, uhich does not usually inoolve any inte...

Bullying affects a substantial proportion of school pupils, and peer counselling services have been established to help tackle this problem. The present study aimed to further the understanding of why affected pupils do or do not choose to utilise this form of social support. Pupils (N = 99, aged 12–16 years) from the UK were asked about their know...

Five hundred five children (267 female) enrolled in school years 5 and 6 in the UK (M = 9 years and 9 months) completed measures of trust beliefs in peers, best friendships, ascriptions of trustworthiness, and trustworthiness toward peers. Children's social disengagement, peer preference, and peer victimization were assessed by sociometric ratings....

Prior studies indicate that teachers differ in how they respond to different kinds of traditional bullying, and that their beliefs predict their intervention intentions. The current study provided the first extension of this work into the realm of cyber bullying. Preservice teachers in the United Kingdom (N = 222) were presented with vignettes desc...

Hostile attribution bias (HAB) has been found to characterize aggressive children. Watching prosocial media has been shown to have positive effects on children, and the general learning model has been used to account for these observations. This study tested the hypotheses derived from this theory that exposure to playful fighting would lead to a r...

Research has shown that victims of bullying fare less well on measures of peer affiliation than nonvictims, but less is known about the direction of effects and the mechanisms involved. Three linked studies addressed the latter two issues using an experimental paradigm with hypothetical vignettes (N=360). In Experiment 1, among both boys and girls...

Being bullied is associated with a psycho-social maladjustment during childhood. One hitherto largely overlooked correlate is disrupted classroom concentration. Using data collected from 364 9–11-year-old children attending seven junior schools in the UK, we tested a model in which children’s perceived safety in two contexts (classroom and playgrou...

Abstract Prior studies have shown that bullying victimization is common during childhood and may have negative effects over the short term. Evidence is also emerging that childhood bullying victimization in the form of teasing may precipitate social anxiety in adulthood. The present study extended the field by testing for associations between adult...

Prior studies have established that children’s peer relationships and school adjustment are associated. The main aims of the current study were to test if four measures of peer relationships (Peer Acceptance, Presence/Absence of Best Friend, Number of Friends, and Perceived Peer Support) could predict School Liking concurrently and longitudinally a...

Despite possible negative effects, many children do not tell their teachers when they have been bullied. This study examined junior school pupils’ (N = 294) reports of instrumental, emotional and validation social support received after disclosing being bullied to teachers, and associations with intentions to disclose in the future. Overall, partic...

Children's abilities to distinguish between playful and aggressive fighting, and the cues they use to do so, were examined as a function of age (8 versus 11 years), sex and observed participation in play fighting (high versus low) and aggressive fighting. Most 8- and 11-year-olds, but significantly more of the latter, agreed with the standard view...

On the basis of peer nominations, 8–10 year-old boys (N=71) were classified as bullies, victims or not involved in this type of problem. These children were then observed in the playground in order to investigate what activities the three groups typically engaged in and who they interacted with. The three groups did not differ significantly in term...

Study 1 provided data about lunchtime supervisors' (N=72) attitudes towards playful fighting, since this group had not figured in previous research. Participants expressed generally positive attitudes, although those individuals with the longest service tended to hold the least favourable views. It was argued that the opinions of this section of sc...

Despite three decades of research and development of anti-bullying intervention, this form of systematic aggression continues to be common in schools. The present study investigated if a contributing factor might be that some pupils are unreceptive to teachers’ anti-bullying lessons. It invited 8–11 -year-old junior school pupils (N = 227) to indic...

The general aim of this study was to examine the concurrent and longitudinal (6 month) associations between 8- to 9-year-old children's (N=75) social activities and interactions during recess and their self-perceptions, and to test for gender differences in those associations. The underlying rationale was that recess provides an important, and hith...

Four studies examined the relation between trust and loneliness. Studies 1, 2, and 3 showed that trust beliefs negatively predicted changes in loneliness during early childhood (5-7 years), middle childhood (9-11 years), and young adulthood (18-21 years). Structural equation modeling yielded support for the hypothesis that the relation between trus...

This study tested transactional models to explain the short-term longitudinal links between self-perceptions and involvement in bullying and victimization among 115 9- to 10-year-old children. Self-perceptions were measured with Harter's Self-Perception Profile for Children (six sub-scales) and bullying/victimization by means of peer nominations. D...

This study examined three main issues among 364 primary school children: (1) self‐reported levels of perceived safety in classroom and playground, and relationship with teacher, (2) associations between perceived safety in the two contexts and peer reported levels of being bullied, and (3) if relationship with teacher moderated the associations bet...

Prior studies outside of the UK have shown that peer victimization is negatively associated with school adjustment. To examine concurrent and short-term longitudinal associations between peer victimization (physical, malicious teasing, deliberate social exclusion, and malicious gossiping) and two measures of school adjustment (school liking and rec...

Studies have shown that peer victimization is associated with psychological maladjustment, and have implicated such maladjustment in disrupted ability to concentrate. To investigate the levels of, and associations between, physical, verbal, and social exclusion victimization, fear of future victimization, and disrupted classroom concentration. Part...

It is well known that many pupils are bullied and suffer in a variety of ways as a result. This study looks at a largely overlooked outcome of bullying that may have direct consequences for academic success – disrupted concentration and attention to school work. Using pupil perceptions as the source of data, the two main aims were to quantify the p...

Pupils (n=99) from two secondary schools in the UK were interviewed to investigate their views and experiences of the peer counselling for bullying service set up in their school. They were asked about various things concerning (1) the characteristics of the service and service providers that they valued and (2) their reasons for not using the serv...

Users of pupil peer counselling for bullying services (n=50) rated their most helpful and their least helpful experiences of these services on five counselling process variables. The aim was to identify which, if any, of these variables differentiated between the two types of experience. Participants gave significantly higher ratings to ‘core condi...

Previous research, primarily in North America, has found that submissive and nonassertive behaviors are associated with peer victimization during childhood. A limitation of this work has been the failure to examine the relationships between such behaviors and different types of peer victimization. To overcome this weakness, we developed an inventor...

Asian and White middle school children were shown photographs of unknown Afro-Caribbean, Asian, and White individuals of approximately the same age as themselves, and asked which one wax most like them, which one they would prefer to be, which ones they would prefer to engage in various activities with, and finally, to allocate positive and negativ...

This study investigated the extent of bullying within and between British Asian and White girls and boys (n = 156) and some of the reasons why it occurs. There was no significant difference in the percentage of peers that nominated Asian and White children as either bullies or victims. Contrary to our prediction (derived from Tajfel's social judgem...

Previous research, primarily in North America, has found that individual factors (e.g., ‘internalising problems’) and social factors (e.g., friendship) interact to influence children's levels of peer victimisation. Some research has found that the identity of children's friends and friendship quality (as ‘protective factors’) are more important tha...

Individual interviews to solicit secondary school pupils’ (N=99) views of the peer counselling for bullying service in their own school, with a focus on the issue of social support for bullying-related problems, were conducted. Three themes were addressed: (1) willingness to use the service relative to other potential sources of support, (2) prefer...

Four hundred and thirty-four children enrolled in school years 5 and 6 in the United Kingdom were administered measures of trust beliefs in peers/best friends and psychosocial functioning (internalized maladjustment, self-perceived social acceptance, social preference, and social exclusion) across an 8-month period (mean age = 9 years-9 months at T...

A small number of prior studies have found that victims of school bullying tend to exhibit poor social skills. Few of these have examined this issue from multiple perspectives, and there has been a focus on a restricted range of social skills. To determine the extent to which self, peers, and teachers regard victims as having poorer social skills t...

Both behaviourist and social learning theory emphasise the importance of the consequences of a behaviour on its subsequent frequency of occurrence [e.g., Bandura, 1973, 1977; Skinner, 1953]. Despite this, very little is known about the types of consequences children receive when they aggress towards other children. The present study employed a wire...

Trustworthiness was examined in children and early adolescents from two countries. In Study 1,505 children in the fifth and sixth school years in the United Kingdom (mean age = 9 years 7 months) were tested across an 8-month period. In Study 2,350 sixth- through eighth-grade Canadian children and early adolescents (mean age = 12 years 11 months) we...

The present study examined sex differences in levels of physical, verbal, and indirect aggression amongst primary school children and their relationship with instrumental and expressive beliefs about aggression. Levels of aggression were examined using self ratings, peer ratings, and observations. The latter were collected during the mid-morning an...

Several programmes have been developed to help support victims of bullying, but few have been formally evaluated. On the basis of previous research and from a review of existing programmes, a Social Skills Training (SST) Programme was developed for victims of bullying, and the effectiveness of this intervention was evaluated. Twenty-eight children...

The article begins with an introduction to the problem of bullying in schools. Next, the relative strengths and weaknesses of some interventions for victims of bullying are discussed. In the second part of this article the reader is introduced to the Social Skills Training Programme that the writers developed. In particular, some of the practicalit...

Incl. tables, abstract and bibl. A self-report questionnaire about involvement in different types of bullying, what behaviours were regarded as bullying, and attitudes towards bullying, bullies and victims was completed by pupils in Year 7 (aged 11/12) through to Year 10 (aged 14/15) (n = 170). Overall, direct verbal assault was the most commonly r...

This paper describes a wireless microphone and micro-video camera used successfully by the present authors to study direct, indirect, and relational forms of aggression in schools. Two major advantages of this equipment are identified; first, it avoids some of the potential biases and difficulties associated with the other methods and, second, it a...

Cross-sectional quantitative designs are often used to investigate whether peer victimization is positively related to psychosocial maladjustment. This paper presents a meta-analytic review of cross-sectional studies, published between 1978 and 1997, of the association of peer victimization with psychosocial maladjustment. Mean effect sizes were ca...

Thirteen and fifteen year old Swedish and English secondary school pupils (n = 210) completed a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes towards, and conceptions of, bullying. The older participants also provided peer nominations of classmates thought to be bullies and victims. Significant differences between pupils from the two countries, betwe...

Previous research has suggested that females hold “expressive” social representations of aggression and males hold “instrumental” representations [e.g., Archer and Parker (1994): Aggressive Behavior 20:101–114; Campbell et al. (1992): Aggressive Behavior 18:95–108]. There is also evidence to suggest that an instrumental representation is associated...

This short-term longitudinal study examined the associations between peer reports of victimization and self-reported friendship among early adolescents. It was carried out to test the view that friendship provides protection against victimization (called the "friendship protection hypothesis"). Data were collected at two points within a school year...

Prior research with contrived play groups suggests that how children interact with one another can influence their social relationships, but few studies have been carried out to determine if this is the case in naturalistic settings. This study examined the concurrent and longitudinal links between four observational measures of 8- to 9-year-old ch...

Teachers play a crucial role in preventing and managing the widespread problem of bullying. Despite this, scant attention has been paid to their views on this type of problem. To determine (i) what behaviours teachers regard as bullying; (ii) teachers' attitudes towards bullying, bullies and victims; (iii) teachers' self-beliefs about their ability...

Considers which behaviours pupils and teachers regard as bullying. Finds that a substantial proportion of people fail to include non-physical acts - such as deliberately leaving somebody out of activities, laughing at someone’s misfortunes, and name-calling - in their definition of bullying. Reports on the frequency with which various behaviours we...

A sample of 192 8‐ to 10‐year‐old children were asked in individual interviews to say which classmates bully other pupils and who they selected as victims. They were provided with a well‐known definition of bullying devised by Olweus. Test‐retest reliability of bully nominations was shown to be good. The data were analysed to reveal the number of m...

Asian and White girls and boys (N=54) were observed on the playground during recess in order to examine their spontaneous peer preferences. All four groups exhibited a highly significant tendency to spend more time with own-race, own-gender peers than with any other type of peer. This result held for the three specific categories of behavior that w...

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of a single viewing of an anti-bullying video on secondary school pupils' views of, and involvement in, bullying. Participants (N = 170) were drawn from Years 7, 8, 9 and 10 (aged 11 to 14 years). Each participant completed a self-report questionnaire on two occasions separated by 2 weeks. Items focu...

Study 1 investigated liking and perceptions of classmates in 140 Asian and White boys and girls in three racially mixed schools. All four groups selected significantly more own-race than other-race classmates as Like Most choices. For Like Least choices, White girls and boys selected significantly more other-race classmates, Asian boys significantl...

Study 1 compared the extent to which 8- and 11-year-old girls and boys (N = 86) participated in specific types of rough-and-tumble play. It used an observational methodology. The data were used to test two prominent hypotheses about the evolutionary function of this general category of play behaviour that have been applied to children, especially b...

Study 1 compared the extent to which 8- and 11-year-old girls and boys (N = 86) participated in specific types of rough-and-tumble play. It used an observational methodology. The data were used to test two prominent hypotheses about the evolutionary function of this general category of play behaviour that have been applied to children, especially b...

On the basis of peer nominations, around 13% of this sample of 158 8- and 9-yr-old children could be defined as bullies, and 17% as victims. Boys were more likely to be nominated as bullies, but not as victims, than girls. Bully/victim status was, in the main, stable over 3 assessment periods in a school year and at the start of the next school yea...

In study 1, 8‐ and 11‐year‐old girls and boys ( N = 110) were interviewed individually and asked about why children in general, and themselves in particular, fight with fellow pupils in the playground. A substantial proportion of children (51 per cent) reported having had at least one aggressive fight during the previous year. The most common reaso...

The potential of an enhanced Cooperative Group Work (CGW) curriculum to increase liking of classmates, reduce sociometric rejection and prejudiced or stereotypically negative attitudes to other ethnic groups, was evaluated with 8and 9-year-olds in three urban middle schools. The main ethnic mix was of white and Asian pupils. In each school, one cla...

A sample of adults (N = 44) was shown an edited videotape of episodes of playful and aggressive fighting involving middle school pupils that had previously been shown to a sample of 8 and 11 year‐old children. Each participant was asked to say whether she/he thought each episode was playful or aggressive and then to give the reasons for her/his cho...

In study 1, the time when aggressive fighting involving 8 and 11 year-old children took place was examined by means of direct playground observations during lunch-time recess. There was a tendency, significant in the younger group, for there to have been more fights in the last quarter of recess. In study 2, the causes of fights, the sex of the par...

In Study 1, eight‐ and 11‐year‐old children's participation in playground activities was examined by means of direct observations. At both ages, the two most common categories of behaviour engaged in were sociable activities and rule games. The older children spent significantly more time in rule games and significantly less time alone than the you...

In Study 1, a questionnaire was designed to investigate secondary school pupils' participation in, and perceptions of, playful and aggressive fighting. It was administered to a sample of 13- to 16-year-old male and female pupils who attended 5 different schools. The majority of pupils (and significantly more males than females) reported that they d...

Anthropologists have long recognized that cultural evolution critically depends on the transmission and generation of information. However, between the selection pressures of evolution and the actual behaviour of individuals, scientists have suspected that other processes are at work. With the advent of what has come to be known as the cognitive re...

Bully/victim problems among six classes of 8-9 year-old and six classes of 11-12 year-old children, attending three middle schools, were investigated by means of Olweus's self-report Bullying Inventory. About 21 per cent of the children reported being bullied, and about 17 per cent reported bullying others, "sometimes" or more often. Reports of bot...

Criteria used to distinguish between play fighting and serious fighting were investigated for 8- and 11-yr-old children in Italy and England, using videotaped and questionnaire-based interviews. There was high consensus in describing most videotaped episodes as either playful or serious. Results were similar for Italian and English children (irresp...

Observations of 8- and 11-year-old middle school children's participation in rough- and-tumble play (r/t) were related to sociometric data for liking and strength in order to examine functional hypotheses. Partners in r/t liked each other more than chance predicted, and tended to be closely matched for strength. Neither initiators of r/t episodes n...

This study compared structural and contextual features of playful [rough-and tumble play (r/t)] and aggressive fighting based on direct playground observations of two classes of 8 and two classes of 11 year old children. Most bouts of r/t and aggressive fighting were dyadic, but significantly more bouts of the former involved three or more particip...

This study investigated children's perceptions of the relative strength of themselves and their peers, in 2 classes of 8-year-olds and 2 classes of 11-year-olds. Each child ranked his or her entire class in terms of strength and liking. Previous investigators have assumed that such strength perceptions reflect the dominance structure of the group....

Examines rough-and-tumble play (RATP) and the criteria used for distinguishing RATP from fighting. Evidence is presented that children are able to use many of these criteria. RATP is considered in relation to dominance and affiliative relationships in children, and its functional significance in development is discussed. RATP may exercise social sk...

81% of middle school students reported engaging in at least one act of bullying in the last 30 days and 8% reported frequently engaging in acts of bullying behavior in the last 30 days. (Bosworth, K., Espelage, D.L., Simon, T.R., 1999)  Boys bully more than girls and no relationships have been found between bullying behavior and grade, ethnicity a...

This work analyses the effects of empathy and anxiety on helping behaviour. The hypotheses attempt to discriminate between the different motives (altruistic or egoistic) that can elicit helping behaviour. Two studies were carried out: one with children and another with adolescents. The data was analyses using structural equations. (Lisrel, VI). Res...