Defending bullied peers in different ways: A longitudinal study of peer defending as a multidimensional construct

Previous bullying research has shown that an important component of schools’ anti-bullying work is to increase students’ propensity to defend victims, yet peer defending and its correlates are not well understood.

By applying a longitudinal study design and exploring different types of defending (direct confrontation, solution-focused strategies, victim comfort, and reporting to adults), the current project will significantly advance the field.

The aim of this project is to contribute with knowledge on students’ different ways of defending in bullying situations and how these different forms of defending are related to the prevalence of bullying prevalence and to cognitive, emotional, and class-level contextual factors over time.

The project will span over four years and includes a pre-study aimed at testing the data collection procedure and some of the self-report measurement scales and a main study in which self-report data from Swedish students in grades 4-8 will be collected at six time points, twice a year, starting in November 2025 and ending in May 2028.

The project leader will be Sjögren (PhD in educational research) and participating researchers are Thornberg (professor of educational research), Craig (professor of psychology), Wänström (associate professor of statistics), and Bjärehed (PhD of educational research).

In addition, the data collection will be planned and carried out in collaboration with the national non-profit anti-bullying organization Friends.