Bullying in pre-adolescents: Prevalence, emotional intelligence, aggression and resilience

Emily R. Bunnett
Swinburne University, Australia

This paper presents current prevalence rates for bullying and victimisation across grades, genders and bullying types. It also explores mean differences in emotional intelligence (EI), aggression and resilience for bullies, victims and bully/victims. A series of one-way analyses were conducted with EI, aggression and resilience as the dependent variables to identify target areas for intervention and prevention. Early intervention is required to reduce the effect of bullying. Of the 704 primary school students who completed this study, 2.6% reported that they bullied others, 53.7% were victims and 35.9% bully/victims. Prevalence differences across bullying types are discussed. As expected, bully/victims displayed lower scores on EI and resilience and were quick to anger. The pattern of results for victims contradicted expectations. Further investigation on target areas for bullies is required in larger samples. Implications for the development of intervention and prevention programs are discussed.
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Author: Dr Emily R. Bunnett (corresponding author) is a data analyst and researcher at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Victoria. Emily's areas of research include emotional intelligence, bullying, victimisation, resilience, psychopharmacology, psychometrics and social and emotional learning and developmental programs within schools. Emily is particularly interested in the use of advanced quantitative statistical analyses including structural equation modeling and is in the process of revising an ability emotional intelligence measure for children and pre-adolescents. Email: emilybunnett10@gmail.com Please cite as: Bunnett, E. R. (2021). Bullying in pre-adolescents: Prevalence, emotional intelligence, aggression and resilience. Issues in Educational Research, 31(4), 1049-1066. http://www.iier.org.au/iier31/bunnett.pdf