Staci's Place:
Dealing with Online
Bullies
Statistics
I
recently went looking for verified statistics to see how
widespread the problem is and found a lot of amateurish pages with
very little sourcing. Even amongst educators pages claims are
made that are utterly unsupported. Assume that the statistics you
are quoted on the links below are not accurate unless you
are able to source them.
"Being bullied is not just an unpleasant
rite of passage through childhood," said Duane Alexander, M.D., director
of the NICHD. "It's a public health problem that merits attention.
People who were bullied as children are more likely to suffer from
depression and low self esteem, well into adulthood, and the bullies
themselves are more likely to engage in criminal behavior later in
life." (Bullying
Statistics)
One third of students in Grades 7 to 12
report having been bullied at school, and just under one third report
having bullied someone else. (Speech,
Dalton McGuinty, Ottawa Anti-Bullying Conference)
In a 2004
survey of 1,500 fourth- through eighth- graders, I-SAFE America found
that 42 percent of kids have been bullied online. (Potomac
News Online)
Research by psychologists Debra Pepler
and Rona Atlas, of York University in Toronto, suggests that teachers
miss 75 percent of the bullying behaviour that goes on in schools. (Today's
Parent)
Students are bullied once every seven
minutes on Canadian playgrounds and once every 25 minutes in classrooms,
according to international expert Bill Belsey. (Winnipeg
Sun)
More than a third of students say they've
heard a classmate threaten to kill someone, according to a ABCNEWS/Good
Morning America poll.
More than 16 percent of U.S. school
children saying they had been bullied by other students during the current
term, according to a survey funded by the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
Almost a quarter of the membership of the
Teachers Union of
Ireland said they were bullied at work in 1999.
According to the World Health
Organization, in 1990, handguns were used to kill 13 people in Sweden, 91
in Switzerland, 87 in Japan, 68 in Canada, 22 in Great Britain, 10 in
Australia, and 10,567 people in the United States.
Bullying is "a problem in every school in
the country," says Scott Poland, president of the National Association of School
Psychologists. "Bullying Behaviors Among U.S. Youth," published in the April 25
Journal of the American Medical Association reports that 30 percent of students
are moderately or frequently involved in bullying, as victims, bullies or both (Pilot
survey exposes high school bullying ,
by Lisa Rayner).
PLEASE, writers, parents and activists,
don't repeat a statistic unless you quote the source! Saying "studies
say" is worse than saying nothing at all. Critical thinkers want to
know WHAT studies are being quoted.
Book Quotes:
"Every two seconds of every school
day, according to the National Education Association, another student is
physically attacked in school. A typical schoolchild has a nearly 25
percent chance of being involved in bullying on campus, taunting on the
bus, sexual harassment, "flaming on the Internet, beatings or gang
activity." - Your
Child: Bully or Victim?
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