ABSTRACT
Bullying, and related terms such as harassment, can be taken to be a subset of aggressive behaviour. As with aggressive behaviour generally, bullying intentionally causes hurt to the recipient. Most of the bullying reported is by children or young people in the same class or at least the same year as the victim. Some is by older pupils, but not surprisingly, little is by younger pupils. Victims are more likely to report being alone at break time, and to feel less well liked at school; having some good friends can be a strong protective factor against being bullied. However this potential support needs to be harnessed; most pupils did not think that peers would be very likely to help stop a child being bullied. Many factors are likely to be implicated in the occurrence and extent of bullying behavior, this chapter presents a brief summary of some of the more important, categorised as child, family, school and societal factors.
