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Copyright of International Journal of Educational Psychology is the property of International Journal of Educational Psychology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Bullying involves aggressive behaviors with the intention to harm others, including manifestations of systematic abuse of power. Two types of bullying can be considered: physical and psychological. Students may get involved in bullying dynamics as bullies, victims, or both - aggressive victims. The literature defines bullying as a global phenomenon, affecting both girls and boys. Therefore, Portuguese schools are no exception, with several studies from North to South of the country demonstrating the presence of bullying in schools, both in elementary and middle schools. The aim of this study is to elaborate the differences and experiences by both genders, boys and girls, in the current dynamics of school bullying. Thus, answering the question - how different are girls and boys as bullies and victims? In addition, it intends to impart the acquired knowledge and raise awareness of the implications of this social context in which Portuguese children are currently involved. The results obtained from a sample of 1147 students attending the 1st cycle of Portuguese education (elementary schools) were in line with previous studies. In order to enrich the literature, bullies, victims, and aggressive victims were characterized in detail. Finally, the importance of the adults’ intervention, especially teachers, was highlighted.

Abstract: We investigated an intervention designed to help female aggressive victims improve their levels of psychological and school adjustment. Adolescent aggressive victims are youth who demonstrate heightened levels of aggressive behavior and are frequently victimized by others. A program focused on the psychology of forgiveness was implemented and tested against both an alternative skillstreaming program and a no-treatment control group. Forty-eight female adolescent aggressive victims in South Korea (age 12 to 21years) were recruited from a middle school and a juvenile correctional facility. Participants were randomly assigned to groups. Both forgiveness and skillstreaming interventions were implemented in a small-group format for 12weeks. Participants in the forgiveness group reported significant decreases in anger, hostile attribution, aggression, and delinquency at post-test and follow-up; they also reported significant increases in empathy at post-test and follow-up and grades at post-test. We discuss implications for the psychological development of adolescent aggressive victims. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Peer maltreatment due to abuse of power is a type of proactive aggression frequent among schools. Aggressive behavior has been linked to impairments in some prefrontal lobe functions. This study evaluated whether there are differences in inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility among victims, aggressors, aggressive victims and witnesses of peer maltreatment. The sample included 46 adolescents who are among 12 to 17 years old. Differences were found in cognitive flexibility but not in inhibitory control. Aggressive victims showed significantly lower performance compared to other groups in cognitive flexibility. Victims showed higher scores than the other groups and aggressors do not differ from witnesses. These results suggest the differential status of aggressive victims group and they also support evidences which describe aggressors as socially competent. The discussion suggests that intervention processes have to do special emphasis over group dynamics instead of focus exclusively in individual interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fung, A. L-C. (2012). Intervention for aggressive victims of school bullying in Hong Kong: A longitudinal mixed-methods study. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology 53, 360-367. The distinction between aggressive and passive victims of school bullying is well documented. Aggressive victims exhibit restlessness and hot-temperedness, are easily provoked, and take revenge when irritated, whereas passive victims are quiet and timid when attacked or insulted and withdraw rather than retaliate. To date, there has been no evidence-based evaluative study examining interventions designed specifically to reduce aggressive victimization, and neither has there been an inclusive assessment screening of high-risk aggressive victims prior to intervention. This study addressed these research gaps by employing multi-stage assessment procedures and a mixed-mode methodology in a one-year longitudinal design. Data were collected from student self-reports, parent and teacher rating scales, and individual structured interviews with students, parents and teachers. A total of 269 potential high-risk aggressive victims were identified from among 5,089 schoolchildren, 68 of whom were screened out and randomly assigned to 10 treatment groups, with 39 completing a one-year follow-up study. Multivariate analysis of variance identified significant improvements in physical and verbal victimization ( F(2,47, 93.99) = 10.73, p < 0.01), verbal victimization ( F(2.74, 104.14) = 12.80, p < 0.01) and social exclusion scores at the three follow-up assessments compared to the pre-treatment scores, and the qualitative results were consistent, showing participants' cognition, emotion, and behavior to have been positively reconstructed by the group intervention. The consistent quantitative and qualitative results confirm that the cognitive-behavioral group therapy program reported herein is effective in reducing aggressive victims' anxious and depressed emotions and reactive cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a sample of 244 first graders, we identified four subtypes of children based on multi-informant measures of victimization by peers and aggression toward peers: aggressive victims (AV), non-victimized aggressors, non-aggressive victims, and non-aggressive, non-victimized (i.e., normative) children. We examined the differences between the aggressor/victim groups concurrently and two years later in third grade in terms of both mental health symptoms (severity and directionality) and school functioning (academic competence and school engagement). AV showed the worst results for mental health, academic competence, and school engagement concurrently and two years later. The role of first-grade teacher experience and education in predicting third-grade outcomes was also the subject of examination. Significant interactional effects were found between both AV and teacher experience and education. Most notably, the education level of first-grade teachers interacted with AV status to predict school engagement, such that the least engaged students at third grade were AV whose first-grade teachers had no schooling beyond a bachelor’s degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study examined the social–cognitive and behavioral attributes of children who are concurrently aggressive and victimized by their peers. The characteristics of these “aggressive victims” were examined in comparison to bullies, passive victims, and normative comparison children. The sample included 240 urban Los Angeles elementary school children (mean age = 9.5 years), who completed a series of self-report inventories, a social–cognitive interview, and a peer nomination inventory. Ratings of behavioral adjustment were obtained from teachers and academic functioning was obtained through a review of school records. Subgroup comparisons indicated that aggressive victims were characterized by impairments in self-regulation as well as difficulties across domains of functioning. In contrast, bullies tended to exhibit aggression-related biases in social-cognitive processing, but did not suffer from other adjustment problems, and passive victims were characterized by nonassertive behaviors and low levels of social skills. Taken together, our findings highlight the distinctiveness and theoretical importance of the aggressive victim subgroup. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study analyzed a sample representing six middle schools that included 206 pure bullies, 514 pure victims, and 206 aggressive victims. Aggressive or provocative victims are students who have been bullied but also bully other students. This research assessed whether aggressive victims engaged in different patterns of behavior and had dissimilar socialization experiences than pure bullies and pure victims. Factors that were considered include measures of parental socialization, family conflict, reactive and proactive aggression, low self-control, social bonds, and other relevant factors, including demographic characteristics. Logistic regression analyses indicated that aggressive victims engaged in significantly different patterns of behavior than pure victims and pure bullies. The analyses also indicated that the socialization experiences of middle school aggressive victims more closely resembled the socialization experiences of pure bullies than pure victims. Aggr. Behav. 00:00–00, 2005. © 2005 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study had two main goals. The first was to analyze the differences between parenting dimensions—strictness/imposition and involvement/acceptance—in adolescents' engagement in peer aggression as aggressors, victims, aggressive victims, and non-involved. The second goal was to examine differences between parenting dimensions and peer-aggression roles by gender of both parents and adolescents. Participants were 779 adolescents (49.16% boys and 50.84% girls), aged between 12 and 16 years old (M = 14.21; SD = 1.35), enrolled in schools in Andalusia (Spain). Findings showed significant differences in parenting dimensions depending on gender of both adolescents (boy or girl) and parents (mother and father). For sons, non-involved adolescents scored higher in mother and father involvement than aggressors and aggressive victims. For daughters, non-involved scored higher in mother involvement than aggressors. Furthermore, girl aggressors and aggressive victims reported higher levels of mother imposition than non-involved. Results and their implications for sustainable development in adolescence are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]