This exciting book finally brings together research done in the area of school bullying around the world – it is a much needed collection of insights and empirical findings based on studies many western researchers have not been very familiar with. Personally, I was very keen on getting to know better the work done in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, and I believe that this volume is an inspiring read for anyone interested in the problem of bullying – especially for those interested in, or planning to do cross-cultural research on the topic.
To me, it is fascinating that researchers in eastern countries have paid attention to the group nature of bullying from early on, describing it as a ‘disease of the classroom’ (as mentioned by Toda in Chapter 4) rather than a problem of individual misbehaving children. Even the roles of students who witness bullying were of particular interest in a Japanese study by Morita and colleagues, before they truly entered the research agenda in the west. Also, many of the concepts used to refer to bullying in South Korea bear a strong connotation of abuse by the group rather than by an individual student. Whether this reflects a cultural understanding of the phenomenon or actual differences in how and by whom it is done (prevalence of different forms, for instance, does not always seem to tell the same story as perceptions of what kind of forms bullying involves) still leaves room for further research.
Overall, there seem to be many similarities in the understanding of bullying, the forms it takes, its correlates, as well as gender differences and developmental changes in it. Although also differences between eastern and western cultures are found, they often leave some doubt concerning equivalence in samples and measurement issues. Reading about prevalence differences makes one think about the large differences found in the prevalence of bullying and victimisation even within European countries. Taking this variation into account, the prevalence of bullying actually does not seem to differ much from east to west; to me, the similarities are perhaps more striking than the differences. Having said that, as there are known variations across classrooms and (to a lesser extent) schools in the prevalence and dynamics of bullying (for instance, more bullying in hierarchical classrooms or in classrooms where teachers do not have strong antibullying attitudes or they do not express such attitudes to students), such differences probably exist across wider cultural contexts as well. The interesting question is, what are the proximal factors (perhaps at the school level, or at the teacher/classroom level) that mediate such cultural influences on the dynamics of bullying.
There are obviously many exciting avenues for future research on bullying in eastern and western cultures. Before taking too many steps forward, however, there is also a need for a step backward, a careful look at methodological issues, such as measurement properties of the constructs across cultures. Before that, there is no guarantee that possible cross-cultural differences found in the associations between bullying and other constructs are not merely artefacts of measurement invariance. The chapter by Guillaume and Funder (Chapter 11) nicely highlights this need, as well as other important issues that need consideration when making cross-cultural comparisons. It is actually surprising that neither confirmatory factor analyses with the basic questionnaires nor forced-choice measures such as Q-sort techniques have been utilised in studying bullying across cultures. Also the implicit association test (IAT) comes to mind as a possible approach when examining bullying-related emotions or attitudes. This volume certainly provides a wonderful overview of what has been done so far and a great inspiration for those intending to take the exciting next steps.
