The Youth Violence Project has engaged in a series of bullying studies over the past 15 years. Many of these studies are described here http://curry.virginia.edu/research/projects/bullying/bullying-research
Our current projects include the following:
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We are assisting the Albemarle/Charlottesville Safe Schools/Healthy Students Project in their annual school climate and bullying surveys (http://www.safeschoolscville.org/). We have helped them track progress in reducing bullying and reducing school climate each year at the elementary, middle, and high school level. See the tabs for more information for each of these grade levels. Some of the substantive questions we are addressing in this project include:
- Can we improve school bullying prevention efforts through the use of peer reports of bully victims? See our video on Youtube to learn more and review a recent conference presentation.
- How is school climate related to bullying behavior and involvement in high risk behavior such as fighting and substance use?
- How can longitudinal data inform us about the course of bullying and victimization through middle school?
- How can we improve the accuracy of school climate and bullying surveys through validity screening?
- Through the Virginia High School Safety Study we are continuing to examine school climate and disciplinary approaches associated with lower rates of bullying and safer schools. We are also showing the impact of bullying climate on student engagement, SOL test performance, and dropout rates.
- Through the Virginia School Safety Audits of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, we are examining how statewide bullying prevention efforts are associated with school safety, discipline problems, and schoolwide academic performance.
- Over the course of all of these projects, we have continued to refine and develop the School Climate Bullying Survey which is available to schools and researchers.
