Victimisation And Bullying

Introduction

This study (Ball et al., 2008) aimed to measure effects of genetic and environmental influences on the subgroups involved in childhood bullying, (bullies, bully-victims and victims). Victimisation and bullying reports from teachers and mothers were compiled from a representative group of families with twins. Model-fitting was used to correlate the relative influence of genetics and environments with involvement in the bullying subgroups.

12% of children were victims, 13% were bullies, and 2.5% were bully-victims. Genetics accounted for 73% of the variation in victimisation and 61% of the variation in bullying, environmental factors not shared between the twins explaining the remainder. It was concluded that children’s genotypes

The fact that this article made it print already shows some level of credibility.

There are multiple authors and more than one university involved, a selection of authors with varied backgrounds from social genetics to psychiatry gives a well-rounded approach to the topic and covers more angles, ensuring greater accuracy.

As mentioned in the study, limitations included only the use of twins in their sample, thus not representative of the general population as twin children have different experiences to normal children (Bollmer et al.,

Definitions of what constitutes bullying vary, so the results may vary depending on what is and what is not defined as bullying, further to this each individual might have variations on what their personal perception is of bullying (i.e. different ideas from teacher to mother to child), (Swain, 1998).

While the genotype of MZ/DZ twins may be the same or similar, the phenotype may vary (Günter, 2008), and different exposures to carcinogens can alter the DNA replication and induce coding errors (Scientific American, 2008). The use of Mplus programme however, with a liability threshold model and use of E parameters limit the percentage error in phenotype deviation (Neale, 1992). This was a particular strength of the study as there was considerable margin for error.

The study is well referenced (with 43 references and 50 citations) and the hypotheses to undertake the study were based on solid evidence in meta-analyses linking anti-social behaviour with bullying, and on genetic influences on anti-social behaviour, thus logical to conclude that a relationship existed between bullying and genetics. I believe the large body of scientifically validated references (many are published in reputable journals) accentuates the credibility of the results from this