In plain language
When people think about bullying, they usually picture physical aggression — hitting, pushing, taking belongings. But bullying also comes in verbal forms (name-calling, taunting) and relational forms (exclusion, spreading rumours, destroying friendships). Much research and policy has treated victimization as a single thing, based mostly on data from a handful of wealthy countries. This study asked whether a three-part (tripartite) model — distinguishing relational, verbal, and physical victimization — better explains how bullying works around the world.
The researchers combined an integrative review of the victimization literature with an analysis of PISA 2018 data: 594,196 fifteen-year-olds from nationally representative samples in 77 countries. They tested the three-component model against simpler one- and two-component models, and examined how each component related to gender, well-being, and attitudes toward bullying.
The three-component model won clearly. The three forms of victimization showed distinct patterns: boys experienced more physical and verbal victimization, while gender differences in relational victimization were negligible; and all 13 well-being indicators were more strongly linked to verbal and especially relational victimization than to physical victimization. This matters because anti-bullying policies and interventions often focus on physical bullying, yet it is relational bullying that does the most damage to young people’s mental health. The study also documented a “Pro-Bully Paradox”: victims tend to be more supportive of bullies than of other victims.
Key findings
- Across 594,196 adolescents in 77 countries, a three-component (tripartite) model of victimization — relational, verbal, and physical — showed superior goodness-of-fit and explanatory power compared to one- and two-component models.
- All 13 well-being indicators were more strongly (negatively) related to verbal and particularly relational victimization than to physical victimization.
- Gender differences varied systematically across components: girls experienced less physical and verbal victimization than boys, but gender differences in relational victimization were negligible.
- Consistent with the Pro-Bully Paradox, anti-bullying attitudes correlated negatively with physical victimization (r = −.17) but were essentially uncorrelated with relational victimization — victims were more supportive of bullies than of other victims.
- Collapsing the three components into one or two components undermined discriminant validity, showing that global victimization indices obscure important differences.
- Systematic cross-national differences emerged in country-level means and gender differences across the three components, related to national development and cultural values.
How to cite
APA
Marsh, H. W., Guo, J., Parker, P. D., Pekrun, R., Basarkod, G., Dicke, T., Parada, R. H., Reeve, J., Craven, R., Ciarrochi, J., Sahdra, B., & Devine, E. K. (2023). Peer victimization: An integrative review and cross-national test of a tripartite model. Educational Psychology Review, 35, Article 46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09765-x
BibTeX
@article{marsh2023peer,
title = {Peer Victimization: an Integrative Review and Cross-National Test of a Tripartite Model},
author = {Marsh, Herbert W. and Guo, Jiesi and Parker, Philip D. and Pekrun, Reinhard and Basarkod, Geetanjali and Dicke, Theresa and Parada, Roberto H. and Reeve, Johnmarshall and Craven, Rhonda and Ciarrochi, Joseph and Sahdra, Baljinder and Devine, Emma K.},
journal = {Educational Psychology Review},
year = {2023},
volume = {35},
number = {2},
pages = {46},
doi = {10.1007/s10648-023-09765-x}
}
Related work
- All publications by Joseph Ciarrochi (searchable, with free PDFs)
- Process-Based Therapy & Idionomic Analysis
Author: Joseph Ciarrochi (ORCID 0000-0003-0471-8100). Free copy hosted with permission for scholarly use. Please cite the published version via the DOI above.