Bullying

Bullying is a public health problem that affects most children, including those who bully others, those who are bullied, and those who witness these incidents. Bullying is a subtype of aggression that involves intentional harm to another that is repeated over time and includes an imbalance of power between the aggressor and the target. The types of bullying that have been identified are physical (e.g., hitting, kicking), verbal (e.g., teasing, threatening, and name-calling, which would include such messages sent in sign language), and social-relational (e.g., social exclusion, rumor spreading). In recent years, the availability of digital technology has provided an additional method for inflicting damage on others in a form called cyberbullying. It is clear that there are both immediate and long-term negative consequences of involvement in bullying and cyberbullying: school attendance problems, decreased academic performance, increased depression, anxiety, involvement in high-risk behaviors, and social withdrawal. Almost all bullying among children and adolescents occurs at school or among school acquaintances.

Despite the publication of thousands of books and scholarly articles on bullying and victimization, and although research has found that students with disabilities are often victimized by bullies at higher rates than their hearing peers, almost no attention has been paid to this problem among deaf students in the United States, and empirical studies of the phenomenon in deaf students are extremely limited. Experts believe that conventional bullying among deaf students is at least as common as, if not more common than, it is among hearing students.

In 2011, a researcher from Gallaudet University conducted a national study of 874 deaf students in grades 3 through 12 who attended residential, day, or self-contained educational programs in 11 different schools and mainstreamed students from five schools. Given that most deaf children attend classes with hearing peers (with or without support), this was not a nationally representative sample. Participants completed the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire, which was interpreted in ASL by the person administering the questionnaire. On average over all grades, 31 percent of students said they had been bullied at least two or three times per month; 28 percent of girls (including 48 percent of fourth graders) and 35 percent of boys (including 56 percent of third graders) reported being [Page 90]bullied by others. About 20 percent of participants reported that they bullied other students. The most common types of bullying were name-calling and rumor spreading, with cyberbullying and property damage being the least common. The most frequent location for bullying was in the lunchroom, followed by in hallways and stairwells. These are places with the least adult supervision. The study also found that 47 percent of bullied girls and 36 percent of bullied boys told a teacher or another adult at school about the bullying. A third or less of students said adults at school often or almost always tried to stop the bullying; more than half of those who bully others said an adult at school talked to them about their bullying behavior. The questionnaire was administered without adaptation for potential language difficulties, and psychometric data for the sample were not reported. Despite these limitations, the findings suggest that rates of bullying and victimization are generally higher among this group than the normative hearing group to which they were compared. This study is further evidence of the prevalence of bullying in this population.

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