Effective and Ineffective Coping With Bullying Strategies as Assessed by Informed Professionals and Their Use by Victimised Students

What strategies do students use to cope with bullying and how effective are they? Answers to such questions will not only help students understand how they can cope, but also inform school-wide policies and practices to reduce the incidence of bullying. To do this, schools need evidence on what strategies to focus on to most effectively target their intervention and prevention programs. Students across Years 8, 9 and 10 in three South Australian high schools (n = 1223) completed a Coping with Bullying questionnaire, indicating strategies they used, and 82 informed professionals (IPs) rated each strategy's effectiveness, along with its applicability to different bullying types. IPs generally agreed on which strategies were effective and ineffective and that the same strategies were appropriate for all types of bullying. Seriously bullied students reported under-using some effective strategies. No significant difference between males and females in strategy use was found. Awareness of effective and ineffective coping strategies provides schools with a workable framework for targeting prevention and/or intervention programs that align with extant knowledge on coping with bullying. Disseminating such research evidence is important as this study shows that seriously bullied students are evidently under-using many strategies that IPs in this study regarded as effective.