Taking a Stand Against Bullying

Research explores how friends and schools can be advocates for a positive learning environment

Bullying can take many different forms, occur at different stages of life and span from mild to severe, but the wide range of negative consequences that can occur from bullying remains clear.

Dr. Wendy Troop-Gordon
Dr. Wendy Troop-Gordon

This is where the crucial research of Dr. Wendy Troop-Gordon, professor in the College of Human Sciences’ Department of Human Development & Family Science, and her colleagues comes into play. Troop-Gordon and her graduate students work to understand how bullying affects children and how to combat bullying by fostering positive school environments.

With a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Troop-Gordon arrived at Auburn University in 2017 with a wide range of expertise. Her research interests include peer relationships in childhood and adolescence, developmental psychopathology, teacher-child relationships and the role of parents in combating bullying. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station.

Understanding the data collection process

What does the data collection process look like for the study of bullies and their victims? For starters, it begins with using a variety of data sets to identify the factors that contribute to bullying and its effects. It also involves using data collected for months, and even years, to see how bullying evolves within children’s peer groups.

“My favorite thing to do is to follow a group of kids because I’m curious about how things change,” Troop-Gordon said. “How do children develop? You can’t know unless you’re actually following kids and watching those changes occur over time. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, so I’ve collected many different data sets through my own lab or with collaborators at other universities.”

According to Troop-Gordon, the sad reality is that the negative outcomes resulting from bullying can begin affecting children as young as preschool. For these young children, bullying can set the stage for long-term problems with depression, anxiety, behavioral issues and more.

“You can see some children get picked on more than others starting in preschool,” Troop-Gordon said. “You can start to see them withdraw and show depressive affect and signs of anxiety.”

With the high prevalence of bullying that can start as early as preschool and continue for years, research needs to focus on teachers, parents, friends and other classmates in order to understand the full picture, as opposed to focusing solely on bullies and victims.

Troop-Gordon tends to focus on two main areas when it comes to bullying research — how teachers can respond to bullying and what promotes children to defend classmates who are bullied by their peers.

“We’ve been trying to understand how teachers can respond to bullying in a way that both prevents further bullying and helps bullied children feel better,” Troop-Gordon said. “Some of the research out there is showing the anti-bullying programs we have can lead to improvements for children who are occasionally bullied but not for those who experience the most severe bullying. Trying to really understand what we can do to target kids at greatest risk and making sure what we’re doing in schools is actually helping them is a top priority.”

Troop-Gordon pointed out that helping children who are bullied once or twice in a school year is much different than helping children who are bullied daily or weekly.

“Kids make fun of them and exclude them regularly,” Troop-Gordon said. “Those are the kids who are really going to suffer. And we really need to know what we can do to help them.”

On the flipside, Troop-Gordon wants to understand how other classmates can step up and defend victims of bullying.

“We know that one thing that might help kids who are bullied is having other kids who will stand up for them,” Troop-Gordon said. “We’re trying to really understand what helps motivate children to develop those   defending behaviors.”

Bullying can take place in different forms

With improvements in technology, the creation of the internet and the widespread use of social media in recent decades, bullying now exists beyond in-person interactions.

While cyberbullying may differ from in-person bullying, Troop-Gordon says the reasons for bullying and the dynamics remain the same. However, cyberbullying makes it harder for victims to catch a break or escape.

“The dynamics between kids that lead to cyberbullying are not that different from what leads to face-to-face bullying, because most kids being bullied through the internet are being bullied by the same kids they know in real life,” Troop-Gordon said. “It’s really in many ways just an extension of face-to-face bullying, but they can’t escape it. You’re carrying it with you wherever you go in your pocket on this little phone.”

Disseminating anti-bullying information and research to alleviate bullying

While the data collection process is critical, the next step of sharing the results and communicating new information is just as crucial.

Troop-Gordon said she discusses her research findings in a variety of ways, including presenting to educators through school visits, creating newsletters, working with other partners like Alabama Extension and giving talks to organizations like the Alabama Association of School Boards.

Some of the information she relays includes positive research findings for teachers and parents, as both can play crucial roles when it comes to bullying.

“A very strong pattern in my findings is that when teachers are very deliberate about who gets to be near whom in a classroom, we see less bullying,” Troop-Gordon said. “Really being very conscientious of who has access to vulnerable peers can make a difference. Although many kids who are bullied don’t have friends, the extent to which they can be near kids who can act as friends is very helpful.”

Another pattern Troop-Gordon has seen consistently is that kids feel worse when teachers or parents take the attitude that bullying is just part of growing up.

“Kids feel worse when teachers or parents make comments such as ‘bullying is something that makes you stronger’ or ‘everyone goes through this,’” she said. “In contrast, when adults take bullying seriously, bullied children fare better.”

Looking toward the future, Troop-Gordon will be focusing on understanding bullying beyond collecting information through questionnaire data.

“There’s been a big push for psychobiological assessments,” Troop-Gordon said. “For example, I’ve been involved in collaborations where we’ve taken children with a history of being chronically bullied and used functional MRI (fMRI) to assess their responses to moderately stressful social encounters. We can see differences in how the brain reacts to social stress for children who spent years being bullied.”

She says fMRI is one way researchers are trying to uncover what causes the link between being bullied as a child and adult outcomes.

“Is it changing the way the brain is working or the way we physiologically respond to stress? Is it how we think about the world around us? Those are some of the questions I’m very interested in,” she said. “As our technology improves in measuring these things, it’s going to increase our understanding of how early bullying continues to impact us for the rest of our lives.”

For Troop-Gordon, what keeps her motivated and passionate about her work goes back to her love of research and the joy of solving real-world problems.

“I just love it when I feel like I’ve found something,” she said. “I especially love when a student gets their first finding, and they realize their hypothesis was supported, and they just get this smile on their face. That’s a great moment.”