School District Anti-Bullying Policies: a State-Wide Content Analysis
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
School District Anti-Bullying Policies: a State-Wide Content Analysis Jaimie Stickl Haugen 1
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Claudia C. Sutter 1
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Jessica L. Tinstman Jones 1
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Laurie O. Campbell 1
# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Abstract Although all states in the United States require school districts to adopt anti-bullying policies, relatively little research explores the content of bullying policies. A content analysis of anti-bullying policies from 76 school districts across the State of Louisiana was conducted. A 63-item coding scheme was developed to guide the analysis. The overall compliance to the coding framework by the Louisiana school districts considered in this study was 64%, with many policies covering logistical aspects of bullying response such as definitions, reporting, investigating, monitoring, disseminating policies, and consequences for perpetrators. While many school districts addressed evidenced-based practices and mental health support for victims and perpetrators, few school district policies addressed the use of personally owned technology, mental health support for witnesses, evaluating programs, or enumeration of vulnerable groups. There was also a noticeable gap in policies that were culturally responsive in nature. Implications are discussed for educators, policy-makers, and researchers. Keywords Bullying . Cyberbullying . Anti-bullying policy . School policy . Content analysis
Introduction Although bullying has long been a matter of concern in the school context, the awareness of its detrimental consequences on students’ social, emotional, and physical well-being has increased over the past decades concurrent with an increasing number of schools implementing anti-bullying policies (Gower, Cousin, & Borosky, 2017; Smith, Smith, Osborn & Samara, 2008; Wang, Iannotti, & Nansel, 2009). The focus on bullying has intensified within the school context due to the increased media coverage as a direct consequence of violent school incidents (e.g., the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, * Jaimie Stickl Haugen [email protected] Claudia C. Sutter [email protected] Jessica L. Tinstman Jones [email protected] Laurie O. Campbell [email protected] 1
College of Community Innovation and Education, Department of Counselor Education and School Psychology, University of Central Florida, 4000 Central Florida Blvd., Orlando, FL, USA
Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018) that have pointed to bullying as the underlying cause, as well as suicides among students that were linked to chronic bullying. Moreover, the concept of bullying has evolved with the expansion of research knowledge (Vivolo-Kantor, Martell, Holland, & Westby, 2014) pointing to serious and long-term effects associated with bullying behavior from both the victim and the perpetrator perspective (Stuart-Cassel, Bell, & Springer, 2011). Bullying is a controversial construct that has been defined in various ways, which can lead to a lack of conceptual clarity (
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