smith child dev 2002

Child Development, July/August 2002, Volume 73, Number 4, Pages 1119–1133

Definitions of Bullying: A Comparison of Terms Used, and Age and Gender Differences, in a Fourteen-Country International Comparison

Peter K. Smith, Helen Cowie, Ragnar F. Olafsson, and Andy P. D. Liefooghe

with the collaboration of Ana Almeida, Hozumi Araki, Cristina del Barrio, Angela Costabile, Bojan Dekleva, Anastasia Houndoumadi, Kenneth Kim, Ragnar P. Olafsson,

Rosario Ortega, Jacques Pain, Lena Pateraki, Mechthild Schafer, Monika Singer, Andrea Smorti, Yuichi Toda, Helgi Tomasson, and Zhang Wenxin

The study of school bullying has recently assumed an international dimension, but is faced with difficulties infinding terms in different languages to correspond to the English word bullying. To investigate the meaningsgiven to various terms, a set of 25 stick-figure cartoons was devised, covering a range of social situations be-tween peers. These cartoons were shown to samples of 8- and 14-year-old pupils (

N

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1,245;

n

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604 at 8 years,

n

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641 at 14 years) in schools in 14 different countries, who judged whether various native terms cognate tobullying, applied to them. Terms from 10 Indo-European languages and three Asian languages were sampled.Multidimensional scaling showed that 8-year-olds primarily discriminated nonaggressive and aggressive car-toon situations; however, 14-year-olds discriminated fighting from physical bullying, and also discriminatedverbal bullying and social exclusion. Gender differences were less appreciable than age differences. Based onthe 14-year-old data, profiles of 67 words were then constructed across the five major cartoon clusters. Themain types of terms used fell into six groups: bullying (of all kinds), verbal plus physical bullying, solely ver-bal bullying, social exclusion, solely physical aggression, and mainly physical aggression. The findings are dis-cussed in relation to developmental trends in how children understand bullying, the inferences that can bemade from cross-national studies, and the design of such studies.

INTRODUCTION

Since the publication of Olweus’s book

Aggression inthe Schools

, in 1978, there has been a growing interestin the topic of school bullying. Spreading from Scan-dinavia to other western European countries, theUnited States, and Australia and New Zealand, andwith a somewhat independent research tradition inJapan on

ijime

, the research and preventive action onthis phenomenon has now reached an internationaldimension (Smith, Morita, et al., 1999). Correspond-ingly, there is a need to examine the use of the wordbullying and cognate terms in a variety of languages,at an international level, to understand fully the sim-ilarities and differences in the phenomenon acrossdifferent countries and language groups. In any cul-ture, the issue of definition is central for accurate sta-tistics on the incidence of bullying; the study of devel-opmental changes in perceptions of bullying on thepart of children, adolescents and adults; the evalua-tion of the effectiveness of different interventions tocombat it; and clarification of individual rights andlegal responsibilities (Ananiadou & Smith, in press).Because comparisons are attempted at cross-nationallevels, the definition of corresponding terms in differ-ent languages becomes essential for the interpretationof cross-national findings. The present study exam-

ined the meaning attached to the term bullying, andrelated terms, in 14 countries and 13 major languages(10 Indo-European, 3 Asiatic), as well as age and gen-der differences related to this issue.

The Definition of Bullying

Heinemann (1973) was one of the first to write onthe phenomenon of bullying. He used the Norwegianterm

mobbning

, referring to group violence against adeviant individual that occurs suddenly and subsidessuddenly. This confines the process to actions carriedout by a group against an individual, as does the En-glish word mobbing. A similar use of the concept ofmobbing also appears in the German literature(Niedl, 1996). Olweus (1978, 1993) at first used thisterm, but subsequently extended the definition to in-clude systematic one-on-one attacks of a strongerchild against a weaker child.

The emphasis of earlier work on bullying was onphysical bullying and verbal taunting done directlyby the bully or bullies to the victim. Olweus’s earlier(1978) work did not fully recognize the extent of indi-rect bullying. However, the importance of indirect

© 2002 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.All rights reserved. 0009-3920/2002/7304-0009

1120 Child Development

aggression as a category was shown by the researchof Björkqvist and colleagues (Björkqvist, Lagerspetz,& Kaukiainen, 1992) in Finland. They distinguisheddirect physical aggression (such as punching) and directverbal aggression (such as name calling), as well asindirect aggression. Indirect aggression, characterizedby its somewhat covert nature and use of third par-ties, had principal forms of gossiping and spreadingrumors, and social exclusion (deliberately not allow-ing a person into a group). Somewhat similar (al-though not identical) concepts have been describedby Crick and colleagues (Crick, Casas, & Mosher, 1997;Crick & Grotpeter, 1995, 1996) as relational aggres-sion, and by Galen and Underwood (1997) as socialaggression; these relate more to the consequencesof the negative act and the intent to damage relation-ships. There are corresponding forms of physical,verbal, and indirect or relational bullying (Rivers &Smith, 1994).

Currently, Olweus (1999, pp. 10–11) states that“bullying is thus characterized by the following threecriteria: (1) it is aggressive behavior or intentional‘harmdoing’ (2) which is carried out repeatedly andover time (3) in an interpersonal relationship charac-terized by an imbalance of power. One might add thatthe bullying behavior often occurs without apparentprovocation,” and “negative actions can be carriedout by physical contact, by words, or in other ways,such as making faces or mean gestures, and inten-tional exclusion from a group.” This kind of defini-tion of the term bullying is now accepted by many re-searchers (Farrington, 1993; Smith & Sharp, 1994).

Such a definition labels bullying as a subset of ag-gressive behavior. Aggressive behavior, in turn, isoften defined as negative acts carried out intention-ally to harm another; thus, behavior that accidentallyharms another would not be aggressive. The issue ofwhether the aggressive behavior is provoked, or insome sense justified, is less clearly resolved. Olweusstated that “the bullying behavior often occurs with-out apparent provocation,” but some researchers (no-tably Pikas, 1989) have suggested that there is a cate-gory of “provocative victims” who play an active partin “inviting” or “perpetuating” the bullying behavior.

An earlier form of the Olweus definition (1993), ex-tended slightly by Whitney and Smith (1993, p. 7) intheir English language version, prefaces the adminis-tration of recent versions of his questionnaire:

We say a young person is being bullied, or pickedon, when another child or young person, or agroup of young people, say nasty and unpleasantthings to him or her. It is also bullying when ayoung person is hit, kicked or threatened, locked

inside a room, sent nasty notes, when no-one evertalks to them and things like that. These things canhappen frequently and it is difficult for the youngperson being bullied to defend himself or herself. Itis also bullying when a young person is teased re-peatedly in a nasty way. But it is not bullying whentwo young people of about the same strength havethe odd fight or quarrel.

This definition specifies that bullying is an aggres-sive act. In addition, it suggests an imbalance ofpower (the victim finds it difficult to defend himselfor herself) and some element of repetition (thesethings can happen frequently). These two additionalcriteria serve to distinguish bullying as a subset of thebroader concept of aggression. Notably, two sorts ofactions are labeled as not being bullying: the odd fightor quarrel between two young people of about thesame strength, which is aggression, is explicitly notbullying because it fails the above two additional cri-teria. The definition also implicitly labels friendlyforms of teasing as not being bullying; teasing is arather ambiguous behavior, but in friendly teasingthere would not be an intent to harm, whereas innasty teasing there would be.

There is now widespread use of the Olweus ques-tionnaire, and similar survey instruments, on an in-ternational basis (Morita, Smith, Junger-Tas, Olweus,& Catalano, 1999; Smith et al., 1999). A modified ver-sion has been used in a cross-national comparativesurvey of five countries (Japan, England, The Nether-lands, Norway, and the United States) funded by theUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization (UNESCO) and the Japanese Ministryof Education, Science, Sports, and Culture (Mon-busho; Junger-Tas & van Kesteren, 1999; Morita, 1999;Smith & Shu, 2000). One aim of such international co-operation is to compare the frequency and structuralcharacteristics of bullying in different societies, to bet-ter understand and then plan interventions to reducethe harmful consequences that bullying can have.

The Implications of Cross-National Research on Bullying

A difficulty facing cross-national comparisons isthe comparability of terminology. Arora (1996) drewattention to the various terms cognate with bullyingin English and in several other languages. The studyof bullying in a number of different countries indi-cates that the word bully is not easy to translate(Genta, Menesini, Fonzi, Costabile, & Smith, 1996;Morita, 1996; O’Connell, Pepler, & Craig, 1999; Rigby& Slee, 1991). Different terms are used both in any one

Smith et al. 1121

language and in different languages. The terms bullyand mobbing are familiar in the Scandinavian andGermanic languages, including English (the etymol-ogy of the word bully probably coming from the Mid-dle Dutch word

boele

meaning first sweetheart, thenfine fellow, then blusterer;

Encarta World English Dic-tionary

, 1999). The word bully is familiar in otherEnglish-speaking cultures such as the United States,although less widely used (Hazler, 1996); in theUnited States the terms victimization and peer

rejec-tion are often used to denote negative actions of peerstoward another young person (Asher & Coie, 1990).Words for bullying are less familiar in the Latin lan-guages; for example, the French have no direct trans-lation of the word.

The importance of the terms used can be illustratedwithin one language, English. The terms bully andbullying have been in usage for a long time, to de-scribe this kind of behavior in children at school (as in

Tom Brown’s Schooldays;

Hughes, 1857/1989). Theterm teasing is similar but can have a milder connota-tion of verbal and possibly playful aggression. An-other term, harassment, appears similar to bullyingbut tends to be used for adult or adolescent ratherthan child behaviors, as in sexual harassment, or ra-cial harassment. Yet another term, abuse, also appearssimilar but tends to be restricted to the family context,as in parent–child

abuse or spousal abuse, or to adult–child contexts, as in physical abuse or sexual abuse.These terms have somewhat different dictionary def-initions and, more importantly, they may be under-stood differently by persons answering questionnaires.

This issue is also highlighted when questionnairessuch as the Olweus questionnaire are translated intodifferent languages. Frequently there is not an exacttranslation of the term bullying. The Japanese termmost equivalent to bullying appears to be

ijime

,

whichhas been the subject of a rather independent researchtradition in Japan, through the 1980s and 1990s(Morita, Soeda, Soeda, & Taki, 1999). However, Morita,Soeda, et al. (1999) consider that

ijime

does differsomewhat from bullying, in having a less physicallyviolent connotation, and a relatively greater emphasison social manipulation and more female types of ag-gressive behavior. In contrast, in Italy, the Italianwords

prepotenza

and

violenza

tend to imply morephysical, violent actions (Fonzi et al., 1999).

The issue of comparability of terms is central for theaccurate interpretation of national and cross-nationalfindings. Exact matching of terms across languages isan unrealizable ideal, but it is necessary to know howcomparable terms are, and, if they differ, on whichdimensions or criteria (e.g., physical/psychological,direct/indirect, group/individual, and so forth) the

difference is primarily located. Even if a fuller explicitdefinition is given (as in the Olweus questionnaire),the favored term (bullying,

ijime

,

prepotenza

, and soforth) is used throughout the questionnaire, and insummaries and wider discussion; and respondents tothe questionnaire may well refer to their personal def-inition of this term rather than that given early on bythe researcher (Arora, 1996; Madsen, 1997).

In the present study’s comparison of the meaningof different terms, the intention was not to “privilege”any particular term or language, but rather to showthe kinds of situational meanings attributed to eachterm. However, given a current strong position of En-glish language in scientific discourse, and the wide-spread use of the term bullying (including its co-option as, e.g.,

bullismo

in Italian; Fonzi, 1997), theremay be particular interest in comparing other lan-guage terms for their similarity/dissimilarity to theEnglish term bullying.

Such information is also important for the study ofdevelopmental changes in perceptions of bullying.There is evidence for developmental differences inthe ways in which pupils construe bullying (Madsen,1997; Smith & Levan, 1995; Smith, Madsen, & Moody,1999). Younger pupils may not distinguish betweenbullying and fighting, broadening the use of the termbullying to cover nasty kinds of behavior even whenno imbalance of power is involved. Younger, Schwartz-man, and Ledingham (1985) compared children’s per-ceptions of aggression, withdrawal, and likabilityitems in Canadian children approximately 6, 9, and 12years of age. Using multidimensional scaling (MDS)techniques, they found a shift with age from a simpleevaluative dimension and low cohesiveness of clus-ters (high structure ratios in the MDS) to a more com-plex separation of clusters with an additional active–passive dimension, and higher within-cluster itemcohesiveness (lower structure ratios).

It is also possible that there are gender differencesin perceptions of bullying and related terms. This isan issue, given the well-established gender differ-ences found in the use of direct and indirect or phys-ical and psychological forms of aggression, includingbullying (Björkqvist et al., 1992; Crick & Grotpeter,1995, 1996; Rivers & Smith, 1994). Although little evi-dence has been found thus far for gender differencesin the understanding of aggression and bullying(Madsen, 1997), as opposed to their use, the possibil-ity of them emerging should be investigated.

Aims of the Present Study

This study examined the understanding of a varietyof terms cognate to bullying, in 14 countries, includ-


ing 13 major languages. Understanding was opera-tionalized in terms of applicability of a selection of 25stick-figure cartoons that displayed situations thatmight or might not be bullying, based on variouswell-used criteria. Age differences were examined bygiving the task to primary school children (8 years ofage) and secondary school children (14 years of age);samples were balanced for gender to also allow formale–female comparisons.

METHOD

The Cartoons Task

We first developed a series of 25 stick-figure car-toon pictures (see Table 1) that illustrated different sit-uations that might or might not be bullying, based onelements used in existing definitions of bullying(Smith, 1999). Most of the cartoons portrayed nega-tive acts; however, two prosocial cartoons (10, 18)were included. Two other nonaggressive cartoonswere paired with corresponding aggressive ones: one(8) showed a negative but accidental act and was con-trasted with one (9) in which a similar act was inten-tional; the other (16) showed friendly verbal teasingand was contrasted with one (17) that depicted simi-lar teasing that upset the recipient. One cartoon (4) re-ferred to provoked aggression. The remaining car-toons covered physical forms of aggression (1–7),direct verbal aggression (11–15), social exclusion ag-gression (19–23), and indirect relational aggression(24, 25); however, embedded in these were compari-sons of the defining criteria of bullying, namely repe-tition and imbalance of power. Thus, repetition wasmade explicit in some cartoons (5, 12, 20), and imbal-ance of power in others (3, 7, 21). Themes such as rac-ism (13), sexism (22, 23), and discrimination on thebasis of disability (14) or sexual orientation (15) werealso included.

The cartoons were piloted extensively before theset was finalized. Stick figures were used so as toavoid issues of clothing, which might vary by culture,and to avoid suggesting any particular ethnic groupor skin color. Thus, identical pictures were usedacross all cultures. Each cartoon had a caption in thenative language, as listed in Table 1 for the Englishlanguage version (boys). In each language, one set ofcartoons had captions with typical boys’ names in thecountry concerned, and a corresponding set had cap-tions with typical girls’ names; cartoons 22 and 23were in common to both gender sets. Examples offour cartoons (3 and 10 from the boys’ set, 14 and 21from the girls’ set) are shown in Figure 1.

The cartoon captions were descriptive (see Table 1)

and avoided use of any general terms such as bully-ing. The English captions constituted a reference set.In each other country, a researcher translated thesecaptions into the main native language as used byparticipants in the task. These captions were thenback-translated into English by another person, andreturned to the first author in London, who thenchecked them against the original versions and dis-cussed any discrepancies until these were resolved.

All 25 cartoons were used identically in all 14countries, with the exception of cartoons 13 and 15. Ifcolor of skin was not an important factor in a culture,an alternate caption about saying nasty things about achild talking in a different way was used for cartoon13. In addition, in some countries permission was notreadily forthcoming from schools to use cartoon 15,which was on sexual orientation (usually with 8-year-olds, but occasionally with 14-year-olds as well); thus,the cartoon was omitted from the main cross-nationalanalyses.

General Procedure

Researchers in all 14 countries followed an agreed-on three-step procedure.

Table 1 Captions for the 25 Cartoons (Male Version)

1. Mike and John don’t like each other and start to fight 2. Bill starts a fight with Joey3. Martin starts to fight with Akhtar, who is smaller4. Sean starts a fight with Ron because he said Sean was stupid5. Chris starts a fight with Damien every break time6. David tells Scott that if he doesn’t give him money, he will hit

him 7. Nick and his friends start to fight Terry8. Nigel borrows Duncan’s ruler and accidentally breaks it 9. Harry takes Ian’s ruler and breaks it

10. Jim forgot his pen so Kirk lends him one of his 11. Kurt says nasty things to Ben12. Charles says nasty things to Marcus every week 13. Stuart says nasty things to Jeff about the color of his skin

(alternate caption if color of skin is not an important factor in the culture: Stuart says nasty things to Jeff about his talking in a different way)

14. Joshua has a bad leg and must use a stick, Carl says nasty things to him about it

15. George says nasty things to Derek about his sexual orientation16. Ken makes fun of Graham’s hair, they both laugh 17. Anthony makes fun about Stan’s hair, Stan is upset 18. Mick asks Richard if he would like to play 19. Matt won’t let Lenny play today20. Sebastian never lets Rob play21. Henry and his friends won’t let Ray play with them 22. The girls won’t let Mark skip with them because he’s a boy 23. The boys won’t let Karen play football because she’s a girl 24. Gerry tells everyone not to talk to Guy 25. Bill spreads nasty stories about Alan

Smith et al. 1123

Step 1: List and select terms for bullying and social ex-clusion in the relevant language.

Likely terms to use inthe investigation were taken from dictionaries andthesauruses, questionnaires on bullying translatedinto the language, and research and popular writingson the topic. Some 5 to 10 terms were then chosen, onthe basis of meaning and applicability across thecountry/culture, to proceed to Step 2.

Step 2: Use focus groups with children to check on usageand broad understanding of terms.

At least two focusgroups were held, each consisting of at least four (usu-ally more) 8-year-olds and four (usually more) 14-year-olds. The ostensible aim for the participants was togenerate words that were currently used to describeantisocial/aggressive behaviors and situations atschool. To engage participants in debate, a subset ofthe cartoons was employed as stimulus materials. Forthe purposes of the study, the aim was to ensure thatterms selected for Step 3 were spontaneously used bysome participants, and were broadly familiar to mostparticipants.

It was recognized that this work could not often bedone on a varied sample across different sites in acountry (although some research teams did use twosites). However, dialect terms that sometimes ap-peared, but were local to a region within a country,were not selected for Step 3.

The intention was to end up with four to six termsfor Step 3. Often, more terms were used and under-stood by 14-year-olds than 8-year-olds. In such cases,all terms were used with the 14-year-old sample, butonly the subset of those terms that were understoodby 8-year-olds were used with the younger sample. Asan example from the English data, pilot work and focusgroups with children established that relevant terms inEnglish, besides bullying, included teasing, picking on,tormenting, harassment, and intimidation. All theseterms were used and understood by 14-year-olds.However, only bullying, teasing, and picking on werereadily understood by 8-year-olds, and thus onlythese three terms were used with this age group.

Step 3: Sorting task using cartoons to delineate ways in

Figure 1 Examples of four of the cartoons: Numbers 3 and 10 from the boys’ set, and 14 and 21 from the girls’ set.


which these terms are used.

The work was carried outin school settings, with children withdrawn fromclass on an individual basis (for all 8-year-olds; insome countries the 14-year-old data were obtained ona class basis). Of the terms selected for investigation,each was taken in turn. Children were shown or giventhe cartoons, with the researcher also reading the cap-tion in the case of 8-year-olds. Gender-appropriatecartoon sets were used. For each term, children wererequired to either include or exclude each cartoon intheir definition of the term with which they were pre-sented. This was done by sorting them in a pile underthe heading: “this is X” or “this is not X” (where X wasthe term being currently considered); or, in class pre-sentation with older children, by checking a standardscore sheet appropriately. The procedure was repeateduntil all terms were investigated. The captions weregiven in the order shown in Table 1. This was done tomaximize consistency across cultures, and to give a“narrative” line to the task, as children moved throughphysical, verbal, and more indirect/relational scenar-ios. The possible drawback of order effects was recog-nized, but pilot work suggested that a random orderwas more confusing for the children to follow.

Participants

The sorting task in Step 3 was given to a minimumof 20 boys and 20 girls each at 8 years and 14 years ofage (total

N

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1,245;

n

�

604 at 8 years,

n

�

641 at 14years). They were selected from schools that weredeemed reasonably representative of the educationsystem in that country; that is, they were not drawnfrom extreme groups in terms of academic ability, orsocioeconomic status. In all cases there were nearlyequal numbers of boys and girls at each age group(exactly equal unless stated). Sample sizes are shownin Table 2, together with the district of the countryfrom which they were recruited via local schools.Table 2 also shows the number of terms used for both8-year-olds and 14-year-olds (only one term wasavailable from the French team; due to a misunder-standing of instructions they chose the one term mostsimilar to bullying, from those terms used in the focusgroups with French pupils).

RESULTS

SPSS 10.0 for Windows was used for statistical purposes.

Structure of Responses to the Cartoons

The percentage of participants who included eachof the 24 cartoons (cartoon 15 was excluded, see

Method section) as part of their “definition” of eachterm was computed. The similarity or difference be-tween any two cartoons could be assessed by com-paring their percentage profiles. This permitted ananalysis of the structure of the cartoon set, over all re-spondents. To this end, MDS was conducted, usingdatasets from all 14 countries.

1

Genders were combined, but analyses were sepa-rated for the 8- and 14-year-olds, using the 47 termsthat were common to both age groups so that the twoage groups could be compared on the same set ofterms. Scores were averaged for each country beforeaggregating (correcting for minor differences in samplesize). The MDS was run on SPSS, minimizing Young’sstress. No transformations were carried out. TheManhattan proximity measure was employed to cre-ate a single distance matrix between cartoons, the dis-tance between two items being the sum of the abso-lute differences between the values (percentages) forthe items (cartoons). The matrix is square symmetric.An ordinal MDS model was specified, using Kruskal’s(1964a, 1964b) least squares monotonic transforma-tion. The Euclidean distance model was used. TheKruskal stress values (Formula 1) for one-, two-, three-,and four-dimensional solutions, respectively, were.08, .05, .03, and .01 for 8-year-olds; and .14, .08, .03,and .02 for 14-year-olds. These low values suggestedtwo-dimensional solutions were adequate for bothage groups. The MDS solutions for each age group areshown in Figures 2 and 3.

The MDS solutions for the 8- and 14-year-olds, re-spectively, were similar in overall structure; bothshowed on Dimension 1 (horizontal axis in figures)those cartoons that were not aggressive (prosocial,friendly teasing, accidental damage) at one end (left-hand side of figures) and cartoons of increasing ag-gression toward the other end (right-hand side of fig-ures), whereas the second dimension (vertical axis infigures) opposed physical cartoons (bottom of fig-ures) and verbal and social exclusion cartoons (top offigures). The somewhat lower stress value for the 8-year-olds (.05) indicates a better fit, and a simplerstructure, than for the 14-year-olds (.08). This is seen

1

Multidimensional scaling attempts to find the structure in aset of distance measures between objects or cases. This is accom-plished by assigning items to specific locations in a conceptualspace (usually two or three dimensional) such that the distancesbetween the points in space match the given dissimilarities asclosely as possible. Points are arranged so that similar items arerepresented by points that are close together (proximities) anddissimilar items are represented by points that are far apart. Thestress value of an MDS solution shows the degree of fit withinthe number of dimensions used, with smaller stress valuesmeaning a better fit.

Smith et al. 1125

also by comparing Figures 2 and 3; the cartoons arebunched more closely in Figure 2, and are morespread out and differentiated in Figure 3. Althougholder children were using the same two dimensionsto classify the cartoons, a greater level of differentia-tion was apparent; for example, the social exclusionitems (19, 22, 23) were more clearly separated fromthe verbal items in this age group compared with the8-year-olds.

Hierarchical cluster analyses

2

were conducted onthe same percentage profile data as the MDS solu-tions to identify distinct groups of cartoons. Ward’smethod was used to combine clusters. The distancematrix between cartoons was based on Euclidean dis-tance. These analyses further indicated a greater ca-pacity of the 14-year-olds to differentiate meaning inthe cartoons. At the same level of distinctness, the so-lution for the 8-year-olds produced only two clusters,whereas the solution for the 14-year-olds showed fiveclusters. The solution for the 8-year-olds distin-guished between the nonaggressive cartoons (8, 10,16, 18) on the one hand and the aggressive cartoons(all the rest) on the other. The five clusters produced

Table 2 Details of the Samples, and Number of Terms Used, in each of 14 Countries

Country Language

Number of Pupils at 8

Years

Number of Pupils at 14

Years

Number of Terms at 8

Years

Number of Terms at 14

Years District of Sample

Austria South Germanic 40 40 3 4 Styria (southeast) and Lower Austria (northeast)China Mandarin Chinese 50 50 2 7 Capital city of Shandong province, eastern

coastal areaEngland English 40 40 3 6 London areaFrance French 40 40 1 1 Paris areaGermany German 43 (22 boys,

21 girls)51 (26 boys,

25 girls)3 4 Munich area in southern Germany

Greece Greek 40 40 2 3 Athens and Ioannina in northwest GreeceIceland Icelandic 40 40 5 6 Reykjavik areaItaly Italian 40 40 7 7 Crema and Cremona, northern ItalyJapan Japanese 51 (25 boys,

26 girls)70 (37 boys,

33 girls)3 5 Tottori and Tokyo, on main island of Honshu

Norway Norwegian 40 40 2 4 Trondheim area, middle coastal region of Norway

Portugal Portuguese 40 40 6 6 Braga area in north PortugalSlovenia Slovenian 40 40 2 6 Ljubljana areaSpain Spanish 60 60 5 5 Seville (south Spain) and Madrid (central Spain)Thailand Thai 40 50 3 3 Rural area near Lampang in north Thailand

2

Hierarchical cluster analysis attempts to identify relativelyhomogeneous groups of variables, using an algorithm that startswith each variable in a separate cluster and combines clustersuntil only one is left. By relating this to MDS, clusters can bemapped onto the MDS configuration in an attempt to identifycommon dimensions. Thus, the co-occurrence of items can beexamined at the same time as the underlying dimensions onwhich they are arranged.

Figure 2 Multidimensional scaling solution of cartoon struc-ture for 8-year-olds.

Figure 3 Multidimensional scaling solution of cartoon struc-ture for 14-year-olds.


by the 14-year-olds, however, were nonaggressive (8,10, 16, 18), social

exclusion (19, 20, 21, 22, 23), verbal:direct

�

indirect

(11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 24, 25; and nineplaced more distantly), physical aggression (1, 4), andphysical bullying (2, 3, 5, 6, 7).

Gender Differences

An analysis of the structure of the cartoons, in bothMDS (corresponding to Figures 2 and 3) and hierar-chical cluster analysis solutions, was carried out sep-arately for boys and girls. For this purpose, datafrom 8- and 14-year-olds were combined, and the anal-yses were run on 45 terms used by both age groups,from 13 countries (Norway was not included becauselabeling by gender had been omitted in data collec-tion). The Kruskal stress values for one-, two-,three- and four-dimensional solutions, respectively,were .12, .07, .03, and .01 for males; and .09, .05, .03,and .02 for females. These low values indicated thattwo-dimensional solutions were adequate for bothgenders.

The MDS solutions for both genders are shown inFigures 4 and 5. The overall structures were very sim-ilar; and, as described for Figures 2 and 3, the hori-zontal axis discriminated prosocial from aggressivecartoons, and the vertical axis opposed physical(bottom of figures) and verbal (middle of figures)aggression from social exclusion (top of figures).

To establish the extent of similarity more objec-tively, two hierarchical cluster analyses were con-ducted, one for each gender, on the same data used inthe MDS solutions above. The specifications followedwere identical to those used for the earlier age com-parisons. At the level of getting a five-cluster solutionas discussed above, configurations were very similar.

For both genders, there were clusters of nonaggres-sive (8, 10, 16, 18), social exclusion (19, 20, 21, 22, 23),and physical aggression (1, 4); both genders also hadclusters of verbal:direct

�

indirect (11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 24,25), and physical bullying (2, 3, 5, 6, 7), with the onlydifference being that cartoon 9 (nonaccidentallybreaking a ruler) was included in the physical bully-ing cluster for boys, but in the verbal:direct

�

indirectcluster for girls.

Comparison of Terms on the Cartoon Cluster Structure

To compare terms on the cartoon cluster structure,a similar cluster analysis to that described above wasused, but was based on data for all 67 terms definedby 14-year-olds, and not just the 47 also used by the8-year-olds. This cluster analysis produced the samefive main clusters, and a plot very similar to thatshown in Figure 3: a nonaggressive cluster (8, 10, 16,18) that included two prosocial items, plus friendlyteasing and accidental damage; a social exclusioncluster (19, 20, 21, 22, 23) that included the five so-cial exclusion cartoons; a verbal:direct

�

indirectcluster (9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 24, 25) that included theverbal cartoons, plus nasty teasing, and the two in-direct verbal cartoons, together with the accidentaldamage cartoon (9), which was intermediate betweenthis cluster (where it technically fell) and the phys-ical bullying cluster (see Figure 3); a physical ag-gression cluster (1, 4) that included the two physi-cal cartoons that most clearly did not fit a definitionof bullying—an even-handed dispute and a pro-voked retaliation; and a physical bullying cluster(2, 3, 5, 6, 7) that generally implied some repetitionor power imbalance.

Figure 4 Multidimensional scaling solution of cartoon struc-ture for boys.

Figure 5 Multidimensional scaling solution of cartoon struc-ture for girls.

Smith et al. 1127

The above clusters were used to simplify the mean-ing profiles of the 67 terms. A mean percentage scorewas computed for each term on each cluster. Themeaning of each term could thus be expressed in 5percentage scores, instead of 25. The outcome is pre-sented in Table 3. The range of scores for each clusterwas 0 to 100. For example (taking the fourth line inTable 3), the term

angreifen

was only applied in 3% ofresponses to the nonaggressive cartoons (i.e., aver-aged over these four cartoons individually), and only7% of the social exclusion and 11% of the verbal bul-lying cartoons, but it was applied to 74% of the phys-ical aggression cartoons, and 83% of the physical bul-lying cartoons; this indicates that the term

angreifen

is used for physical aggression and bullying butnot for nonphysical forms. As expected, none of theterms scored highly on the nonaggressive cluster;however, there was considerable variation in weight-ing on the other four clusters, which showed differ-ences in meaning—sometimes obvious, sometimesmore subtle.

Conceptual Structure of Terms Used in Different Languages

For each term, the percentage of participants whoincluded each of the 24 cartoons as part of their “def-inition” of that term was computed. The meaning ofeach term was operationalized with regard to themean percentage for the cartoons in each of the fiveclusters. The similarity or difference in meaning be-tween any two terms could be assessed by comparingtheir percentage profiles across the five clusters. Thispermitted a comparison of the meaning of the termsacross languages and cultures.

To examine similarities and differences in theirmeanings, MDS was first conducted on all 67 termsfor the 14-year-olds. The specifications for the analy-sis were identical to those applied in the earlier MDSanalyses, except that in this case, a distance matrixwas computed between terms instead of between car-toons as was done in the earlier analyses. Stressvalues for one- to four-dimensional solutions were,respectively, .34, .18, .09, and .06. This suggests that athree-dimensional solution was needed. Examiningthis, the first dimension opposed the aggressive andthe nonaggressive terms, the second dimension op-posed the physical and social exclusion terms, andthe third dimension differentiated the verbal andsocial exclusion terms. Because a three-dimensionalsolution is difficult to visualize or portray, a hierachi-cal cluster analysis was conducted to aid the identifi-cation of subgroups of terms. The specifications forthe analysis were identical to those used before, with

the distance matrix computed between terms. Sixmain groups or clusters were identified (see Figure 6).The clusters can be interpreted by referring back toTable 3, where the “meaning” of each term (with re-gard to the cartoons) can be inferred.

The first cluster consisted of 19 terms, which weregenerally higher on the physical bullying, verbal,and social exclusion clusters than on the physical ag-gression cluster; thus, these terms tended to be clos-est to the definition of bullying, and did indeed in-clude the English term bullying, as well as the termpicking on.

The second cluster consisted of six terms, whichscored most highly on the social exclusion cluster.The third cluster had seven terms; these all scoredmuch more highly on the verbal:direct

�

indirectcluster than on the physical bullying or social exclu-sion clusters. The English term teasing appeared inthis cluster.

The fourth cluster had 19 terms; these were weightedmost highly on the verbal:direct

�

indirect cluster, butmoderately on the physical bullying cluster, and lesson the social exclusion cluster. The English terms ha-rassment, intimidation, and tormenting appeared inthis cluster.

The fifth cluster contained three items, which wereonly weighted highly on physical aggression andphysical bullying. The sixth cluster had 13 items,which loaded highest on either the physical aggres-sion or the physical bullying cluster, but moderatelyon one or two other aggressive clusters.

Corresponding terms from different languageswere not necessarily close together; thus, althoughdifferent countries did contribute different numbersof terms to the analyses (

range

, 1–7; see Tables 2 and3) there was no reason to suppose that this had af-fected the cluster structure obtained. For example, thefour terms used in Austria all fell in different clus-ters (Table 3, Figure 6):

gemein sein

in the bullyingcluster,

sekkieren

in the verbal cluster,

ärgern

in the ver-bal

�

physical cluster, and

angreifen

in the physicalonly cluster.

Figure 6 shows that the initial bifurcation of clus-ters of terms was between the “physical” terms (Clus-ters 5 and 6) and the rest. Clusters 5 and 6 effectivelyincluded terms corresponding to violence (such asPortuguese

violência

, Italian

violenza

). The next splitwas to separate out the bullying terms (Cluster 1)from those that referred more specifically to verbaland social exclusion (Clusters 2, 3 and 4). The thirdsplit separated social exclusionary terms in Cluster 2(such as Portuguese rejeição) from the verbal terms(Clusters 3 and 4). The fourth split led to the six clus-ters described above.


Table 3 Mean Percentage of 14-Year-Olds Who Included the Cartoons in Each Cluster as Part of Their Definition of that Term

Nonaggressive Physical Aggression Physical BullyingVerbal:Direct

�

Indirect Social Exclusion

AustriaA1: sekkieren 16 40 51 73 34A2: ärgern 21 56 60 85 58A3: gemein sein 23 65 78 94 90A4: angreifen 3 74 83 11 7

China (romanized terms)C1: lingru 2 28 57 71 51C2: qifu 3 13 94 85 68C3: qiling 2 25 82 72 52C4: qiru 2 22 79 80 53C5: qiwu 2 23 67 89 58C6: qiya 3 17 85 55 60C7: wuru 2 24 39 84 45

EnglandE1: bullying 4 34 94 91 62E2: harassment 10 42 88 84 49E3: teasing 15 43 35 83 51E4: intimidation 7 42 78 82 46E5: tormenting 14 59 76 84 64E6: picking on 8 39 95 96 67

FranceF1: violence 3 56 83 60 26

GermanyGE1: ärgern 7 85 61 65 46GE2: angreifen 2 89 91 72 30GE3: gemein sein 4 28 85 93 85GE4: schikanieren 6 20 58 80 55

GreeceG1: kano to magha 8 40 84 70 65G2: miono 10 70 74 85 78G3: taleporo 13 76 92 85 75

IcelandIS1: radast a 3 71 95 42 25IS2: hrekkja 9 40 75 88 60IS3: skilja ut undan 1 4 12 27 97IS4: strida 13 41 52 90 64IS5: taka fyrir 4 31 81 73 65IS6: einelti 4 11 86 81 75

ItalyIT1: aggressività 10 91 96 68 63IT2: fare il duro 12 68 80 74 72IT3: prepotenza 10 71 92 86 90IT4: violenza 10 93 96 63 59IT5: approffitarse 12 48 82 84 75IT6: cattiveria 11 75 96 91 86IT7: scorretto 15 85 94 93 89

JapanJ1: ijime 4 9 50 87 39J2: ijiwaru 8 27 56 94 56J3: iyagarase 8 30 56 97 43J4: fuzake 27 26 38 56 19J5: nakamahazushi 4 8 29 55 65

NorwayN1: erting 18 29 28 67 36N2: mobbing 6 17 46 70 39N3: plaging 11 35 81 77 58N4: krangling 9 88 45 22 18

(Continued)

Smith et al. 1129

DISCUSSION

The cartoon methodology used in the present studygenerally proved successful; children appeared to en-joy the task and it held their attention. This was facil-itated by the narrative line used in the sequence, be-cause often one feature was changed at a time. Thedanger of this technique is the possibility of order ef-fects; however, these were not apparent in the results.For example, the social exclusion cartoons near theend (19–23) were clearly treated differently than otheritems, including the last two (24, 25). The two pro-social cartoons (10, 18), although separated by sevenother cartoons, were scored almost identically (Fig-ures 2 and 3).

As predicted, the results indicated that 8-year-oldshad a less differentiated understanding of terms thandid the 14-year-olds. Overall, the lack of differentia-tion between the cartoons for the 8-year-olds (twoclusters versus five for the 14-year-olds) suggests arelatively limited ability in this younger age group todifferentiate the situations presented in the cartoons,by means of the terms presented to them. The agecomparison was based on the same 47 terms. How-ever, the 14-year-olds had a wider choice of terms in

many countries (Table 2), and although the termsshared with 8-year-olds were usually presented first,this was not invariably done; it is conceivable that thelarger number of terms available to many 14-year-olds assisted their differentiation. It is also possiblethat younger children might have differentiated moreon a free-sorting task with the cartoons, rather than averbal labeling task, as was used in this study. How-ever, the present finding is consistent with that ofYounger et al. (1985, 1986), who also used MDS tech-niques and found a progressive differentiation in 6-,9-, and 12-year-olds’ perceptions of classmates interms of aggression, likeability, and withdrawal.

The present study’s findings (Figures 2 and 3) sug-gest that at 8 years, children still primarily contrastaggressive and nonaggressive scenarios, but do notdistinguish so clearly between different forms of ag-gression (physical aggression, physical bullying, ver-bal aggression, and social exclusion). This is in linewith the finding in a study by Smith and Levan (1995)with 6-year-olds, that bullying and fighting are notclearly distinguished in young children. Figure 2 doesshow some separation between physical aggressionand bullying (above the horizontal axis) and verbalplus social exclusionary aggression (below the hori-

PortugalP1: abuso 3 10 71 55 30P2: armar-se 1 18 72 56 75P3: insulto 4 35 17 58 20P4: provoção 3 60 69 78 44P5: rejeição 1 8 38 54 81P6: violência 1 18 74 24 16

SloveniaSL1: nadlegovanje 13 51 89 67 42SL2: nasilni tvo 6 88 96 48 33SL3: trpin enje 7 58 93 75 65SL4: ustrahovanje 4 45 79 49 31SL5: zavra anje 7 43 54 66 92SL6: zlorabljanje 4 40 84 59 49

SpainS1: maltrato 8 49 96 85 65S2: meterse con 15 66 63 86 40S3: rechazo 6 28 42 81 96S4: abuso 5 21 86 75 58S5: egoismo 6 21 54 66 94

ThailandT1: nisai mai dee 15 77 79 81 69T2: klang 19 32 64 86 67T3: tum raai 10 38 76 61 48

Note:

The five clusters consist of the following cartoons: nonaggressive (8, 10, 16, 18), physical aggression (1, 4), physical bullying (2, 3, 5,6, 7), verbal:direct

�

indirect (9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 24, 25), and social exclusion (19, 20, 21, 22, 23).

Table 3 Mean Percentage of 14-Year-Olds Who Included the Cartoons in Each Cluster as Part of Their Definition of that Term

Nonaggressive Physical Aggression Physical BullyingVerbal:Direct

�

Indirect Social Exclusion

sc

c

Table 3

Continued


zontal axis), but this separation is not as significant at8 years as it is at 14 years. Also, the 8-year-olds did notappear to so clearly separate physical aggression andphysical bullying as did the 14-year-olds (Clusters 2and 3), nor did they so clearly separate verbal aggres-sion and social exclusion as did the 14-year-olds(Clusters 4 and 5). This lesser discrimination of types

of bullying by 8-year-olds might be due to the factthat they experience physical bullying more than theverbal or social exclusionary forms (rather than beingdue to cognitive limitations). However, althoughphysical forms are more common in younger chil-dren, verbal bullying and social exclusion are cer-tainly not infrequent at this age (Genta et al., 1996;Whitney & Smith, 1993), or even younger ages (Cricket al., 1997); thus, an explanation linked to experienceis considered unlikely.

The 14-year-olds clearly discriminated the differ-ent cartoons in more detail. It is nevertheless interest-ing that the two indirect relational cartoons (24 and25) did not begin to form a separate cluster, but werefully integrated with the other direct verbal aggres-sion items (11–15). It would be interesting to see ifadults separate these two clusters more clearly; re-searchers (Björkqvist et al., 1992; Crick et al., 1997;Crick & Grotpeter, 1995, 1996) have distinguishedthese as two separate kinds of aggression.

The age differences in the present study were gen-erally found to be consistent in the different countries,when this was explored on individual country data.The lesser differentiation of terms by younger chil-dren raises important issues in the measurement ofbullying (Smith & Levan, 1995). There is a possibilitythat the higher reported rates of victimization oftenfound in younger children are due to a more inclusiveunderstanding of the term bullying, which does notdelineate it as only a subset of aggression. Examiningthis possibility in relation to the large-scale surveystudies using the Olweus questionnaire, Smith, Mad-sen, and Moody (1999) concluded that the more inclu-sive understanding of bullying by younger children(up to 8 years) was probably an important factor inthe high rates of bullying and victimization often re-ported by these age groups.

The present study also examined gender differ-ences in the clustering of terms, by running analyses(Figures 4 and 5) separately for each gender. Therewas little difference in the configurations of cartoonsin the MDS solutions, and the cluster analysis pro-duced almost identical cluster structure at the five-solution level (with just one cartoon, 9, being in a dif-ferent cluster for boys than for girls). We concludedthat there were no large gender differences in the un-derstanding of the kinds of social situations depictedin the cartoon set. This is consistent with other studieson the definition of bullying (Madsen, 1997; Smith &Levan, 1995), which suggests that although boys andgirls differ in the kinds of bullying they give and re-ceive (Lagerspetz, Björkqvist, & Peltonen, 1988), atany particular age they share a common understand-ing of what the terms mean. Even though boys may

Figure 6 Cluster analysis of 67 terms as used by 14-year-olds.

Smith et al. 1131

directly experience more physical bullying, and girlsmay experience more indirect bullying, there is con-siderable overlap. In addition, both boys and girls arelikely to observe a considerable amount of bullyinginvolving both same-sex and opposite-sex children(O’Connell et al., 1999).

The cartoon methodology allowed for the ability tocompare 67 terms from 14 countries, with regard totheir weighting on the five major clusters obtainedfrom Figure 3 (in a slightly modified version embod-ying 67 not 47 terms). The results (Table 3) and thecluster analysis (Figure 6) show something of the con-ceptual structure captured in different languages, andshow how closely other terms relate to the term bul-lying. Naturally, the results are limited by the choiceof terms used in each country, and the number ofterms available. The relatively few items in the socialexclusion cluster (six items) may reflect an uninten-tional lesser emphasis on these terms in the instruc-tions given to participating teams for generatingterms to use. Indeed, the English data did not includesuch terms as social exclusion or rejection. Thus, littleattention can be given to the absence of a term in theclusters in Table 3, for a particular country or lan-guage. However, it is possible to compare profiles ofthose terms, which are present.

The English term bullying loaded highly on bothphysical and verbal bullying, moderately highly onsocial exclusion, less highly on an even-handed dis-pute or a provoked retaliation, and, of course, mini-mally on nonaggression (see Table 3). This is consis-tent with the general adult understanding of the term;bullying is different from aggression, and is generallythought to be both physical and verbal, but is not al-ways thought to include more psychological forms ofbehavior such as social exclusion. Boulton (1997)found that less than 50% of teachers and only one infive pupils in English schools defined psychologicalor emotional abuse as “bullying.”

Table 3 might be used to help choose the most suit-able term, when translating a questionnaire such asthe Olweus questionnaire into another language.Even if the questionnaire gives an extended definitionnear the beginning, it is usual that one term is used inmost of the questions (e.g., “How often have you beenbullied this month?”), and it is correspondingly likelythat children may use their natural understanding ofthis term (“bullied”) rather more than the longer def-inition read earlier.

However, the English term bullying

,

as used byschoolchildren, does not match perfectly with the def-initional concept used by many researchers and nowwidely accepted in the scientific community; this isbecause the term bullying, at least in England in the

late 1990s, still did not fully include social exclusion.Thus the Portuguese term

abuso

might be taken asreasonably similar in common usage to the Englishterm bullying, being high on physical and verbal bul-lying, lower on social exclusion, and very low onfighting. However, the Portuguese term

armar-se

couldbe seen as a better correspondent to the scientific def-inition, because it is higher on social exclusion. Thisimperfect correspondence between popular and sci-entific definition of terms such as bullying is an issuethat researchers must remain aware of.

Table 3 may also help in the interpretation of cross-national comparisons. For example, Genta et al.(1996) compared rates of bullying (using the Olweusquestionnaire) in Italy, with those in the United King-dom reported by Whitney and Smith (1993). Gener-ally high rates of bullying were found in both centraland southern Italy that were notably higher than therates reported in the United Kingdom. In the Italianquestionnaire, the term

prepotenza

was used for bully-ing. Table 3 shows that

prepotenza

does indeed loadhighly on physical, verbal, and social exclusionarybullying, but also on fighting (Cluster 2). Thus, thehigher rates may reflect a more inclusive response in-corporating even-handed fighting, as well as bullyingwith an imbalance of power. Using the term

prepo-tenza

in questionnaires in Italy may therefore lead toan overestimation, if the findings are then referred toas yielding rates of bullying. Other Italian terms such as

violenza

,

cattiveria

, or

scoretto

suffer a similar problem.An alternative to using global terms such as bully-

ing in questionnaire surveys is to ask for informationon the experience of particular acts. For example, theLife in School checklist (Arora, 1994) asks children ifthey have experienced acts such as being hit, threat-ened, teased, or called names. This avoids issues ofchildren’s understanding of the term bullying. How-ever, if researchers wish to make generalizationsabout the occurrence of bullying, they face the prob-lem of deciding which acts should be included as bul-lying. This amounts to a decision by the researchers,not the children. In addition, such questionnaires nor-mally do not specify that there should be an imbal-ance of power in the act experienced, so straightfor-ward fighting and aggression (rather than bullying)may be included by researchers. These drawbacksmean that there is likely to continue to be a place forquestionnaires about bullying (or

ijime

,

abuso

, orwhatever term is used in a particular country), and itis then important to know how children understandthese terms.

Researchers who investigate the phenomenon ofbullying are involved, as are adult and child membersof the community, in the process of constructing its


meaning in a social and historical context. Histori-cally, meanings of words change. Even the core con-cept of the term bully has changed dramatically overseveral centuries. More subtle changes have takenplace in the past 5 years, with the incorporation ofmore indirect and relational forms of bullying intocurrent definitions. In addition, the term bullying isnow commonly used in the workplace and is notsolely confined to the school context.

The current study therefore represents an histori-cal snapshot of the meaning of terms cognate to bul-lying, at the turn of the second millenium. This snap-shot is moreover limited by the particular samples ofterms used, and of choice of respondents, in the 14countries selected. However, the findings should as-sist in the design and interpretation of comparativecross-national studies of bullying at the present timeand for some years to come. In addition, the findingsconcerning the greater discrimination of criteria at 14years than 8 years, and the lack of gender differencesin understanding and use of terms despite the genderdifferences in behavior, may be of considerable gener-alizability over time and in different countries.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Hidefumi Arimoto, Julius K. Bjorns-son, Cheryl Blackadder, Pamela Burton, Isabel Fernan-dez, Rosa Fera, Hector Gutierrez, Stefan Korn, JessicaMahdavi, Ersilia Menesini, Vicky Panagiotidou, VickyPavlidis, Colin Pritchard, Rosario del Rey, Ebba Staven,Mitsuru Taki, and Thanes Wongyannava for help indata collection. This study was supported by contractERBFMRX-CT-970139 from the European Commissionon “The Causes and Nature of Bullying and Social Ex-clusion in Schools, and Ways of Preventing Them”(http://www.gold.ac.uk/tmr).

ADDRESSES AND AFFILIATIONS

Corresponding author: Peter K. Smith, Department ofPsychology, Goldsmiths College, New Cross, LondonSE14 6NW, U.K.; e-mail: [email protected]. HelenCowie is at the University of Surrey Roehampton,London, U.K.; Ragnar F. Olafsson is at the Institute forEducational Research, Reykjavik, Iceland; and AndyP. D. Liefooghe is at Birkbeck College, London, U.K.Collaborating authors and their affiliations are: AnaAlmeida, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal;Hozumi Araki, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Ja-pan; Cristina del Barrio, Universidad Autonoma deMadrid, Madrid, Spain; Angela Costabile, Universitádella Calabria, Cosenza, Italy; Bojan Dekleva, Uni-versity of Ljubljana, Llubljana, Slovenia; Anastasia

Houndoumadi, Deree College, Athens, Greece; Ken-neth Kim, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.;Ragnar P. Olafsson, Institute for Educational Research,Reykjavik, Iceland; Rosario Ortega, Universidad deSevilla, Seville, Spain; Jacques Pain, Universite ParisX Nanterre, Paris, France; Lena Pateraki, Deree Col-lege, Athens, Greece; Mechthild Schafer, UniversitätMünchen, Munich, Germany; Monika Singer, Gold-smiths College, University of London, London, U.K.;Andrea Smorti, Universitá di Firenze, Florence, Italy;Yuichi Toda, Osaka University of Education, Osaka,Japan; Helgi Tomasson, University of Iceland, Reyk-javik, Iceland; Zhang Wenxin, Shandong Teacher’sUniversity, Jinan, People’s Republic of China.

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