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Rina A. Bonanno, Department of Human Development and Learning; Shelley Hymel, De- partment of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education.

We are grateful to the Canadian Institute for Health Research, whose financial support through the Gender and Aggression Project made this research possible. We also thank the stu- dents, teachers, and administrators who participated in this project. The research reported herein was completed as part of the doctoral research of Rina A. Bonanno. Portions of this research were presented at the European Association for Research on Adolescence, Turin, Italy, May, 2008.

Address correspondence to Rina A. Bonanno, Department of Human Development and Learning, Dowling College School of Education, 150 Idle Hour Boulevard, Oakdale, NY 11769. Phone: 631-244-1093. E-mail: [email protected].

M e r r i l l - P a l M e r Q u a r t e r l y , V o l . 5 6 , N o . 3

Beyond Hurt Feelings Investigating Why Some Victims of Bullying Are at Greater Risk for Suicidal Ideation

Rina A. Bonanno Dowling College Shelley Hymel University of British Columbia

This study investigated why some adolescents who are victimized through peer bullying are more negatively impacted than others. Drawing from research on peer victimization and suicidology, two theoretically derived models were inves- tigated, one examining social hopelessness as a risk factor, the other examining social support as a protective factor, both seeking to explain potential paths between victimization and suicidal ideation. Students in Grades 8–10 (N = 399) completed self-report measures of victimization, suicidal ideation, hopelessness (general and social), and perceived social support (from family and friends). Re- sults indicated that social hopelessness partially mediated the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation, suggesting that one potential mechanism by which victimized students become suicidal is through victimization’s impact on social hopelessness. The more socially hopeless someone becomes, the greater is their risk for having suicidal thoughts. Findings also revealed that perceived social support buffered the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation, such that victimized students with higher perceived social support from family reported lower levels of suicidal ideation than did students with lower perceived social support.

Beyond Hurt Feelings 421

In recent years there have been numerous, well-publicized incidents of youth from countries around the world committing suicide in response to being victimized by their peers (e.g., see Marr & Field, 2001). Indeed, in Norway, the impetus for the first large-scale, national effort to address peer bullying in schools was in response to the tragic deaths of three young boys who committed suicide, “in all probability as a consequence of severe bullying by peers” (Olweus, 1993, p. 2). These tragedies clearly demon- strate the devastating consequences that bullying can have on its victims. Research has confirmed that victimization by peers is associated not only with suicidal ideation (Kaltiala-Heino, Rimpelä, Marttunen, Rimpelä, & Rantanen, 1999; Kim, Koh, & Leventhal, 2005; Rigby & Slee, 1999; van der Wal, de Wit, & Hirasing, 2003) but with a number of internalizing diffi- culties, including anxiety (Craig, 1998; Graham & Juvonen, 1998), depres- sion (Craig, 1998; Neary & Joseph, 1994; Slee, 1995; van der Wal et al., 2003), psychosomatic symptoms (Kaltiala-Heino, Rimpelä, Rantanen, & Rimpelä, 2000), and poor self-worth (Graham & Juvonen, 1998; Neary & Joseph, 1994). Nevertheless, it is important to underscore that not all children who are bullied will develop internalizing difficulties. Although researchers have documented the consequences associated with involve- ment in bullying (for a review, see Hawker & Boulton, 2000), there is a paucity of research investigating the factors that influence victimized chil- dren’s risk for negative consequences, including one of the most serious as- sociated with peer victimization: suicidality (Rigby, 2001). Drawing from research on both peer victimization and youth suicide, the present study in- vestigated theoretically derived risk and protective factors that are hypoth- esized to influence the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation.

Victimization and Suicidal Behavior

Kaltiala-Heino et al. (1999), along with Roland (2002), were among the first to demonstrate significant associations between involvement as either a victim or a bully and suicidal ideation among large samples of Finnish and Norwegian adolescents. Although both studies brought much-needed attention to the more serious consequences associated with bullying, the reliability of such associations are hindered by the fact that both studies used single-item measures to tap suicidal ideation. As described by Reyn- olds (1988), suicidal ideation encompasses “the domain of thoughts and ideas about: death, suicide, and serious self-injurious behaviors, including thoughts related to the planning, conduct, and outcome of suicidal behav- ior” (p. 4). Single-item indices are not able to capture variations in the com- plexity and severity of suicidal thoughts. Although more recent research

422 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

by Brunstein Klomek, Marrocco, Kleinman, Schonfeld, and Gould (2008) used validated measures of suicidal behavior to demonstrate that all forms of victimization were positively related to both suicidal ideation and sui- cide attempts, there is still significantly more research investigating links between victimization and all other forms of internalizing difficulties than there are investigating links to suicidality.

The dearth of research specifically investigating bullying and suicidal behaviors in children and adolescents is in part due to the fact that conduct- ing research on this topic (in a normative sample) presents unique ethical challenges for researchers. A common fallacy is that discussing suicide can lead to thoughts about suicide (Gould et al., 2005), making some parents and school personnel, in our experience, reluctant to give consent for their children to participate in studies that ask questions about suicide. This, coupled with evidence that suggests depression is a significant predictor of suicidal behavior in young inpatients (Marciano & Kazdin, 1994), may make using measures designed to tap depression a less controversial and more viable alternative for indirectly addressing risk for suicide. For ex- ample, Slee (1995) used a measure that tapped several indices of men- tal health, including severe depression. The depression subscale included items such as “felt that life isn’t worth living.” Although Slee was able to demonstrate that victimization was significantly related to severe de- pression, severe depression is not analogous to suicidal ideation, and risk for suicide cannot adequately be determined by depression. Although de- pression has been shown to be the most common antecedent to suicide (McLean & Taylor, 1998), simply identifying children who are depressed is not sufficient for identifying all children who are at risk for suicide, in that roughly 30% of suicidal youth are not depressed (Reynolds & Mazza, 1990). In light of these methodological concerns, the present research used a well-validated self-report measure of suicidal ideation and examined its relation to peer victimization.

Risk and Protective Factors

Of primary interest in the present study was the identification of risk and protective factors that might impact the association between victimization and suicidal ideation. Drawing from the literature on suicidality, two poten- tial influences on the link between victimization and suicidal ideation were specified: hopelessness and social support.

Hopelessness as a pathway to suicidality. Hopelessness has been de- fined as a system of cognitive schemas in which the common denomina- tor is negative expectations about the future (Beck, Weissman, Lester, &

Beyond Hurt Feelings 423

Trexler, 1974). Within the literature on suicidal behavior among adoles- cents, feelings of hopelessness have been shown to be significantly related to suicidal ideation (Terzi-Unsal & Kapci, 2005) and to be a better predictor of suicide or suicidal ideation than depression is (Maris, 1992). Prospec- tively, hopelessness has been shown to be a better predictor of suicide than even suicidal ideation is (Beck, Steer, Kovacs, & Garrison, 1985). Within the literature on bullying, it is recognized that some victimized children may feel hopeless (Swearer, Grills, Haye, & Cary, 2004), and at least one study has demonstrated that victimized children score higher on measures of hopelessness than nonvictimized children (Coggan, Bennett, Hooper, & Dickinson, 2003). To date, however, no studies have investigated the role that hopelessness plays in the relation between peer victimization and suicidal ideation.

Hewitt, Norton, Flett, Callander, and Cowan (1998) have refined the concept of hopelessness by considering a more domain-specific form: so- cial hopelessness. Unlike global measures of hopelessness, social hope- lessness encompasses both negative expectations regarding one’s future interpersonal relations, and one’s ability to deal with their interpersonal relations. Recent research has demonstrated that social hopelessness is not only associated with suicidal ideation (Heisel & Flett, 2004) but that it can discriminate between high- and low-ideating groups when general hope- lessness failed to do so (Heisel, Flett, & Hewitt, 2003). Given the highly interpersonal nature of bullying and the heightened importance for adoles- cents to feel like they belong (Hamm & Faircloth, 2005), social hopeless- ness may be a more salient form of hopelessness for adolescents than is general hopelessness. Accordingly, the present study investigated the hy- pothesis that feelings of hopelessness, especially social hopelessness, are a mitigating or mediating factor in the relation between peer victimization and suicidal behaviors. In other words, proposed is a potential mechanism by which victimized students become suicidal whereby victimization con- tributes to hopelessness and hopelessness in turn contributes to suicidal ideation. This model is consistent with suggestions put forward by Beck et al. (1985) that hopelessness mediates the relation between “source” vari- ables and suicidal behaviors.

Buffering effect of social support. A potential protective factor con- sidered in the present study was the availability of social support. Social support has been shown to be both directly and indirectly related to suicidal behavior among diverse groups. For example, Clum et al. (1997) found that perceived social support uniquely contributed to the explained variance in suicidality in a sample of American young adults. Bjarnason (1994) found that mental social support from family had significant independent effects

424 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

on reducing suicidal behavior among Icelandic youth. Indirect effects have been established by Esposito and Clum (2002) whereby social support was found to moderate the relationship between history of abuse and suicidal ideation in a juvenile delinquent sample. Lower levels of suicidal ideation were found among youth who had a severe history of sexual abuse but reported higher satisfaction with social support. Similarly, de Man, Leduc, and Labreche-Gauthier (1993) found that dissatisfaction with reported so- cial support significantly contributed to the prediction of suicidal ideation in a sample of French Canadian adolescents. Additionally, ideators were less likely to list their parents or siblings as sources of social support that they could rely on.

Over a decade ago, Rigby and Slee (1999) demonstrated a negative association between social support and suicidal ideation among adoles- cents involved in bully-victim problems. Suicidal ideation was less likely in adolescents who indicated they had more social support. Rigby and Slee hypothesized that victimization would interact with social support in pre- dicting suicidal ideation but were not able to demonstrate that social sup- port indeed had a buffering or moderating effect on the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation. One possibility is that Rigby and Slee included a composite index of social support from a number of sources (parents, peers, and teachers) rather than examining each source separately. Accordingly, the present study examined whether specific forms of social support from family as well as peers served as a protective factor that mod- erates the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation among ado- lescents, buffering teens from the impact of peer victimization.

Method

Participants

Participants were 399 students (228 girls and 171 boys; M age = 14.2 years, SD = .91 years) in Grades 8–10 from an urban community high school in British Columbia, Canada. Following approval from both the institutional review board and the school board research committee, letters of consent (including versions translated into Chinese, Vietnamese, and Spanish) were sent home with students from all eighth-, ninth-, and tenth-grade class- rooms (N = 20 classrooms). Approximately 91% of students who received parental consent also gave their assent, resulting in a participation rate of 76% of all eligible students from the school. The sample was predomi- nantly Asian Canadian (62%), followed by White (22%) and mixed descent (6%). The majority of students came from intact families and were living

Beyond Hurt Feelings 425

with both of their parents (69.7%), followed by single-parent households (15.3%). Information provided by the school board indicated that the stu- dents’ socioeconomic backgrounds varied, with approximately half of the families reporting an income of less than $50,000 per year and one quarter reporting an income of less than $25,000 per year.

Procedures

Students completed a series of paper-and-pencil measures during a single- group testing session (50–60 min) conducted in January 2005 by the first author (R.B.) along with trained research assistants. Students were told that, although their individual responses to questions would remain strictly confidential, the author had an ethical responsibility to inform parents if their son’s or daughter’s responses indicated that they were having serious thoughts of suicide. Parents of the 26 students whose responses indicated severe suicidal ideation were contacted by one of the authors and offered the opportunity to have their child/children speak with a counselor at the school. Students were also given the opportunity to request and receive additional support from their school counselor by completing an optional final section on the last page of the survey. At the end of each testing ses- sion, all surveys were carefully checked, and any student requests for help were given to the appropriate school counselor for immediate follow-up. In addition, a handout containing contact information for various mental health resources and youth crisis hotlines was made available to all par- ticipants. Finally, school counselors agreed to provide support for students who reported high levels of suicidal ideation and/or who asked for such support. Counselors were provided with an information packet that con- tained facts on bullying, depression, and suicidal ideation among adoles- cents, as well as a list of resources available within the community.

Measures

All instruments administered in the present study were paper-and-pencil, self-report measures that had been previously used with youth of this age. A total of five measures were used for the purposes of the present study to tap the following constructs.

Victimization. The Bullying Questionnaire is a 32-item instrument developed for the present study by the authors in consultation with local school staff to tap students’ perceptions of their experiences with both over- all and specific forms of bullying, victimization, and witnessing, including physical, verbal, relational, and electronic (cyber)bullying. Respondents

426 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

were asked to indicate how often they experienced each form of bully- ing on a 5-point scale, ranging from “not at all” to “many times a week.” Higher scores reflected more frequent involvement in bullying, as a bully, victim, or witness. For the present study, student reports of overall victim- ization were used (“Overall, how often have you been bullied this year?”) because this index correlated significantly with each of the different forms of victimization, r(397) = .221 to .612, p < .01.

Suicidal ideation. This was assessed by using the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire–JR (Reynolds, 1987). The SIQ is available in three versions: the Adult SIQ (25 items), the SIQ (30 items) for adolescents in Grades 10–12, and the SIQ-JR (15 items) for adolescents in Grades 7–9. Given that the scale developer has indicated that the SIQ-JR may be used with older adolescents (Reynolds & Mazza, 1994), the SIQ-JR was used for all par- ticipants in the present study in order to maintain consistency across grade levels (Grades 8–10). The SIQ-JR was designed to tap thoughts and ideas about death, suicide, and serious self-injurious behaviors. Adolescents were asked to rate how often they have had particular suicidal thoughts during the past month (e.g., “I thought about how I would kill myself,” “I thought that killing myself would solve my problems”), ranging from 0 (“never”) to 6 (“almost every day”). Responses to all 15 items were summed to com- pute a total score which ranged from 0 to 90, with higher scores indicating greater suicidal ideation. In a study assessing the reliability and validity of the SIQ-JR, Reynolds and Mazza (1999) found the measure to have good psychometric properties, demonstrating both high internal consistency (α = .91) and test-retest reliability (r = .89), and significant correlations with suicidal ideation as measured in a semistructured clinical interview. For the present study, the SIQ-JR had an internal consistency reliability coefficient of α = .94.

Hopelessness. General hopelessness was assessed by using the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS; Beck et al., 1974). The BHS measures the extent of adolescents’ and adults’ negative attitudes about their perceived short- term and long-term future. The BHS is a 20-item, true/false measure that asks respondents to indicate whether a set of statements describes their at- titude during the past week (e.g., “I don’t expect to get what I really want,” “Things just don’t work out the way I want them to”). Overall scores, based on a sum of responses across items, range from 0 to 20, with higher scores indicating greater hopelessness. An internal consistency of α =.82 was ob- tained for participants in the present sample.

Social hopelessness. Hopelessness in the social domain was assessed by using the Social Hopelessness Questionnaire (SHQ; Flett, Hewitt, & Gayle, 1993), a 20-item scale measuring negative expectancies about

Beyond Hurt Feelings 427

outcomes in the social domain. Respondents were asked to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with a set of statements regard- ing their impending social or interpersonal relationships (e.g., “I will never be able to do things as well as other people can,” “In the future, people will probably take advantage of me more than they should”). Responses were made on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). Students’ responses to all 20 items were summed to yield a composite index of social hopelessness, ranging from 20 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater social hopelessness. For the present sample, the scale yielded high internal consistency (α =.90).

Social support. Perceived social support was assessed by using the Re- lational Provisions Loneliness Questionnaire (RPLQ; Hayden-Thomson, 1989). The RPLQ is a 28-item, multidimensional scale that measures chil- dren’s and adolescents’ perceptions of the social support that they receive from peers and family members. The scale consists of 14 items measuring perceived social support from friends and 14 comparable items measuring perceived social support from family, with two different types of social support assessed in each case: belonging (e.g., having someone to do things with) and intimacy (e.g., having someone to confide in). Respondents were asked to evaluate on a 5-point scale the extent to which each statement is true or not true for them by circling statements ranging from 1 (“NO; not at all”) to 5 (“YES; always true”). Composite scores, based on a sum of rele- vant items regarding social support from family and from friends, ranged from 14 to 70, with higher scores indicating greater perceived social sup- port. The RPLQ coefficient alpha reliabilities in the present study were .95 and .92 for perceived family and friend social support, respectively.

Results

Descriptive findings are presented first, followed by correlational analy- ses demonstrating the associations among victimization, suicidal ideation, and various indices of hopelessness and perceived social support. Next, regression analyses were used to evaluate the impact of hopelessness on the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation. Finally, hierarchi- cal regression analyses were conducted to determine whether perceived social support moderated the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation.

Descriptive statistics for the various measures used in this study are presented in Table 1. Zero-order correlations were computed to assess the interrelations among victimization, suicidal ideation, hopelessness (both general and social) and social support (from both family and friends).

428 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

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Beyond Hurt Feelings 429

Approximately 34% of students reported that they had been bullied at least a few times or more that year. Results indicated that victimization was positively related to suicidal ideation and social hopelessness, and was negatively related to social support from family and friends. Victimization was not found to be significantly related to general hopelessness and thus general hopelessness was not considered further in any of the analyses.

Mediating Role of Social Hopelessness on Suicidal Ideation

Following guidelines outlined by Baron and Kenny (1986), regression analyses were used to evaluate the impact of hopelessness on the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation. It was hypothesized that so- cial hopelessness would partially mediate the relation between victimiza- tion and suicidal ideation. Partial mediation is established if hopelessness accounts for part of the association between victimization and suicidal ideation. To establish evidence for the proposed mediational model, four conditions must be met. The independent variable (victimization) must be significantly related to both the mediator (hopelessness) and the dependent variable (suicidal ideation). The mediator must also be significantly related to the dependent variable while controlling for the impact of the indepen- dent variable. Finally, the effect of the independent variable on the depen- dent variable (controlling for the mediator) should result in a reduction of the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable. Given that victimization was not found to be significantly related to general hopeless- ness, only social hopelessness was evaluated as a mediator.

As shown in Figure 1, social hopelessness partially mediated the rela- tion between victimization and suicidal ideation. The addition of social hopelessness reduced the association between victimization and suicidal ideation from .24 to .15. Sobel’s test of significance was conducted to de- termine whether the indirect effect of victimization on suicidal ideation (via the mediator) was significantly different from zero (Preacher & Hayes, 2004). Results indicated that the association between victimization and sui- cidal ideation was significantly reduced by the inclusion of social hopeless- ness (Sobel z = 4.33, p < .001).

Social Support as a Moderator of the Relation Between Victimization and Suicidal Ideation

Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to determine whether perceived social support buffered the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation. Given that two forms of perceived social support were

430 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

Victimization

Social Hopelessness

Suicidal Ideation

.244**

.242** (.146*)

.428** (.392**)

Figure 1. Standardized regression coefficients for the relation between victimiza- tion and suicidal ideation as mediated by social hopelessness. Note. Standardized regression coefficients for partial effects are in parentheses.

*p < .05. **p < .001.

measured (social support from family and social support from friends), two separate analyses were run. Prior to conducting the analyses, all inde- pendent variables and interaction terms were mean centered to reduce the risk of multicollinearity (Aiken & West, 1991). The effect of gender was controlled for by entering gender in Step 1 of all the analyses. Victimiza- tion and social support were entered in Step 2, and the interaction terms of victimization by social support were entered in Step 3. Evidence for a moderation model is demonstrated if the interaction term is found to be statistically significant.

As can be seen in Table 2, perceived social support from family (but not friends) was found to moderate the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation. The significant interaction term signified that the regres- sion of suicidal ideation on victimization varied significantly across the range of perceived social support. Procedures outlined by Aiken and West (1991) were used to examine the nature of the interaction. Simple slopes were plotted for values of 1 SD above the mean, the mean, and 1 SD below the mean for perceived social support, as shown in Figure 2. Post hoc anal- yses were conducted to determine whether the slope of each regression line differed significantly from zero. Results of post hoc probing revealed that the simple slopes for 1 SD below the mean (t[385] = 6.86, p < .001), at the mean (t[385] = 5.66, p < .001), and 1 SD above the mean (t[385] = 2.46, p = .014) for perceived social support (family) were all significantly dif- ferent from zero. Thus, reported victimization was more strongly related to suicidal ideation under low levels of perceived social support from family;

Beyond Hurt Feelings 431

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432 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

victimized students who reported low levels of perceived social support from family were at greatest risk for suicidal ideation.

Discussion

The purpose of the present study was to gain a clearer understanding of why some adolescents who are victimized by bullying are more negatively impacted than others. To this end, two theoretically derived models were evaluated, one testing the potential mediation of social hopelessness as a risk factor, and the other testing the potential moderation of family and peer social support as a protective factor. Results provide support for both mod- els, thereby extending our understanding of the processes through which some, but not all, victimized children come to be at greater risk for suicide.

Extending previous research linking victimization and suicidal ide- ation (e.g., Kaltiala-Heino et al., 1999; Kim et al., 2005; Rigby & Slee, 1999; Roland, 2002; Slee, 1995; van der Wal et al., 2003), the present study tested the hypothesis that victimization contributes to the development of hopelessness, particularly social hopelessness, which, in turn, contributes to the development of suicidality, including suicidal ideation. Even though general feelings of hopelessness have been shown to be significantly re- lated to suicide and suicidal ideation in previous research (Beck et al.,

Figure 2. Graph depicting interaction between victimization and perceived social support (family) to predict suicidal ideation.

Beyond Hurt Feelings 433

1985; Maris, 1992; Terzi-Unsal & Kapci, 2005) and in the present study, and despite suggestions that victimized children may be particularly vul- nerable to feelings of hopelessness (Coggan et al., 2003; Swearer et al., 2004), general feelings of hopelessness were not found to be significantly related to self-reported victimization in the present sample.

Social hopelessness, however, was found to be significantly related to both victimization and suicidal ideation. Moreover, as hypothesized, social hopelessness was found to partially mediate the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation. The results suggest that a potential mechanism by which victimized students become suicidal is through vic- timization’s impact on social hopelessness. The more that students are vic- timized, the more socially hopeless they become, and the greater is their risk for suicidal thoughts. These findings are consistent with research that has demonstrated that indices of social hopelessness can discriminate be- tween high- and low-ideating college students, whereas general hopeless- ness failed to do so (Heisel et al., 2003).

The present findings further suggest that, for victimized adolescents, social hopelessness may be a more salient form of hopelessness, given the importance of social relationships to adolescents and the instrument’s abil- ity to assess expectations regarding one’s future interpersonal relationships and one’s perceived efficacy to deal with those relationships. Helping stu- dents who have been victimized to feel more efficacious in their current and future social relationships, through empowerment programs like Safe Teen (Roberts, 2001) or through efforts that increase actual peer support, may indeed reduce their risk for suicidal behavior by reducing their social hopelessness.

The second model tested in the present study concerned the potential protective factor of social support in moderating the link between victim- ization and suicidal ideation. Consistent with results reported by Rigby and Slee (1999) among Australian youth, perceived social support was found to be significantly negatively associated with suicidal ideation in the present sample of Canadian adolescents. Students who reported higher social sup- port from family members as well as from peers were less likely to ideate than students who reported lower levels of perceived social support from family and/or peers. Importantly, however, results of the present study also indicated that family (but not peer) social support had a buffering effect on the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation. This finding is particularly interesting given the well-known difficulty that exists in de- tecting interactions (McClelland & Judd, 1993), and that previous research by Rigby and Slee was unable to demonstrate an interaction between vic- timization and social support in predicting suicidal ideation. Given the

434 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

differential findings observed in the present study regarding the potential buffering effect of family but not peer social support, and that Rigby and Slee did not demonstrate such moderation when considering a composite index of social support from several different sources, the present results underscore the need to consider more carefully the nature of support pro- vided. Nevertheless, the present findings clearly point to the importance of social support for victimized children, suggesting that when it comes to identifying victimized students at greatest risk for suicidal ideation, special attention should be paid to victimized students who indicate that they are lacking social support from their family members.

Limitations and Strengths

Three main limitations in the current study should be acknowledged. The first deals with the cross-sectional nature of the present study; the second regards shared method and source variance; and the third surrounds is- sues of generalizability. Although many of the findings from the present study imply a directional relationship, the cross-sectional nature of the de- sign prevents us from concluding, for example, that victimization leads to suicidal ideation. In fact, it could be argued that having suicidal thoughts contributes to children being victimized. Further longitudinal research is needed to specify the exact nature of these causal links. However, longitu- dinal research has demonstrated that peer victimization and poor social re- lationships predict the onset of anxiety and depression in adolescents, and not the other way around (Bond, Carlin, Thomas, Rubin, & Patton, 2001). Nevertheless, prospective studies would better test causal statements re- garding factors that place students involved in bullying at greatest risk for suicidal ideation, and plans to conduct longitudinal research are currently being cultivated.

Since all variables of interest in the present study were assessed by using self-report measures, the associations between these variables might be overestimated because of shared method and source variance. However, findings reported by Rigby and Slee (1999) have demonstrated consistency across both self-report and peer nominations in assessing involvement in bully-victim behaviors. Unfortunately, no such research exists with respect to assessing the emotional states of hopelessness and suicidal ideation that were assessed in this study. Since we cannot assume teachers, peers, or even parents are sentient to a child’s innermost thoughts, the use of self-report measures is warranted and necessary. The use of self-report measures in this study is further substantiated by research by Ladd and Troop-Gordon (2003) that suggests that self-report measures are among the most reliable

Beyond Hurt Feelings 435

sources of information for emotional states. In addition, it is important to note that in this study it was the participants’ subjective experience of these emotional states that was of interest rather than the identification of these emotional states by others. Finally, the problems associated with shared method and source variance are minimized in the present study, given that the majority of analyses controlled for the effects of other variables (e.g., hierarchical and simultaneous regression).

Lastly, two cautionary notes must be made with regard to the generaliz- ability of findings from the present study. First, it is important to recognize that the ethnic composition of this sample (predominantly Asian Canadian) may limit the generalizability of findings from the present study to students with similar ethnic backgrounds. That said, given that 76% of all eligible Grade 8–10 students from this school participated in the present study, we feel confident that the present sample is a reasonable representation of the majority of students from this school and other schools in the neighboring area. Second, excluded from the sample were approximately 15–20 students with learning disabilities. The decision not to involve these students was made by school counselors who felt that the survey may be too difficult and thus frustrating for these students. Consequently, these students, who have been shown to be vulnerable to both victimization and aggressive behavior (Mishna, 2003), were not represented in this sample, potentially reducing the true magnitude of involvement in bullying at this school and resulting in find- ings that may not generalize to students with learning disabilities.

Despite these limitations, the present study has several methodological strengths and contributes to the field of bullying in important ways. First, the study drew from two related but distinct literatures to build theoreti- cally based models of risk. In doing so we were able (a) to identify social hopelessness as a potential mediator in the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation, and (b) to identify and use a well-established and psychometrically sound measure to assess suicidal intent. Using the SIQ- JR enabled us to capture variations in severity that exist in the domain of suicidal intent. This was extremely important in that most of the studies investigating suicidal ideation in the peer victimization literature have used limited-item measures or measures that are intended to capture severe de- pression and not suicidal ideation, which is a related but distinct construct. Allowing for greater variation reduces problems associated with measures that have a restricted range.

The present study also demonstrated the buffering effect of perceived social support on the relation between victimization and suicidal ideation, a relation that had been postulated but not demonstrated previously (Rigby & Slee, 1999).

436 Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

Although replication of these results is warranted, it is important to underscore that the present results were obtained within an ethnically di- verse sample with a high participation rate. Moreover, the rates of reported victimization in the study were consistent with rates reported in national Canadian samples. Specifically, approximately 34% of students in the pres- ent sample reported that they had been bullied at least a few times or more that year. Similarly, in a national sample of Canadian Youth for the World Health Organization, Craig and Harel (2004) reported that, overall, 34% of Canadian students reported that they had been bullied at least once during the previous couple of months. Thus, although future research would bene- fit from replication and extension of the present findings, the results of the present study contribute significantly to our understanding of the potential risk and protective factors that might be considered in addressing the link between peer victimization and adolescent suicide.

Concluding Remarks

Even though bullying is commonplace in the vast majority of schools, there exists a real danger in subscribing to the notion that bullying is a normal part of growing up and going to school. The consequences of bullying are varied and range from loss of opportunity to loss of life. For example, Slee (1995) found that 17.6% of students indicated that they had thought of staying away from school because of bullying, and 6.5% had actually stayed away. Accord- ing to the National Education Association, every day an estimated 160,000 children in the United States miss school due to fear of attack or intimidation by other students. The more time children spend worrying about their safety, the less time they have to spend on their studies, and missed school leads to missed learning opportunities. Even more distressing is the suggestion that at least one child a month tries to commit suicide because of the fear of school (Dean, 1993). Understanding potential risk and protective factors that impact children’s ability to cope with bullying situations will enable us to design more effective interventions for protecting and enhancing the well-being of children involved in bully-victim problems.

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