The insider's experience of long-term peer victimisation

Bullying in schools continues to be a problem despite the best efforts of educators, researchers, and clinicians. Of most concern for the present study is that some children experience long-term victimisation by their peers. To improve our understanding in this area, the phenomenology of being bullied over the course of the school year was investigated with three participants aged from 11 to 15 years. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Two superordinate themes with associated subthemes were identified: 'experience of victimisation' ('being different', 'dynamics of bullying', 'school', and 'social network') and 'strategies' ('help-seeking', 'behaviour', 'response to bullying', 'personal coping', and 'solutions'). Through these interviews some of the factors that may contribute to long-term peer victimisation were identified. The implications of these results for prevention and intervention are discussed.