Bullying is a widespread problem in schools and a vast amount of research has been conducted on the subject. In order to examine how members of the school community perceive bullying, self-report questionnaires were devised for completion by secondary school pupils from two year groups, teachers and support staff. The scenario-based questionnaires compared their views on defining bullying, the perceived seriousness of different behaviours and the bullying perceived to occur in the school. The questionnaires indicated that perceptions of bullying were mediated by the age, gender and group (pupil, teacher and support staff) of participants. Indirect behaviours (such as social exclusion) were less likely to be defined as bullying and were perceived as less serious than direct behaviours. Where the victim portrayed in the questionnaire was female, perceptions of seriousness for the incidents described were higher than for male victims. Staff rated direct and indirect behaviours more seriously than did pupils. Differences between schools indicated that perceptions were not fixed and there was potential for change. Open-ended comments made on the questionnaires revealed further complexity in perceptions of bullying and illustrated the benefits of utilising qualitative techniques to study bullying. Therefore, an additional study was conducted whereby a sample of teachers and support staff from participating schools were interviewed, using a semistructured approach, about their experiences of bullying. Results were analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2003) and findings suggested the need to consider bullying in a wider context, focusing on schools as organisations with external and internal influences affecting their functioning. The research highlighted the importance of schools working together to focus on what is understood by the term bullying. Interventions need to recognise the complexity of bullying and not treat it in isolation. Practical issues for studying bullying in schools and the potential benefits of combining quantitative and qualitative research are discussed.

One of the main aims of this research was to determine the perceived long-term consequences of bullying behaviour in schools. Furthermore, this study examined individual’s recollections of the nature and prevalence of bullying and experiences of other forms of violence throughout their life-course; in doing so the reliability of individual’s retrospective accounts were also assessed. Further still, school pupil’s experiences of bullying and exposure to violence and trauma was also examined, as were their typical behavioural responses to scenes of school bullying. This thesis presents the findings of three studies, focusing on individuals experiences of bullying in school, in a sample of undergraduate university students and post- primary school pupils. In Chapter One, a review of the literature surrounding bullying behaviour research is presented, in addition to an overview of the ‘cycle of violence’ hypothesis, which permeates all aspects of this research. Chapter Two provides an outline of the continuing debate concerning the use of retrospective in bullying behaviour research and a detailed review of all the scales utilised in the first study. The results of Study One are presented in Chapter Three, in which a short-term longitudinal study assessed the reliability and stability of participants (N = 824) memories, the nature of their life-course victimisation experiences and perceived negative consequences of such experiences. A qualitative approach was adopted in Study Two, involving a series of in-depth interviews with self-reported victims (N = 13) of child abuse, bullying in school and domestic violence, all of whom had previously taken part in the first quantitative study; the results of which are presented in Chapter Four. In Chapter Five, the questionnaire booklet was administered to a sample of post-primary pupils (N = 213), within the local area, to assess their experiences of bullying in school and evaluate their perceived ‘rules’ for behaviour according to their status group. Finally, a summary and discussion of the results are presented in Chapter Six. Results suggest that 31.1 % (N = 256) of university participants recalled having been bullied in school at some point, and a further 11.9% (N = 98) acknowledged having actively taken part in victimising other pupils at school, with individuals most commonly citing verbal bullying (i.e. name calling). Just over two in five victims (44%) stated that they attempted suicide, with the majority reporting more than one attempt. It was determined that 43.0% of victims reported having experienced abuse during childhood (i.e. physical abuse/neglect, sexual abuse, etc), 35.9% indicated that they had experienced bullying in later-life (i.e. workplace harassment); resulting in one in five participants (N = 53; 20.7%) revealing that they had experienced both abuse and further victimisation. Measures in the questionnaire booklet revealed that participants were more likely to experience depression, anger and hostility, compared to those with no experience of bullying in school. Over one in three ‘victim only’ participants reported a ‘fearful’ relationship style, and moreover reported the lowest mean scores relating to same and opposite sex self-esteem, but the highest levels regarding emotional loneliness and social isolation. Further still, symptornology analogues with PTSD were found in 11 % of victims. Finally, reliability analysis revealed that individual’s recollections were both accurate and stable across the three data collection point (initial, 6 months post, and 12-14 months post). Reponses from the face-to-face interviews supported these findings with participants expressing how their experiences of bullying in school have affected many aspects of the adult life. Results from the schools based research revealed that 18.8% of pupils reported to be ‘victim only’ and a further 6.6% stated that they were both the victim and a perpetrator of bullying in school, with name calling and exclusion the most commonly cited forms of behaviours reported. With regards to pupil’s experiences of violence, individuals reported experiencing ‘vivid memories’ recollections and feelings of distress in situations which remind victims of their experiences, leading to outbursts of anger and a general sense of wariness. Furthermore, ‘bully only’ pupils reported the highest overall mean on a measure of aggression, and on a measure of parenting style reported the highest means relating to ‘indifference’, ‘over-control’ and ‘abuse’. Self- identified victims reported lowest levels of both same and opposite-sex self-esteem and general self-esteem; and highest levels of both emotional loneliness and social isolation.

This thesis is based around five studies examining the psychology of interpersonal communication applied to organizational settings. The studies are designed to examine the question of how the way that people in positions of power in organizations communicate with subordinates, affects various measures of health, wellbeing and productivity. It is impossible to study modern organisational communication without recognising the importance of electronic communication. The use of e-mail and other forms of text messaging is now ubiquitous in all areas of communication. The studies in this thesis include the use of e-mail as a medium of communication and examine some of the potential effects of electronic versus face-to-face and verbal communication. The findings of the studies support the basic hypothesis that: it is not what is said that matters but how it is said. The results showed that an unsupportive, formal, authoritarian style of verbal or written communication is likely to have a negative effect on health, well-being and productivity compared with a supportive, informal and egalitarian style. There are also indications that the effects of damaging communications may not be confined to the initial recipient of the message. Organizational communication does not take place in a vacuum. Any negative consequences are likely to be transmitted by the recipient, either back to the sender or on to other colleagues with implications for the wider organisational climate. These findings are based on communications that would not necessarily be immediately recognised as obviously offensive or bullying, or even uncivil. The effects of these relatively mild but unsupportive communications may have implications for the selection and training of managers. In the final section of the thesis there is a discussion of how examples of various electronically recorded messages might be used as training material.