Bullying is ubiquitous and a major cause of psychological distress and disease. While most bullying research investigating the predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating factors has focused on victims, important gaps remain regarding the theoretical drivers of bullying perpetration. Using sexual selection and intrasexual competition as a theoretical framework, researchers have argued that bullying is an evolved behaviour that enables bullies to obtain or maintain a strong position in the social hierarchy and have greater access to resources, including sexual and romantic experiences. Intrasexual competition comprises two key features: competitor derogation and self-promotion. Bullying could be considered as a type of repeated competitor derogation, but the extent to which bullies engage in self-promotion tactics is unknown. As body shape and size are of central importance to males and females in the context of intrasexual competition, the aims of this thesis were: to determine whether body weight or body image independently or jointly predict bullying role; and to examine the extent to which bullies, victims and bully-victims are preoccupied with self-promotion through body alteration, and whether this is related to psychological functioning. A large school-based study (The Bullying, Appearance, Social Information Processing and Emotions Study; The BASE study) of adolescents in the UK was conducted. Study 1 investigated whether body weight or body image (i.e., actual or perceived underweight or overweight) was independently associated with bullying role (bully, victim or bully-victim), and whether body weight and body image interacted to predict bullying role amongst adolescent boys and girls. Study 2 examined whether bullies, victims and bully-victims were at increased risk of weight loss preoccupation compared to adolescents uninvolved in bullying, whether psychological functioning mediated the relationship between bullying role and weight loss preoccupation, and whether sex was a key moderator. Study 3 examined whether bullies, victims and bully-victims had a higher desire for cosmetic surgery compared to adolescents uninvolved in bullying, whether the relationship between bullying role and desire for cosmetic surgery was direct or mediated by psychological functioning, and whether any effects were sex-specific. The findings offer several new contributions to knowledge. Firstly, it was revealed that body image, rather than actual body weight, is associated with being a victim and bully-victim. Bullies were of average weight and were more likely to be at an advanced pubertal status (girls only). Secondly, being a male or female bully was directly associated with increased desire for cosmetic surgery and weight loss preoccupation (boys only). The relationship between being victimised (as a victim or bully-victim) and cosmetic surgery desire and weight loss preoccupation was mostly mediated by reduced psychological functioning. Overall, victims had the highest desire for cosmetic surgery, whilst bully-victims had the highest weight loss preoccupation; there were no significant differences between male and female victims or bully-victims. In conclusion, the findings that male and female adolescent bullies are engaging in or cognizing about self-promotion strategies to improve physical appearance, which was unrelated to psychological functioning, are consistent with the theory of bullying as a form of intrasexual competition. Bullies are thus multi-strategic in their attempt to obtain or maintain social dominance. Bullied adolescents are similarly concerned about their appearance, but this is mostly because of reduced self-esteem, body-esteem and emotional problems as a result of being bullied. Thus, adolescents involved in bullying are at increased likelihood of attempting to alter their physical appearance, albeit via different pathways and with likely different outcomes. The research advances theoretical understanding about bullies and has practical implications for understanding the body concerns and self-promotion tactics of bullies, victims and bully-victims.

This thesis investigates bullying and negative behaviour among chefs working in commercial kitchens. The idea for this study arose due to evidence from the hospitality industry and amongst chefs in particular which suggested that negative behaviour and bullying were widely accepted practices. However, much of this evidence has been either anecdotal from media reporting or based on small scale studies.The industry has also complained about high labour turnover and the need for a trained workforce. Therefore, this study examines the behaviours to which chefs are exposed and if negative behaviours cause them to leave the industry.This thesis has used a questionnaire to measure responses from chefs who were either in training in catering colleges or working in the industry. Questionnaires were distributed to first year student chefs (n = 202), final year student chefs (n = 153) and working chefs (n = 304). Working chefs and final year student chefs were given questionnaires that included a behavioural method of measuring bullying, known as the NAQ-R, a self labelling method of measuring bullying and items about kitchen specific behaviours. Working chefs and final year student chefs were also asked about positive aspects of work and job satisfaction. First year student chefs were also given a personality instrument as well as being asked their opinions of kitchen specific behaviours. The findings suggest chefs’ exposure to regular bullying was in line with another major UK study (Hoel, 2002). However, occasional bullying was much higher. An examination of industry specific behaviours revealed that chefs tolerate a range of behaviours from verbal abuse on the one hand to physical and sexual abuse on the other. There were also positive aspects about the freedom of work and job satisfaction but this study was unable to find any evidence as to what made chefs stay in the industryThe study found that as student chefs become socialised into their role they were more likely to tolerate negative work behaviours and could identify reasons for their use although, this did not mean that they necessarily agreed with them. In fact, as the working chef sample was very different in ethnicity, gender and nationality from the student sample it could mean that due to negative behaviours on graduation students may not work as chefs.

This thesis explores the scale of bullying in Taiwanese schools and the impact of school anti-bullying policies. Critical realism is used in this policy-related research to argue against current empirical bullying research mainstream and how it may be possible to conduct scientific policy research in Taiwan. The thesis is divided into two parts, covering the literature review and methodology (four chapters in part one) and analysis of the case study in Taiwan (three chapters in part two). This research endeavours to link critical realism with empirical research to deepen our understanding of the school anti-bullying policy structure in Taiwan. The thesis begins with the exploration of the conceptualisation and development of bullying research in Chapter 2 whose main purpose is to capture the definition of bullying and the prevalence of school bullying in different countries and then illustrate the main research areas and the international trend of bullying research. Following Chapter 2, bullying-related theories and approaches to bullying research are highlighted in Chapter 3 and policy process theories and school anti-bullying policies are touched on in Chapter 4 in term of policy agenda setting, policy formulation and policy implementation consideration. A crucial role is played by Chapter 5 which focuses on the philosophical discussion of critical social research (ontology, epistemology and methodology) with reference to the appropriate use of practical methods and related ethical issues. This chapter sets out to explain how critical realism could function in this research to bridge the gap between the literature review and the case study research. In part two, three chapters discuss the formation of school anti-bullying policy in Taiwan. Chapter 6, which is an historical inquiry, illuminates the trajectory of school regulation policies with regard to the democratic transformation of a political system since 1945 in Taiwan. After the historical discussion, light is shed on empirical inquiry into school anti-bullying policy in Chapter 7, which analyses different debates over school anti-bullying policy and power struggles between four different policy stakeholders. Most importantly, Chapter 8 attempts to theorise the ‘generative mechanism’ behind the policy making process and the inferential logic of knowledge production is also considered at the end of this chapter. In addition, reflection on the generative mechanism and collective agency of community and professional groups in policy making are also involved. The concluding chapter reflects on the use of theories, methodology and the research findings in answer to the research questions and elaborates on the compatibility of critical realism, the critical qualitative case study and school anti-bullying policy research in Taiwan. To be reflexive this chapter finishes by looking at further research directions for policy making and practice between political governance, policy research and school practice.

The ever-increasing use of social media in the internet space have induced a number of problems like cyberbullying and cyberaggression over the internet. Researchers have made a commendable progress on the ongoing fight against cyberbullying but a lot of unresolved issues still persist that primarily motivates the purpose of the research. The paper aims to integrate recent advances in the field of word embedding like fastText, ELMo and stacked flair embeddings combined with a host of robust deep learning techniques to further the efficiency of detection over the state-of-art. Two distinct datasets Formspring and Wikipedia were requested and processed for the purpose of the research. A number of different combinations of word embedding with deep learning methods were tested and compared with CNN with ELMo embedding delivering the most promising results with an F1 score of 0.82 on both datasets. On the other hand, CNN with fastText obtained F1 score of 0.82 on Formspring and 0.64 on Wikipedia dataset but was computationally faster than the counterparts. Moreover, transfer learning was performed using the models to test and prove the robustness and efficacy of the models. The system performed considerably well with superior scores in precision, recall and F1 over the state-of-the-art across all the test cases performed.

Teachers play a critical role in responding to, reporting, and preventing bullying. This study focuses on teachers’ perceptions of various types of bullying: physical, verbal, relational, and especially the more recent phenomenon of cyberbullying. It compares English and US teachers’ perspectives of the seriousness of these different types of bullying, thereby investigating how and why teachers have different views of how to address bullying and the different reasons they give as to why they would or would not respond to different bullying scenarios. This can possibly contribute to potential strategies to combat bullying.

The research is based on a sequential explanatory mixed methods design. In the first quantitative phase, the researcher developed two questionnaires, asking teachers for their perceptions of different hypothetical bullying scenarios, drawing on Expectancy Theory and Social Cognitive Theory. Questionnaires were adapted from those previously developed in a series of American studies (Bauman and Del Rio 2006; Yoon and Kerber 2003; Stauffer et al. 2012). They were administered to a purposive sample of teachers in both England and the US in order to provide a comparative element in two English-speaking country contexts. The questionnaires were analysed to establish whether there are differences between the perceptions and the reasons for responses for new and experienced teachers across the two different country contexts. The analyses also explored teacher perceptions of more long-term strategies to deal with cyberbullying.

In the second qualitative phase, a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted with small sub samples of teachers in both England and the US to provide additional qualitative evidence about teachers’ understandings and experiences of bullying. The interviews explored a number of topics emerging from the quantitative findings pertaining to bullying and cyberbullying, allowing teachers to comment on the survey findings and share their experiences. In addition, the analysis of the qualitative interviews offered the opportunity to provide richer descriptions and insights, building explanations and enhancing understandings. This process enables the research to investigate the degree of similarity between the quantitative and qualitative findings. The combination and integration of findings from both phases of the mixed methods study adds to the ability to triangulate findings and to explore and clarify the reasons for differences in perspectives between English and US teachers. In the mixed sequential explanatory strategy, quantitative findings reveal general trends from the data that are later expanded and investigated further within the qualitative phase. The discussion then explores the nature of the similarities and differences between these findings.

The quantitative findings suggest that three main variables predicted both US and English teachers’ responses to cyberbullying scenarios: the perceived seriousness of the situation, the confidence in one’s ability, and the location (home having less of a response than school scenarios). The qualitative findings suggest that teachers’ perceptions of severity could be shaped by current policies and the relationships teachers developed with their students; the perceived confidence in one’s self could be mediated by one’s interpretation of the school culture and the trust established with others on staff; responding to a home cyberbullying situation could depend on one’s understanding of pastoral responsibilities and the current parental involvement. This research provides new findings that can inform policy makers and practitioners in designing and implementing anti-bullying programs that are relevant to different contexts. Knowledge of teacher perceptions could prove useful as a starting point for developing a teacher education program. An understanding of the different types of bullying and cyberbullying that need attention could enable anti-bullying programs to present new and relevant material.