This thesis investigates gendered power relations, including violence, control and coercion, within teenage heterosexual relationships, and broader relationship cultures. It focusses on upper-middle class 14-16 year olds, whose sexualities – unlike those of working-class teenagers – are seldom seen as a social problem. It explores the interactions of romantic and sexual experiences with classed identities and social contexts, based on data generated within a large, high-performing state comprehensive in an affluent, ethnically homogenous (white) area of south-east England. The research, conducted in and outside school, used a mixed-methods approach, incorporating in-depth individual and paired interviews, and self-completion questionnaires. It draws on insights from feminist post-structural approaches to gender and sexualities, and is situated in relation to work that explores the negotiation of gender in “post-feminist” neoliberal societies. Despite (in some ways, because of) their privileged class positioning, these young people faced conflicting regulatory discourses. Heteronormative discourses, and gendered double standards, still shaped their (sexual) subjectivities. Sexuality was very public and visible, forming a claustrophobic regulatory framework restricting movements and choices, particularly girls’. But inequalities and violences were often obscured by powerful classed discourses of compulsory individuality, with young people compelled to perform an autonomous self even as they negotiated inescapably social networks of sexuality. These discourses could exacerbate inequalities, as participants denigrated others for vulnerability. A significant proportion of participants reported controlling, coercive or violent relationship experiences, but girls especially downplayed their importance. Girls shouldered the burden of emotion work, taking on responsibility for both their own and partners’ emotions. Sexual harassment and violence from peers were often regarded with resignation, and sometimes led to further victimisation from partners or peers. Policing of sexuality was bound up with classed prejudices and assumptions; participants’ performances of identity often rested on dissociation from the working class. Young middle-class people’s heterosexual subjectivities sat uneasily with educationally successful, future-oriented subjectivities; sexuality was an ever-lurking threat to becoming an educational and therefore classed success.

Sibling relationships have a great impact on children’s social and psychological development. This thesis provides an all-encompassing examination of the precursors and outcomes of sibling bullying through three quantitative studies: the first study, a meta-analysis, provides a foundational schema of the factors associated with sibling conflicts; the second study, a short-term longitudinal study, examines the individual and proximal precursors of sibling bullying and its short-term outcomes (one and two years later); the third study, a long-term longitudinal study, examines the distal precursors of sibling bullying and its long-term outcomes (five years later). The first study assessed the strongest effect sizes associated with sibling conflicts. It examined the link between parent-child relationships, familial factors and sibling conflicts. Studies were identified through a systematic search, coded, and selected based on criteria relevant for this study resulting in 60 studies (178 effect sizes), which in total involved 43,270 participating children and adolescents. Studies were categorised as proximal and distal factors. Those involved in sibling conflicts were significantly less likely to have authoritative, and warm and affectionate parents, and less likely to come from families with affluent socioeconomic-status, positive family climate and good marital quality. Conversely, more sibling conflicts were significantly related to abusive and neglectful parents, and parent-child conflicts; and more likely to come from families with poor mental health, low SES, adverse family atmosphere and parental conflict. The factors were moderated by assessment methods, study design, direction and form conflict, gender constellation, and continent. This study served as a building block for the two following studies, as it highlighted key factors to focus on in further assessing the precursors and outcomes of sibling bullying. The second study, which was based on the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transition and Crime (ESYTC, 2014) found that parenting factors were crucial to sibling bullying. Parental involvement, parent-child conflict and parent-child leisure time were precursors and outcomes of sibling bullying, so that more parental involvement and parent-child leisure time were associated with less sibling bullying perpetration and victimisation. Further, sibling bullying perpetration and sibling victimisation were precursors of peer bullying perpetration and victimisation one and two years later. However, the strength of the association declined over the course of two years. Impulsive behaviour and social alienation seem to be fundamental influencing factors in the development of sibling bullying and sibling victimisation, respectively. Additionally, children who were involved in peer bullying were more likely to have been involved in sibling bullying, compared to peer neutrals one and two years later. The third study, which was based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC, Boyd et al., 2012) found that maternal somaticism was the strongest predictor of sibling bullying. Further, the strongest predictor of sibling victimisation was partner-to-mother verbal violence. Symptoms of depression at 16.5 years of age was the strongest outcome of sibling bullying perpetration and victimisation at 12.5 years of age. Children who were peer bully-victims when they were 17.5 years old were more likely to have been sibling pure bullies and sibling bully-victims, compared to children who were peer neutrals. The results suggest that familial factors significantly influence the quality of sibling relationships. Additionally, the findings show that sibling bullying is related to peer bullying, so that children mirror bullying behaviours across social contexts (i.e. family environment and school environment). The findings of this thesis are important for clinical practitioners, social workers, parents and schools. Based on these findings practitioners could tailor family and parenting intervention programs that prevent siblings from establishing conflictual relationships with one another. Particularly, it is suggested that bullying intervention programs should integrate three aspects: family members should play an integrated and active role in their plans to reduce bullying and victimisation; bullying intervention and prevention studies should commence at preschool ages; positive family climate should actively be nurtured, in addition to lowering hostility.

Workplace bullying is an issue of practical importance and theoretical interest. Not only is workplace bullying of increasing concern to employers and employees, it is also the focus of empirical research and analysis. However, there are few studies which examine workplace bullying in Turkey. This study aims to investigate the nature of bullying in Turkish workplaces and to examine the association of bullying with paternalistic leadership and various work-related attitudes. The study uses both qualitative and quantitative techniques. Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with Turkish employees to explore in depth the nature of workplace bullying, with a thematic analysis indicating that polarisation at work and institutionalised bullying were major problems in Turkish organisations. In the second phase of the study, a questionnaire focusing on the nature of bullying and its potential determinants was completed by employees in both the public and private sectors in Turkey (n=142). Findings from both the interview study and an exploratory factor analysis of the questionnaire data were used to adapt the Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) for use in Turkey. In the final stage, the adapted questionnaire was completed by a sample of public and private sector employees in Turkey (n=708). Confirmatory factor analyses were used to examine the components of bullying and their relation with dimensions of paternalistic leadership. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that loyalty-seeking paternalism is positively related to the experience of bullying, whereas familial paternalism is negatively related to the experience of bullying. In addition, negative associations were observed between organisation-based selfesteem and all the components of bullying, except for experience of non-work related criticism. Finally, intention to leave was found to be positively associated with experience of task pressures and work related criticism. This study contributes to the bullying literature by exploring the nature of workplace bullying in Turkey using complementary methods.

This study examined the perceptions of and responses to conflict of pupils and teachers in secondary schools in England and Denmark. It also examined the responses of schools to pupil conflicts and whether pupils and teachers found these measures to be effective in addressing and/or managing such conflicts. The inquiry into perceptions and responses involved questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations and documentary data collection instruments. There were a total of 347 pupil respondents (approximately 11-16 years old) and 34 teacher respondents across four schools. The results yielded significant perceptual differences both within the individual countries and cross-culturally. In the two English schools there were significant differences amongst pupil and teacher perceptions of conflict. There were also significant differences amongst pupil perceptions and responses to conflict crossculturally. More English pupils defined conflict and identified pupil conflicts in their schools as fighting, while the majority of Danish pupils both defined and identified pupil conflicts as verbal. However, for the most part there was more consistency in responses amongst pupils and teachers in Denmark than in England. Cultural and educational differences could be two contributing factors that played a role in the differences in perceptions of, and responses to, conflict amongst respondents in England and Denmark. For example, the Danish system administers a class teacher system where the class teacher not only spends several years with the same pupils but also takes on the role of pastoral carer. Moreover, it was found that while all four schools in this study had anti-bullying policies, none had policies pertaining specifically to the management of conflict. This was potentially an area of concern as pupils described conflicts that were beyond the scope of bullying.

There is an increasing academic and policy interest in subjective well-being (SWB). However, the questions of whether and how public policy can promote children’s SWB remain understudied. This thesis aims to reduce this gap by studying the association between education policy and students’ SWB, with a focus on life satisfaction (LS). To quantitatively study this question, this thesis analyses data on 15-year-old students in 33 countries that participated in the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. The analysis draws on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of child development and it is conducted by using a range of advanced quantitative methods, mainly multilevel regression. This thesis presents analysis demonstrating an association between several education policy-relevant factors and students ́ LS, which is particularly prominent –and observed in almost all countries- for schoolwork-related anxiety, bullying and parents’ emotional support in relation to school. Results also indicate that schools may play an important role in shaping students’ LS. This is supported by evidence that these associations tend to vary by school, by evidence on the existence of school effects in almost all countries, and by the finding that a proportion – substantial in some countries- of the variation in students’ LS is explained by differences between schools. Moreover, findings suggest that school type and school peers’ characteristics can be important to students’ LS too. In addition, in many countries, the links between schools and education policy and students’ LS differ for girls and boys and for students of different socio-economic status. Finally, in all the analyses described above, there are significant differences across countries. Overall, this thesis makes key contributions to our understanding of whether and how children’s SWB can be influenced by schools and education policy, supporting calls that education policy should also be assessed in terms of its impact in children’s SWB.