Previous research suggests that inclusion of the word ‘harassment’ does not affect endorsement rates of bullying [10]. As such, bullying was presented to youth with the following text: “Now we have some questions for you about bullying and harassment. Remember, you do not have to answer any questions you do not want to. Bullying and harassment can happen anywhere, like at school, at home, or other places you hang out. In the past 12 months, how often were you bullied or harassed by someone about your age...?” 1) In person, 2) By phone call, 3) By Text message, and 4) Online. Next, youth were asked: In the past 12 months, how often have others about your age bullied or harassed you by…? 1) Hitting, kicking, pushing, or shoving you, 2) Making threatening or aggressive comments to you, 3) Calling you mean names, 4) Making fun of you or teasing you in a nasty way, 5) Leaving you out or not letting you into a group because they were mad at you or were trying to make you upset, 6) Spreading rumors about you, whether they were true or not, and 7) Bullying or harassing you in some other way.

Response options were: 1) never in the past 12 months, 2) once or a few times in the past 12 months, 3) once or a few times a month, 4) once or a few times a week, and 5) every day or almost every day to indicate frequency.

Youth who indicated they had been bullied at least once either through some mode or in some way were asked a follow-up question about differential power: “Was it by someone who had more power or strength than you? This could be because the person was bigger than you, had more friends, was more popular, or had more power than you in another way.” (Yes/no).

As an indicator of repetition, the youth who were bullied were also asked: “When you were bullied or harassed in the past year, was it done repeatedly, so that it happened again and again?” (Yes/no)

Based upon these items, youth were categorized into one of seven groups: 1) Not bullied (i.e., ‘never in the past 12 months’ on all bullying questions), 2) Bullied + equal power (‘once or a few times in the past 12 months’); 3) Bullied + differential power (i.e., ‘once or a few times in the past 12 months’ to at least one bullying item and ‘yes’ to the question of differential power); 4) Bullied + repeated (less than monthly) (i.e., ‘once or a few times in the past 12 months’ to at least one bullying item and ‘yes’ to the question of repetition); 5) Bullied + frequently (i.e., ‘once or a few times a month’ or more frequently on at least one of the bully items, irrespective of their answer to the question about repetition); 6) Bullied + differential power + repeated (less than monthly) (i.e., ‘once or a few times in the past 12 months’ to at least one bullying item and ‘yes’ to both the question of differential power and repetition); and 7) Bullied + differential power + frequently (i.e., ‘once or a few times a month’ or more often to at least one bullying item and ‘yes’ to the question of differential power, irrespective of their answer to the question about repetition). Categories #5 and 7 ignore the question of repetition because it reflects the youth who would be identified through the response options (i.e., without the additional follow-up).

Questions about the impact of the bullying (e.g., how much it interfered with relationships with friends, family; how upset they felt about it) were asked of youth who reported any type of bullying. Psychosocial indicators, including alcohol use [18], depressive symptomatology [20], self-esteem [21], social support from friends and a special person [22], and caregiver-child relationships [8, 23] were asked of all youth. The survey instrument can be downloaded at: http://innovativepublichealth.org/projects/teenhealth-and-technology/

Five items were used to measure generalized peer aggression: 1) someone made a rude or mean comment to youth while online; 2) someone spread rumors about the youth online, whether they were true or not; 3) someone made threatening or aggressive comments to youth online; 4) someone posted a video or picture online that showed the youth being hurt or embarrassed; and 5) someone the youth’s age took them off their buddy list or other online group because the person was mad at the youth. The first item was from the Youth Internet Safety Survey [8, 16], the second was adapted from an item in the Aggression-Problem Behavior Frequency Scale [19], and the last three items were specifically created for this survey. The items were inter-related (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.84).

Bullying was queried with the following text: “The next questions are about bullying and harassment. We say a young person is being bullied or harassed when someone else or a group of people repeatedly hits, kicks, threatens, or says nasty or unpleasant things to them. Another example is when no one ever talks to them. These things can happen at school, online, or other places young people hang out. It is not bullying when two young people of about the same strength fight or tease each other.” Five different communication modes were queried (e.g., at school, on the Internet, etc.). To allow for direct comparisons to generalized peer aggression, we focus on youth who reported bullying “on the Internet.”

Both generalized peer aggression and bullying item responses were captured on a 5-point scale: Never, Less often than once a month, Once or twice a month, once or twice a week, Every day / almost every day.

Based upon their responses to these questions, youth were placed into one of five categories: 1) not online victimization (i.e., ‘no’ to all generalized peer aggression and bullying questions); 2) Victim of online generalized peer aggression (only) (i.e., ‘yes’ to at least one peer aggression item and ‘no’ to the bullying question’); 3) Victim of online generalized peer aggression and cyberbullying (infrequent) (i.e., bullied less often than monthly, irrespective of their responses to the peer aggression items); 4) Victim of generalized peer aggression and cyberbullying (frequent) (i.e., bullied monthly or more frequently, irrespective of their responses to the peer aggression items); or 5) Victim of cyberbullying (any frequency) only (i.e., ‘no’ to all peer aggression items and yes to the bullying question).

Psychosocial indicators, including alcohol use [18], depressive symptomatology [20], and one’s emotional closeness to one’s caregiver [8, 23], general media use (i.e., frequency and intensity of television, Internet, music, and game consumption); and demographic characteristics were asked of all youth. The survey instrument can be downloaded at: http://innovativepublichealth.org/projects/growing-up-with-media/.

HPOL data are comparable to data that have been obtained from random telephone samples of adult populations once appropriate sample weights are applied [24–27]. In Study 1, youth participants were weighted to known demographics of 13–18 year olds based on the 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS). In Study 2, data were weighted statistically at Wave 1 to reflect the population of adults with children ages 10–15-years old in the U.S. according to adult age, sex, race/ethnicity, region, education, household income, and child age and sex [28]. Survey sampling weights also adjusted for adult respondents’ self-selection into the HPOL as well as accounted for differential participation over time [24–27].

In both studies, missing data were imputed using Stata’s ‘impute’ command [29]. In most cases, this affected less than 7% of respondents for any one variable. Respondents who gave valid answers for less than 80% of the survey; or in the THT Study, who also do not meet valid data requirements (i.e., survey length was less than 5 minutes) were dropped. As a result, the final analytical sample for GuwM was 1,150 respondents, and for THT was 3,777.

For Study 1, we first examined the overlap among bullying involving: differential power, differing frequency, and repetition. Next we examined rates of interference with daily functioning across the different bullying categories. Finally, using multinomial logistic regression, we estimated the relative odds of being in one of the multiple bullying categories versus not being bullied given psychosocial indicators (e.g., depressive symptomatology) and demographic characteristics. In Study 2, we examined the overlap in reports of generalized peer aggression and cyberbullying. We then used multinomial logistic regression to estimate the relative odds of being a victim of generalized peer aggression and/or bullying versus not being a victim, given psychosocial and demographic characteristics.

Rates of interference with daily functioning, bullying-related distress, and indicators of hopelessness and helplessness increased as more features of bullying were endorsed (see Table 1). For example, 6% of youth who reported being bullied by someone with equal power also reported that the bullying interfered with their school work whereas 10% of youth who reported being bullied by someone with differential power, 14% who reported that it was repeated (but less than monthly), and 26% who reported that it was frequent (monthly or more often) reported the bullying interfered with school work ‘somewhat’ or ‘a lot’ (see Table 1). In comparison, 40% of youth who reported both differential power and repetition of bullying reported that it affected their school work, as did 50% of youth who reported differential power and frequent bullying (occurring monthly or more often). One exception to the trend: Youth who reported repeated bullying by someone with equal power had the lowest rates of endorsement that people in their lives cannot protect them.

Among youth who did not report differential power, those who reported frequent bullying were significantly more likely to report interference with their family relationships and to disagree that there are people who could protect them from the bullying, whereas those who reported repeated bullying were more likely to report being upset by the bullying. Among youth who were bullied by someone who had more power, those who were bullied frequently were more likely to say that bullying was just a part of life than those who were bullied repeatedly but not frequently.

As shown in Table 2, as one’s self-esteem increased, the relative odds of being bullied – irrespective of whether it was repeated or frequent or by someone with more power than they or not – decreased significantly. The same inverse relation was noted for social support and age (with the exception of those who were bullied repeatedly), such that as social support and age increased, the odds of being bullied decreased. In almost all cases, White youth were significantly more likely than non-White youth to report being bullied. Other, less consistent associations were noted for poor caregiver child relationships, female gender, and low income.