Peer victimization in schools most often occurs in the presence of bystanders. When bystanders intervene on behalf of the victims, they are often successful in stopping the victimization. Defender self-efficacy (i.e., the belief in one's ability to successfully defend victims) has consistently been associated with greater defending and less…

This article explores how young people in Sweden talk about and understand violence, with a particular emphasis on how violence, gender, space and time are co-constructed in this discourse. We found that young people display an ambivalent attitude to violence, reinforcing several contradictory discourses of violence. Young people adopt various…

A school health promotion project was carried out in an elementary school in Sweden where active participation, gender equality, and empowerment were leading principles. The objective of the study was to understand challenges and to identify social processes of importance for such a project. Focus group interviews were conducted with 6 single-sex…

The aim of this study was to enhance the understanding of young girls' experiences of peer sexual harassment in elementary school and of normalizing processes of school-related sexualized violence. Six focus group interviews with girls in Grade 1 through 6 were carried out in an elementary school in the northern part of Sweden. A content analyses…

This book describes survey data and an intervention program conducted in Sweden and Norway as part of a government-led nationwide campaign against bullying. The survey data support some conventional wisdom about bullying, but also destroy many longheld myths about bullies and victims. The goals of the intervention program were to: (1) reduce or…