articol cyberbullying

1. Aggressive Behavior. 2021;47:557–569. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ab © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC | 557
Received: 11 January 2021 | Revised: 14 April 2021 | Accepted: 19 April 2021
DOI: 10.1002/ab.21986
R E S E A R C H A R T I C L E
School bullying before and during COVID‐19: Results from a
population‐based randomized design
Tracy Vaillancourt1,2
| Heather Brittain1
| Amanda Krygsman1
|
Ann H. Farrell1
| Sally Landon3
| Debra Pepler4
1
Counselling Psychology, Faculty of
Education, University of Ottawa, Ottawa,
Canada
2
School of Psychology, Faculty of Social
Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ottawa,
Canada
3
Hamilton‐Wentworth District School Board,
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
4
Department of Psychology, York University,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Correspondence
Tracy Vaillancourt, Counselling Psychology,
Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa,
145 Jean‐Jacques‐Lussier, Ottawa, ON K1N
6N5, Canada.
Email: tracy.vaillancourt@uottawa.ca
Funding information
Canadian Institutes of Health Research,
Grant/Award Numbers: 201009MOP‐
232632‐CHI‐CECA‐136591, 201603PJT‐
365626; Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada,
Grant/Award Numbers: 833‐2004‐1019,
435‐2016‐1251
Abstract
We examined the impact of COVID‐19 on bullying prevalence rates in a sample of
6578 Canadian students in Grades 4 to 12. To account for school changes asso-
ciated with the pandemic, students were randomized at the school level into two
conditions: (1) the pre‐COVID‐19 condition, assessing bullying prevalence rates
retrospectively before the pandemic, and (2) the current condition, assessing rates
during the pandemic. Results indicated that students reported far higher rates of
bullying involvement before the pandemic than during the pandemic across all
forms of bullying (general, physical, verbal, and social), except for cyber bullying,
where differences in rates were less pronounced. Despite anti‐Asian rhetoric during
the pandemic, no difference was found between East Asian Canadian and White
students on bullying victimization. Finally, our validity checks largely confirmed
previous published patterns in both conditions: (1) girls were more likely to report
being bullied than boys, (2) boys were more likely to report bullying others than
girls, (3) elementary school students reported higher bullying involvement than
secondary school students, and (4) gender diverse and LGTBQ + students reported
being bullied at higher rates than students who identified as gender binary or
heterosexual. These results highlight that the pandemic may have mitigated bullying
rates, prompting the need to consider retaining some of the educational reforms
used to reduce the spread of the virus that could foster caring interpersonal re-
lationships at school such as reduced class sizes, increased supervision, and blended
learning.
K E Y W O R D S
bullying, COVID‐19, pandemic, prevalence, students
1 | INTRODUCTION
The COVID‐19 pandemic has caused unprecedented educational
and social disruptions to students globally. For example, the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization estimated
school closures in 138 countries, affecting 80% of children world-
wide (Phelps & Sperry, 2020). In Canada, most students were forced
to learn on‐line beginning in March 2020 and did not return to
in‐person learning until the following academic year in September
2020. The return to school was however not typical. In Ontario,
where the present study was conducted, the Ministry of Education
(2020) offered parents of children in Kindergarten to Grade 8 the
option to have their child learn in‐person (students attend school
full‐time) or virtually (students learn on‐line from home). For sec-
ondary students in Grades 9 to 12, designated boards opened using
an adaptive model in which class cohorts (half of the class) attended

2. in person on alternate days for at least half of the instructional day
and then attended remotely with their teachers and classmates for
synchronous and/or asynchronous learning the rest of the time.
Students could also opt for full‐time e‐learning, taking asynchronous
courses through their board and other boards' offerings, a system
which predates the pandemic.
In addition to these changes, health and safety protocols were
implemented which included social distancing, mandatory mask
wearing for students in Grades 1 to 12, and changes to how students
used school grounds. Elementary (i.e., aged 4‐14 years) and sec-
ondary (i.e., aged 13–18 years) cohorts were not permitted to in-
teract with other cohorts throughout the day. As a result of these
changes, most students in Ontario (which was similar to most pro-
vinces in Canada) were being taught in smaller groups and were
afforded far less opportunity to interact socially with each other than
before the pandemic. Students were also supervised more closely
than before the pandemic because the ratio of students to teachers
was smaller and because teachers needed to ensure that public
health protocols were being followed throughout the school day.
Although the impact of these types of educational changes are being
considered in relation to students' academic achievement (Dorn
et al., 2020) and mental health (Marques de Miranda et al., 2020), to
the best of our knowledge, the impact of these changes on students'
peer relations has only been examined in three reports, two of which
have not been peer‐reviewed and the third currently under review.
In the UNICEF Canadian Companion (2020), 93% of participants said
they were not bullied online since the lockdown began and 17% said
they were bullied less now than before the lockdown. These data
were collected from youth aged 13 to 24. There is similar evidence
for reduced rates during COVID‐19 from Australia. Data from the
Kids Help Line showed a 4% drop in face‐to‐face bullying among
children aged 5 to 18 (Yourtown, 2021). This reduction is similar to
what is noted when students are out of school for the holidays.
Finally, in a Chinese sample of adolescents assessed before the
pandemic, during the lockdown, and after school resumed during the
pandemic, bullying victimization rates were found to be lower during
the lockdown than before the pandemic (Yang et al., 2021). Our aim
was to examine the impact of COVID‐19 school changes on bullying
prevalence rates using a population‐based randomized design that
compared pre‐COVID‐19 rates to current bullying rates in a large
sample of students in Grades 4 to 12.
2 | BULLYING VICTIMIZATION AND
PERPETRATION
Bullying extends beyond the occasional fight or disagreement be-
tween peers. Rather, bullying is an enduring experience of psycho-
logical distress caused by interpersonal aggression that is repeatedly
directed at a person who wields less power than their abuser
(Olweus, 1994). Bullying typically takes the forms of physical (e.g.,
hitting, shoving, stealing, or damaging property), verbal (e.g., name
calling, mocking, or making sexist, racist, or homophobic comments),
social (e.g., excluding others from a group or spreading gossip or
rumours about them), and cyber bullying (e.g., spreading rumours and
hurtful comments using e‐mail, cell phones [e.g., text messaging], and
on social media sites).
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (1989) emphasize that children have a
right to an education that is free from violence and discrimination,
yet bullying is a pervasive problem for students worldwide. Ac-
cording to population‐based studies, 10% of students are bullied on a
regular basis and another 30% of students are bullied occasionally
(National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2016;
Turner et al., 2018; UNICEF, 2019; Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al., 2010).
The Canadian rates for bullying are similarly high. The latest UNICEF
Report Card (2019) provides prevalence rates on children's (ages 11
to 15) exposure to chronic bullying victimization, defined as occur-
ring at least twice in the past month. According to UNICEF, Canada
ranks in the top five of 31 economically advanced countries for the
highest bullying victimization rates. Unfortunately, this is an all too
familiar problem. For close to three decades, Canada has been at the
top of the distribution for bullying victimization (Molcho et al., 2009;
UNICEF, 2019).
Published population‐based prevalence rates for bullying per-
petration tend to be lower than bullying victimization rates, but still
disconcertingly high. For example, Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al. (2010)
examined the bullying experiences of 16799 Canadian students in
Grades 4 to 12 and found that, in response to a general question,
31.7% reported bullying others and 37.6% reported being bullied.
When examining bullying by any type, prevalence rates were con-
siderably higher; 48.9% reported bullying others and 63.1% reported
being bullied. In this study, boys reported bullying others at a higher
rate than girls did and reported rates of bullying others were lower in
elementary school than in secondary school. Turner et al. (2018)
examined bullying victimization in 64174 Canadian students in
Grades 7 to 12 using the same cut‐off as Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al.
(2010). Similarly high rates were found with 63.2% of adolescents
reporting being bullied. In another study involving 11152 Canadian
students in Grades 4 to 12, Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al. (2010) ex-
amined chronic bullying involvement (i.e., being bullied or bullying
others more than 2 or 3 times per month) and found that 12.3% of
students were identified as targets of bullying, 5.3% were identified
as perpetrators of bullying, and 4.0% were identified as students who
both bullied others and were bullied. Slightly more girls than boys
were classified as targets of bullying and more boys than girls were
classified as students who bully others and as students who both
bully others and were bullied. Moreover, more elementary school
students were classified as targets than secondary school students
and more secondary school students were identified as perpetrators
than elementary school students.
The negative impact of bullying on those victimized is pervasive,
affecting virtually all aspects of functioning— both in the immediate
and in the long‐term. Bullying victimization is associated with low
self‐esteem, loneliness, depression, anxiety, suicidality, psychosis,
disordered eating, and a host of somatic complaints and physical
558 | VAILLANCOURT ET AL.

3. health problems (McDougall & Vaillancourt, 2015; Moore et al.,
2017). Bullying also affects students' cognitive processes, such as
memory and the ability to pay attention (Vaillancourt &
Palamarchuk, 2021), making it hard for bullied students to learn and
actively participate at school (Schwartz et al., 2005). Students who
are bullied by their peers view their school as an unsafe environment
(Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al., 2010) and thus avoid attending (Dunne
et al., 2010) as a way to prevent or reduce further abuse (Hutzell &
Payne, 2012). Given this pattern of cognitive interference and dis-
engagement, it is not surprising that bullying victimization is asso-
ciated with poor academic achievement (Nakamoto & Schwartz,
2010). The list of difficulties associated with bullying is extensive
because bullying damages opportunities for children to develop
healthy relationships with their peers. Peer relationships are critical
for healthy social‐emotional development (Pepler & Bierman, 2018).
When a child's fundamental need to belong is unmet, as is the case
with bullying, developmental pathways to adaptive outcomes be-
come derailed.
Perpetrators of bullying are also at risk. Specifically, mental and
physical health, as well as social difficulties such as self‐harm, de-
linquency, school adjustment problems, and employment challenges
are associated with bullying perpetration (Wolke & Lereya, 2015).
One of the most prominent correlates of bullying perpetration is the
continued use of aggression within social relationships. Indeed, the
abuse of power over others that is practiced in childhood bullying
can extend to other forms of violence in adulthood like sexual har-
assment, homophobic taunting, and dating violence (Humphrey &
Vaillancourt, 2020). Meta‐analytic results further support the con-
tinuity of aggression. Childhood bullying perpetration is associated
with multiple forms of violence (e.g., assault, carrying weapons,
robbery; Ttofi et al., 2012), criminal offending (Ttofi et al., 2011), and
dating violence (Zych et al., 2019). There is also longitudinal research
demonstrating that being the target of bullying predicts becoming a
perpetrator of bullying over time (Barker et al., 2008; Haltigan &
Vaillancourt, 2014).
3 | PRESENT STUDY
Given the high prevalence rates of bullying in Canada along with the
costs borne by targets and perpetrators, our aim was to assess the
impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on bullying prevalence rates by
randomizing students at the level of the school into two conditions—
the pre‐COVID‐19 condition and the current condition (during the
pandemic). We predicted that the increase in virtual learning along
with the organization of smaller groups of students with increased
supervision and fewer face‐to‐face interactions would be associated
with lower rates in general, and specifically, lower rates in physical,
verbal, and social bullying because students had less opportunity to
be involved in bullying. This is consistent with recent reports in-
dicating a reduction in bullying victimization during the pandemic
(UNICEF, 2020; Yang et al., 2021; Yourtown, 2021). In terms of cy-
ber bullying rates, because more students were on‐line during the
pandemic it is possible that more students would be involved in
online bullying; however, the UNICEF Canadian Companion (2020)
indicated a 17% reduction in cyber bullying during the pandemic. We
thus predicted that cyberbullying rates would also be lower during
the pandemic than before the pandemic, albeit the magnitude in
difference was expected to be smaller for cyber bullying than for
face‐to‐face forms of bullying. We explored whether East Asian
Canadian students might be more vulnerable than White students
during the pandemic. The anti‐Asian rhetoric associated with the
pandemic (Gover et al., 2020) has been linked to increased incidents
of racism, discrimination, and violence (Croucher et al., 2020). This
prejudice toward East Asians might be associated with higher bul-
lying victimization rates among students of East Asian descent
compared to White students.
Considering the novelty of our research design, we included
several validity checks. Specifically, we examined prevalence patterns
in relation to known modifiers such as gender, grade division, and
sexual minority status (i.e., gender diverse and LGBTQ + students).
Population‐based studies of Canadian students suggest that: (1) boys
are more often perpetrators of bullying than girls, (2) girls are more
often targets of bullying than boys, and (3) students in elementary
school are more involved in bullying than students in secondary school
(Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al., 2010; Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al., 2010).
Moreover, studies consistently demonstrate that sexual minority
students are bullied at the highest rate of any student (Cénat et al.,
2015; Mennicke et al., 2020). We expected to find similar patterns of
results in the pre‐COVID‐19 and current conditions.
4 | METHODS
4.1 | Participants
A total of 9095 students in Grades 4 to 12 accessed the survey
either at school or at home using their personal or a board provided
device. In the pre‐COVID‐19 condition, 1442 students had data that
were not usable because they had no data (n = 382), incomplete data
(n = 706), did not provide assent (n = 138), or were flagged for invalid
responses (n = 216). In the current condition, 1075 students had
unusable data because they had no data (n = 342), incomplete data
(n = 442), did not provide assent (n = 115), or were flagged for invalid
responses (n = 176).
The final analytic sample consisted of 6578 students in Grades 4
to 12 (M age=13.05 years; SD = 2.34; MIN = 8.00; MAX = 19.00) who
completed the survey. In the pre‐COVID‐19 condition, 3895 (49.3%
girls, 44.8% boys, 2.1%1
gender diverse) students completed the
survey and in the current condition, 2683 students (44.8% girls,
50.0% boys, 2.6% gender diverse) completed the survey. The current
condition had fewer students than the pre‐COVID‐19 condition be-
cause randomization occurred at the school level and not all schools
were the same size. Schools randomized to the pre‐COVID condition
had 9.9% more students available at the elementary level and 26.1%
more students at the secondary school level.
VAILLANCOURT ET AL. | 559

4. In terms of other demographic features, in the pre‐COVID‐19
condition, 42.2% of students identified as White and 29.1% as be-
longing to an underrepresented racial group, while in the current
condition, 46.7% of students identified as White and 32.1% as be-
longing to an underrepresented racial group. Most students attended
school in person during the pandemic, beginning in September 2020:
elementary school (97.8%) and secondary school (84.8%).
Parent consent and student assent were obtained for all parti-
cipants. Most parents (94.0%) of eligible students consented to have
their child participate and most students provided assent to parti-
cipate in the pre‐COVID (97.6%) and current (97.0%) conditions.
Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Ottawa's Re-
search Ethics Board (REB) and the Hamilton‐Wentworth District
School Board's REB.
4.2 | Procedures
As part of a Safe Schools audit, students were randomized at the
level of the school into the pre‐COVID‐19 condition and the
current condition to account for the COVID‐19 pandemic. In
these conditions, students were asked to consider their retrospective
experiences within a specified timeframe. The timeline for
the pre‐COVID‐19 condition was September 2019 to March 2020
and for the current condition it was from the start of September
2020 until November 2020.
For students enrolled in the in‐person learning program, class-
room teachers provided school‐owned devices to students and had
students access the survey, which assessed various aspects of school
safety including the measures described below. Students took
15.31 min (median) to complete the survey. A survey code was given
to each school based on their randomization assignment and this
code populated the appropriate survey by condition. Teachers in-
formed students of their rights as participants including the assur-
ance of anonymity and the right to skip any question they wanted to.
Following recommendations by Vaillancourt et al. (2008), teachers
read out loud a definition to students before granting access to the
survey. The definition differentiated bullying from general aggression
and teasing:
There are a lot of different ways students get bullied.
Bullying can be physical, verbal, social, or online. A stu-
dent who bullies wants to hurt the other person (it's not
an accident), and they do it more than once and in an
unfair way (the person bullying has some advantage over
the person they are bullying). Sometimes a group of stu-
dents will bully another student. It is not bullying when
two students of about the same strength or popularity
have an argument or disagreement.
Parents of younger students (Grades 4 to 8) and secondary
school (Grades 9 to 12) students enrolled in virtual learning pro-
grams were provided with an instruction sheet that clearly
delineated the timeframe to consider when responding and the de-
finition of bullying. Parents were asked to allow their child to fill out
their survey alone after setting them up with the survey and con-
veying these two important points (timeframe and definition), which
were also clearly noted on the surveys. Technical support was
available to teachers, students, and parents.
4.3 | Measures
4.3.1 | Bullying victimization and perpetration
Bullying victimization and perpetration were assessed with five self‐
report items from an adapted version of the widely used Olweus
Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus, 1994; Vaillancourt, Brittain,
et al., 2010; Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al., 2010). Students were asked first
to read the aforesaid definition of bullying and then asked about their
general experience with bullying victimization (“How often were you
bullied by another student(s)?”) followed by questions assessing phy-
sical, verbal, social, and cyber bullying victimization that included be-
havioural descriptors for each form. These questions were then
repeated to assess bullying perpetration (“How often have you bullied
other student(s)?”). A five‐point scale was used to assess each item
(0 = not at all to 4 = many times a week). Cronbach's α was good for
bullying victimization in both conditions (pre‐COVID α = .83; current
α = .80), as well as for bullying perpetration (pre‐COVID α = .77; cur-
rent α = .82) supporting the reliability of the scales in both conditions.
4.3.2 | Demographic questions
Students were asked about the program of learning they were cur-
rently taking: (1) “Elementary in‐person (you go to school full‐time)”;
(2) “Elementary virtual (you go to school from home)”; (3) “Secondary
adaptive alternate cohorts (or rotational model)”; and (4) “Secondary
e‐learning.” Students were also asked to indicate their current grade,
their age, their gender, their sexual orientation (Grades 7 to 12 only),
and their racial background using multiple choice and checkbox
options.
4.3.3 | Validity screening
Anonymous student surveys run the risk of having invalid responses
(Cornell et al., 2012, 2014). We screened for data integrity using
three questions by Cornell et al. (2012): (1) “I am telling the truth on
this survey”; (2) “I am not paying attention to how I answer this
survey”, and (3) “The answers I have given on this survey are true.”
We also screened the open‐ended questions for implausible re-
sponses such as listing being an alien under the race question and
having unlikely times to complete the survey. Students with invalid
responses were excluded from subsequent analyses (<5% of re-
sponses were invalid).
560 | VAILLANCOURT ET AL.

5. 4.4 | Analytic plan
Bullying involvement (prevalence) was calculated by using the cut‐off
point shown by Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al. (2010) as having the best
specificity and sensitivity (no involvement vs. any involvement) and has
been used in other population‐based studies examining bullying in-
volvement prevalence (e.g., Craig et al., 2020; Turner et al., 2018). Spe-
cifically, data from the general screening questions were combined into
binary bullying experience groups for targets (been bullied) and perpe-
trators (bullied others). These groups were calculated as follows: (a) those
reporting never being bullied or never bullying others (coded as “0,”
noninvolved) and (b) those reporting some level of involvement with
bullying ranging from only a few times to every week (coded as “1,”
involved).
Prevalence rates were assessed using Multi‐Way Frequency Ana-
lyses (MFA), a nonparametric analysis similar to analysis of variance that
tests associations between multiple categorical variables by comparing
observed and expected frequencies (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).
The results of MFA can be influenced by inadequate expected cell
frequencies (i.e., 20% of cells under five; Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).
Expected cell frequencies in all analyses exceeded five. In these analyses,
bullying involvement (target or perpetrator) was conceptualized as the
dependent variable and condition (pre‐COVID 19 vs. current), gender
(girls vs. boys), and grade level (elementary vs. secondary) were con-
sidered independent variables. In MFA, the loglinear model begins by
testing the higher order associations (e.g., condition by gender by bullying
experience) followed by all two‐way, then one‐way associations. Asso-
ciations that are not statistically significant are eliminated. In the present
study, we were not interested in establishing a model and therefore we
restricted our analyses to an examination of reliable variations in bullying
involvement and experience (i.e., by form of bullying) as a function of
condition by gender/grade, similar to Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al. (2010). We
addressed our potentially high false discovery rate by applying the
Benjamini‐Hochberg procedure (Benjamini & Hochberg, 1995). Only
p‐values for the interaction terms of interest were included, that is
bullying experience by condition, bullying experience by condition by
gender/grade, bullying experience by gender/grade, bullying victimization
(any form) by condition by race/gender diversity/sexual orientation, and
bullying victimization (any form) by race/gender diversity/sexual
orientation (n = 66 comparisons).
5 | RESULTS
5.1 | Prevalence of bullying involvement by
condition
Examining prevalence rates of bullying experiences by form by con-
dition revealed reliably higher rates pre‐COVID‐19 compared to
current rates (Table 1), consistent with our initial predictions. For
example, when examining all forms as a composite, 59.8% (n = 2312)
of students reported being bullied before the pandemic compared
with 39.5% (n = 1052) of students who reported being bullied in the
current condition. In terms of perpetration, 24.7% (n = 951) reported
bullying others pre‐COVID‐19, while 13.0% (n = 347) of students re-
ported bullying others in the current condition. As predicted, rates of
physical, verbal, social, and cyber bullying victimization and perpe-
tration were higher before the pandemic than during the pandemic.
5.2 | Racial bullying victimization
The three‐way interaction between condition, White/East Asian, and
victimization (any form) was not statistically significant, χ2
(1, 3110) =
2.500, p = .114, indicating that differences in rates of victimization for
White and East Asian students did not differ before and during the
TABLE 1 Proportion of Involved Students by Experience Type and Condition
Experiences Condition × Experience Pre‐COVID involved (%/n) Current involved (%/n)
Victimization (general) χ2
(1, 6411) = 236.277, p < .001 34.3 (1305) 16.9 (442)
Physical victimization χ2
(1, 6418) = 128.968, p < .001 21.5 (818) 10.7 (280)
Verbal victimization χ2
(1, 6430) = 170.593, p < .001 40.2 (1531) 24.5 (642)
Social victimization χ2
(1, 6397) = 239.930, p < .001 44.7 (1696) 25.6 (666)
Cyber victimization χ2
(1, 6433) = 7.644, p = .006 13.8 (528) 11.5 (301)
Victimization (all forms + general) χ2
(1, 6530) = 260.573, p < .001 59.8 (2312) 39.5 (1052)
Bullying (general) χ2
(1, 6403) = 81.833, p < .001 11.9 (449) 5.3 (138)
Physical bullying χ2
(1, 6441) = 21.306, p < .001 5.6 (212) 3.1 (82)
Verbal bullying χ2
(1, 6425) = 41.463, p < .001 11.9 (451) 7.0 (184)
Social bullying χ2
(1, 6419) = 111.646, p < .001 13.8 (525) 5.6 (147)
Cyber bullying χ2
(1, 6445) = 6.454, p = .011 3.4 (130) 2.3 (61)
Bullying (all forms + general) χ2
(1, 6505) = 134.483, p < .001 24.7 (951) 13.0 (347)
Note: All Condition × Experience were statistically significant following the Benjamini‐Hochberg procedure.
VAILLANCOURT ET AL. | 561

6. COVID‐19 pandemic. The two‐way interaction between race and victi-
mization was also not significant, χ2
(1, 3110) = 2.815, p = .093, indicating
that White and East Asian students reported similar rates of victimiza-
tion. In the pre‐COVID condition, 61.1% (n = 1002) of White students
and 50.4% (n = 61) of East Asian students reported being bullied. In the
current condition, 38.0% (n = 475) of White students and 38.4% (n = 38)
of East Asian students reported being bullied.
5.3 | Validity check
We examined interactions by condition by gender2
by bullying experi-
ences (Table 2) and by condition by grade by bullying experiences
(Table 3) and found that only two of the three‐way interactions were
statistically significant (verbal victimization by condition by grade and
bullying perpetration (any form) by condition by grade) suggesting that
gender and grade trends were relatively similar across condition (i.e.,
same direction but different magnitude), as would be expected given the
randomization of students at the level of schools. Specifically, as pre-
dicted, girls reported higher rates of bullying victimization than boys
across all forms, except for physical bullying victimization, which was
higher for boys than for girls. As expected, girls reported lower bullying
perpetration rates than boys on the general bullying, physical bullying,
and verbal bullying questions. Girls and boys reported approximately
equal rates of social and cyber bullying perpetration. In terms of grade
differences, as predicted, students in elementary school reported higher
TABLE 2 Proportion of involved students by experience type, condition, and gender
Proportion score within gender
(% involved/n)
Experiences Condition × Experience × Gender Experience × Gendera
Pre‐COVID Current
Victimization (general) NS χ2
(1, 6070) = 14.989, p < .001 B = 30.8 (530) B = 14.7 (194)
G = 36.1 (675) G = 17.7 (205)
Physical victimization NS χ2
(1, 6073) = 53.180, p < .001 B = 25.5 (439) B = 12.0 (158)
G = 16.6 (309) G = 8.2 (96)
Verbal victimization NS χ2
(1, 6082) = 15.195, p < .001 B = 36.9 (634) B = 21.9 (288)
G = 42.2 (793) G = 25.4 (297)
Social victimization NS χ2
(1, 6054) = 161.657, p < .001 B = 34.9 (598) B = 19.4 (254)
G = 52.6 (983) G = 31.4 (364)
Cyber victimization NS χ2
(1, 6084) = 39.044, p < .001 B = 10.1 (175) B = 9.1 (120)
G = 16.4 (306) G = 12.9 (150)
Victimization (all forms + general) NS χ2
(1, 6174) = 46.103, p < .001 B = 53.8 (938) B = 36.0 (480)
G = 64.3 (1225) G = 41.6 (496)
Bullying (general) NS χ2
(1, 6059) = 15.547, p < .001 B = 13.3 (226) B = 6.4 (84)
G = 10.3 (192) G = 3.6 (42)
Physical bullying NS χ2
(1, 6091) = 30.427, p < .001 B = 7.6 (130) B = 3.8 (50)
G = 3.7 (70) G = 2.2 (26)
Verbal bullying NS χ2
(1, 6081) = 18.187, p < .001 B = 13.2 (227) B = 8.9 (117)
G = 10.5 (196) G = 4.9 (58)
Social bullying NS χ2
(1, 6074) = 4.395, p = .036b
B = 12.5 (214) B = 5.3 (69)
G = 14.8 (227) G = 5.9 (69)
Cyber bullying NS χ2
(1, 6099) = 0.864, p = .353 B = 3.6 (62) B = 2.4 (31)
G = 3.2 (60) G = 1.9 (23)
Bullying (all forms = general) NS χ2
(1, 6151) = 12.795, p < .001 B = 26.4 (458) B = 14.7 (196)
G = 22.9 (433) G = 11.0 (131)
Note: B, boys; G, girls.
a
Partial χ2
statistic and p value.
b
The effect of social bullying perpetration × condition was not statistically significant following the Benjamini‐Hochberg procedure.
562 | VAILLANCOURT ET AL.

7. rates of bullying involvement than students in secondary school, with
three exceptions: (1) there was no grade difference for cyber bullying
victimization or perpetration, (2) rates of verbal victimization were found
to vary by grade and by condition, and (3) rates of verbal victimization
and perpetration (any form) were found to vary by grade and condition.
Further, the rate of verbal victimization for elementary students in the
current condition was 72% of the pre‐COVID rate, whereas current
secondary school verbal bullying was approximately half that of the pre‐
COVID rate. A similar pattern was found for bullying perpetration (any).
We also examined gender diversity as a validity check and found
that the three‐way interaction between condition, gender diversity
(gender diverse/binary), and victimization (any form) was not sta-
tistically significant, χ2
(1, 6326) = 0.427, p = .513, indicating that dif-
ferences in victimization rates between gender diverse and binary
students did not depend on condition. There was a statically sig-
nificant two‐way interaction between gender diversity and victimi-
zation, χ2
(1, 6326) = 23.786, p < .001. An inspection of the proportion
victimized indicated that gender diverse students reported higher
rates of victimization pre‐COVID (diverse = 79.7%, n = 63; binary =
59.3%, n = 2163) and during the pandemic (diverse = 57.1%, n = 40;
binary = 38.6%, n = 977).
Finally, results for sexual orientation mirrored those for gender
diversity. The three‐way interaction was not statistically significant,
χ2
(1, 3344) = 0.001, p = .980; however, the two‐way interaction be-
tween sexual orientation and victimization (any form) was statisti-
cally significant, χ2
(1, 3344) = 64.911, p < .001. Results indicated that
there were differences in rates of victimization between students
reporting heterosexual and diverse sexual orientations that did not
TABLE 3 Proportion of involved students by experience type, condition, and grade
Proportion score within grade
(% involved/n)
Experiences Condition × Experience × Grade Experience × Gradea
Pre‐COVID Current
Victimization (general) NS χ2
(1, 6411) = 105.711, p < .001 E = 39.3 (904) E = 21.7 (284)
S = 26.8 (401) S = 12.2 (158)
Physical victimization NS χ2
(1, 6418) = 323.756, p < .001 E = 28.9 (664) E = 17.2 (225)
S = 10.2 (154) S = 4.2 (55)
Verbal victimization χ2
(1) = 11.682, p < .001 χ2
(1, 6430) = 72.682, p < .001 E = 43.2 (999) E = 31.0 (409)
S = 35.5 (532) S = 17.9 (223)
Social victimization NS χ2
(1, 6397) = 86.258, p < .001 E = 49.6 (1140) E = 30.2 (392)
S = 37.1 (556) S = 21.1 (227)
Cyber victimization NS χ2
(1, 6433) = 7.473, p = .006 E = 12.6 (291) E = 10.9 (143)
S = 15.8 (237) S = 12.0 (158)
Victimization (all forms +
general)
NS χ2
(1, 6530) = 166.441, p < .001 E = 65.5 (1541) E = 48.2 (647)
S = 50.9 (771) S = 30.7 (405)
Bullying (general) χ2
(1) = 4.121, p = .042b
χ2
(1, 6403) = 31.253, p < .001 E = 13.5 (307) E = 7.2 (95)
S = 9.5 (142) S = 3.3 (43)
Physical bullying NS χ2
(1, 6441) = 109.21, p < .001 E = 7.9 (182) E = 5.2 (58)
S = 2.0 (30) S = 1.1 (14)
Verbal bullying NS χ2
(1, 6425) = 29.482, p < .001 E = 13.4 (306) E = 9.2 (121)
S = 9.6 (149) S = 4.8 (63)
Social bullying NS χ2
(1, 6419) = 24.549, p < .001 E = 15.5 (355) E = 7.2 (94)
S = 11.3 (170) S = 4.0 (53)
Cyber bullying NS χ2
(1, 6445) = 1.140, p = .286 E = 3.1 (72) E = 2.3 (30)
S = 3.9 (58) S = 2.4 (31)
Bullying (all forms + general) χ2
(1) = 7.000, p = .008 χ2
(1, 6505) = 74.390, p < .001 E = 27.9 (651) E = 17.5 (235)
S = 19.9 (19.9) S = 8.5 (112)
Note: E = elementary school (Grades 4–8), S = secondary school (Grades 9–12).
a
Partial χ2
statistic and p value.
b
The effect of perpetration (general) × condition × grade was not statistically significant following the Benjamini‐Hochberg procedure.
VAILLANCOURT ET AL. | 563

8. vary in magnitude as a function of the pandemic. Students with di-
verse sexual orientations reported significantly higher rates of bul-
lying victimization in both the pre‐COVID (diverse = 67.8%, n = 387;
heterosexual = 53.0%, n = 621) and current (diverse = 49.9%, n = 212;
heterosexual = 34.7%, n = 408) conditions.
6 | DISCUSSION
The impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on students' academic achieve-
ment (e.g., Dorn et al., 2020) and mental health (e.g., Marques de Miranda
et al., 2020) is being investigated in earnest. However, what has largely
been ignored during these trying times is how school‐related changes,
designed to keep students safe during the pandemic, may have affected
students' social relationships/interactions, and in particular, their ex-
periences with bullying. There is good reason to expect a “silver lining”
with regard to bullying rates during the pandemic. With decreased class
sizes, increased supervision, and fewer opportunities to interact socially
at school, bullying victimization and perpetration rates should be lower
during the pandemic than before the pandemic. We tested this as-
sumption using a population‐based randomized design that compared
bullying rates before and during the pandemic in a sample of students in
Grades 4 to 12. Although our aim was simple, the knowledge gained is
important for the prevention of bullying. For example, researchers and
educators have argued that increased supervision is critical for the re-
duction of bullying (Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al., 2010; van Verseveld
et al., 2019). There has also been a push to reduce class sizes so that
caring relationships between students and teachers and among students
can be forged (Finn et al., 2003), although the evidence on smaller class
sizes and bullying reductions is mixed (e.g., Azeredo et al., 2015). Still,
improving relationships can reduce bullying (Khoury‐Kassabri et al.,
2004), while also potentially improving academic achievement (Nye et al.,
2000). The pandemic has brought these educational changes (e.g., re-
duced class size, increased supervision) to fruition, but has an associated
reduction in bullying rates also occurred? When we examined bullying
prevalence rates across the two conditions, we found notable differences.
Specifically, students reported far greater involvement in bullying as
targets and perpetrators before the pandemic than during the pandemic.
For example, when we examined rates using a composite variable that
included a general question about bullying along with specific questions
about forms of bullying (i.e., physical, verbal, social, and cyber), we found
that 59.8% of students reported being bullied before the pandemic
compared with 39.5% who reported being bullied during the pandemic.
These striking differences were also found when examining bullying
perpetration rates—24.7% pre‐COVID‐19 versus 13.0% current.
Although it is possible that these differences in rates are driven by
timeframe differences between the two conditions, we suspect that this
is not the case given that high proportions obtained in the pre‐pandemic
condition are in keeping with those obtained by Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al.
(2010), a decade earlier, from students in the same grades and school
district and using the same cut‐off and measure. In this study, 63.1% of
students were involved in bullying as targets and 48.9% as perpetrators.
Turner et al. (2018) also found in their population‐based study that
63.2% of Canadian youth in Grades 7 to 12 were bullied by their peers.
Of note, Turner et al. asked students to report on their experiences with
bullying in the past year, while Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al. (2010) asked them
to report on their experiences using the same timeframe as the current
(pandemic) condition (i.e., 3 months; September to November) and yet it
is the pre‐COVID‐19 rates, with the longer timeframe, that map onto
Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al. (2010) and Turner et al. and not the current
condition rates, with the timeframe identical to Vaillancourt et al. These
consistencies help demonstrate validity but also highlight a dismal reality
in Canadian schools, one that is echoed in the UNICEF world reports of
students from economically advanced nations. That is, whereas most
countries are showing declines in bullying involvement, for Canada, our
rates are steadfast and high (Molcho et al., 2009; UNICEF, 2019).
We predicted that involvement with specific forms of bullying
would be higher in the pre‐COVID‐19 condition than in the current
condition. In particular, we expected students to report higher rates of
physical, verbal, and social bullying before the pandemic. As for cyber
bullying, our prediction was more tentative. The prominent virtual
component associated with the pandemic could be associated with
higher cyber bullying rates, but a recent Canadian UNICEF report
(2020) noted a 17% reduction in online bullying during the pandemic.
With this new report in mind, we expected less cyber bullying during
the pandemic than before the pandemic but the difference in magni-
tude would be smaller when compared to face‐to‐face forms of bul-
lying. Bullying involvement was indeed a lot higher for physical, verbal,
and social bullying before the pandemic than during the pandemic,
while cyber bullying rates were only slightly higher before the pan-
demic than during the pandemic. Although students are on‐line more
now than before the pandemic, this has not translated to higher rates
of cyber bullying involvement. In fact, our results support the opposite
conclusion. The finding of slight reductions in cyber victimization and
bullying might be related to the close monitoring of virtual activities
by teachers and parents, many of whom have been tasked with su-
pervising their children one‐on‐one at home.
We explored whether students of East Asian heritage were
bullied more during the pandemic than before the pandemic in
consideration of the anti‐Asian rhetoric (Gover et al., 2020) and in-
creased incidents of racism, discrimination, and violence (Croucher
et al., 2020) associated with COVID‐19. Results indicated that stu-
dents of East Asian decent did not report higher rates of bullying
victimization during the pandemic (or before the pandemic) than
their White peers. Although this is reassuring, and consistent with
meta‐analytic findings (Vitoroulis & Vaillancourt, 2015), it does not
mean that Asian students are necessarily spared in different regions
in Canada or in different countries that vary in their level of racist
rhetoric and bigoted behaviour. For instance, in the United States,
former president Donald Trump consistently referred to COVID‐19
using a racial slur, which has been cited as having an impact on hate
crimes and racial bullying during the pandemic (Cruz et al., 2020).
Our primary validity check was to examine whether our pattern
of findings were consistent with other published studies in terms of
gender, grade, gender diversity, and sexual orientation. We undertook
this step because students were asked to retrospectively report on
564 | VAILLANCOURT ET AL.

9. their experience before the pandemic. Though we were confident that
our approach was sound because bullying is such a salient experience
and one that students seldom forget (see neuroscience review by
Vaillancourt & Palamarchuk, 2021), we nevertheless carried out this
important validation check. Based on Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al.
(2010), and Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al. (2010), we predicted that across
the two conditions, girls would report more involvement with victi-
mization than boys and that boys would report more involvement with
perpetration than girls. We also expected that elementary school
students would have more involvement with bullying than secondary
school students (Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al., 2010; Vaillancourt, Trinh,
et al., 2010). Finally, we expected that sexual minority students would
be bullied at higher rates than students who identified as gender
binary and heterosexual, as has been shown in other studies (Cénat
et al., 2015; Mennicke et al., 2020).
Our results largely confirmed previous patterns in both
conditions—girls were more likely to report being bullied than boys,
boys reported bullying others at a higher rate than girls, with the
exception of social bullying perpetration (girls > boys) which was not
significant following the Benjamini‐Hochberg procedure. Students in
elementary school reported both bullying others and being bullied at
higher rates than students in secondary school, with the exception of
cyber bullying where secondary school students reported slightly
higher victimization rates than elementary school students. Grade
was not, however, associated with cyber bullying perpetration rates.
Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al. (2010) found that involvement in cyber
bullying as a target or perpetrator peaked in early secondary school.
In our analyses of gender and grade, only two of our three‐way
interactions were statistically significant suggesting that while the mag-
nitude of the differences were dissimilar between conditions on rates, the
pattern of findings was the same across the two conditions. The two
exceptions were the three‐way interactions for condition by grade by
verbal victimization and condition by grade by bullying perpetration (any
form). Probing these findings suggests that secondary students' rates
during the pandemic were substantially lower than pre‐pandemic
rates, as compared to the difference in elementary school students'
rates. Specifically, rates of verbal victimization for secondary school
students were lower during the pandemic than pre‐pandemic by ap-
proximately 50%, whereas elementary students' experience of verbal
victimization were lower by only 28%. Similarly, pandemic rates of bul-
lying perpetration (any form) were 57% lower than pre‐pandemic rates
for secondary students and only 37% lower than pre‐pandemic rates for
elementary students. Gender diverse and LGTBQ + students reported
being bullied at higher rates than those who identified as gender binary
or heterosexual in both conditions.
6.1 | Limitations
The strength of our study is that we used an experimental design and
randomized students (at the school level) to report on their experiences
with bullying before and during the pandemic. Another strength is that
we included several validity checks and added screening questions to
assess invalid responses (Cornell et al., 2012, 2014). Despite these
strengths in design, there are limitations to consider. First, the timeframe
was not equivalent in the pre‐COVID‐19 and current conditions, which
could have inflated pre‐pandemic results because students had a longer
period to consider. We suspect this did not happen because students
were asked the same questions using the same response format that
ranged from not at all to many times a week and thus likely defaulted to a
general pre‐pandemic versus pandemic timeframe. Indeed, the timeframe
differences do not seem to have had a notable impact on our results
insofar as the prevalence rates obtained in the pre‐pandemic condition
(six month timeframe) paralleled those obtained by Vaillancourt, Trinh,
et al. (2010) even though Vaillancourt et al. asked students about their
experiences with bullying using a “past three months” timeframe. This
three month timeframe is the same one used in the current condition yet
the rates obtained before the pandemic using a six month timeframe are
the ones that replicate Vaillancourt et al.'s rates. Incidentally, Vaillancourt
et al. also collected data in late fall of the school year, which is the same
data collection schedule as the current condition and data were collected
in the same school district. Still, given these differences, replication is
needed. Moreover, more attention needs to be paid to the impact of
timeframes in general on bullying prevalence rates in children and youth.
We suspect that given the salience of bullying, victimization is not likely
to be easily forgotten and thus timeframe difference of three months
compared to six months will not have much of an impact on rates. In a
recent study by Beltran‐Catalan and Cruz‐Catalan (2020), the best cut‐
off point to use, based on their ROC curve analysis, was “more than six
months”. This was likely because bullying typically lasted longer than six
months for most youth (72.6%) in their study. Indeed, they found that
targets of bullying reported that the duration of their bullying experi-
ences was three years on average. In a study involving adults, Green et al.
(2018) found that the recall of bullying was stable, as did Rivers (2001),
who reported that “participants were able to recall key events in their
lives and place them within a general chronology which was not found to
vary across the 12–14 month period” (p. 129). In other words, adult
participants were accurate about the time and duration of their bullying
experiences. Olweus (1993) also found that former targets of bullying
were accurate in their appraisal of the severity of their childhood abuse
up to seven years later. This is consistent with the broader literature that
finds that most individuals can recall past events accurately across time.
Specifically, autobiographical memories (which is what bullying experi-
ences are) have been shown to be “remarkably robust” after a number of
years even in very young children (Peterson, 2002). Importantly, emo-
tional and thematic coherence of original memories have been found to
increase memory survivability (Bauer et al., 2019; Peterson et al., 2014).
It will be important to also address if the same robustness is found when
examining bullying perpetration. It is likely that the recall of the abuse of
others is more susceptible to biases because of factors like moral dis-
engagement, cognitive dissonance, and social desirability.
Second, when assessing prevalence rates by form, we did not ask
specifically about racial bullying. According to Vitoroulis and
Vaillancourt (2015), the lack of reference to race/ethnicity when
assessing bullying can lead to an underestimation of the prevalence
of peer victimization experienced by racial and ethnic minority
VAILLANCOURT ET AL. | 565

10. students. They also suggest that “ethnicity as a demographic variable
is not sufficient to draw conclusions on inter‐ or intra‐ethnic peer
victimization” and recommend the inclusion of other variables that
are “pertinent to ethnic identity, acculturation and immigration sta-
tus” (p. 165). Third, it is common for cyber bullying in particular to be
treated as a distinct form of bullying in the scientific literature, the
media, and in education. However, studies using sophisticated ana-
lytic techniques to assess the overlap and uniqueness of the various
forms of bullying suggest that there is substantial commonality; all
forms of bullying overlap and co‐occur, are predicted by similar
factors, and are associated with comparable outcomes (Haltigan &
Vaillancourt, 2018; Nylund et al., 2007). Accordingly, the best pre-
valence estimates for the present study are likely those derived from
the five‐item composite, consistent with Vaillancourt, Trinh, et al.
(2010). Fourth, the students who completed the survey at‐home did
not have the same support as those who completed the survey at
school. The presence of a bullying definition (or not) has been shown
to have an impact on prevalence rates (Vaillancourt et al., 2008).
In the present study, we cannot be sure if students who completed
the survey at home attended to the definition of bullying the same
way students did at school. Fifth, not all eligible students accessed
the survey, and of the 9095 students who did, only 6578 (72%)
completed the survey. It is possible that students who were involved
with bullying were more motivated to participate in the study than
students not involved. However, it is worthy to mention again that
our pre‐COVID rates were similar to those obtained by Vaillancourt,
Trinh, et al. (2010) who surveyed 98% of eligible students. Sixth, our
assumption is that bullying victimization and perpetration were
lower during the pandemic than before the pandemic because of
school‐related factors like decreased class sizes, increased supervision,
and the fewer opportunities for them to interact socially at school,
but other factors could be at play. Students get bullied and bully
others on their way to and from school (Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al.,
2010) and peer conflicts in the community can spill over to the
school environment. In Canada, there have been notable restrictions
on social gatherings of children and adults. As one example, extra-
curricular activities like community sports have been cancelled in
many areas. These restrictions could also influence bullying in-
volvement rates before and during the pandemic. Finally, we were
not permitted to code school level data as per our agreement with
the participating school board, and therefore, we were not able to
examine school‐level variation. Such information could have been
used to explore factors like difference in school ethnic composition
and involvement with bullying similar to Vitoroulis et al. (2016) but in
the context of the pandemic.
6.2 | Implications
The present study was conducted in Ontario, Canada where the
Education Act expects assiduous care for the health of students,
which means unrelenting support for students, especially the most
vulnerable ones (Accepting Schools Act, 2012; Education Act, 1990).
When reporting on bullying involvement before the pandemic, three
of every five students reported having been bullied. The prevalence
rate was lower among those students reporting on experiences
during the pandemic, with two of every five students reporting being
bullied. In our research, gender diverse and LGBTQ+ students were
at the highest risk of bullying victimization; four out of every five
reported being bullied pre‐COVID and three out of every five re-
ported being bullied during the pandemic. These disquieting statistics
suggest that the Education Act's (1990) first responsibility for prin-
cipals and teachers to provide assiduous care falls short for far too
many students. This responsibility must be in place before the sec-
ond responsibility, educating students, can be implemented effec-
tively, especially for the most marginalized students. Assiduous care
is also critical for students who bully because like bullied students
(McDougall & Vaillancourt, 2015; Moore et al., 2017), they too are at
risk for a wide range of health, social, and school adjustment pro-
blems (Wolke & Lereya, 2015). Youth who bully also need to be
identified and supported in developing healthy relationship patterns
to establish a foundation for positive adaptation and relationships
across the lifespan.
The shifts in patterns of bullying involvement from the pre‐pandemic
to the pandemic periods indicate that bullying is not an individual pro-
blem but a social power dynamic that unfolds in the context of peer
groups and the school system. Therefore, bullying problems must be
addressed through systemic changes at all levels within the education
system and with proactive efforts to ensure that all students are safe and
able to learn. Systemic change to address bullying is the responsibility of
all those within the system—policy makers, senior administration, prin-
cipals, teachers, parents, and students. These changes can only be made,
however, by engaging students as change partners (Spears et al., 2011),
as they are the experts on the ground in school bullying; they know the
problems and can envision the solutions (Cunningham et al., 2010, 2016).
Finally, our results highlight that the pandemic seems to have had
a positive effect on bullying rates, which prompts the need to consider
retaining some of the educational reforms used to reduce the spread
of the virus such as increased supervision, reduced class sizes, and
blended learning. Increased supervision is essential for the reduction
of bullying (Vaillancourt, Brittain, et al., 2010; van Verseveld et al.,
2019), while smaller class sizes may help foster caring relationships
(Finn et al., 2003), which could help reduce bullying (Khoury‐Kassabri
et al., 2004), and improve academic achievement (Nye et al., 2000).
When we mention increased supervision, we do not mean increases in
security cameras or police officers in schools. Rather we mean chan-
ges to the number of teachers or other caring adults who are physi-
cally present to supervise students outside of class. Blended learning—
combining traditional, in‐person instruction with online learning—has
potential to afford more options to students who do not thrive in the
traditional classroom. To date the evidence on blended learning sug-
gests better academic performance when compared to traditional face
to‐face instruction (see review by Means et al., 2013). Blended
learning seems to also outperform online only learning. For example, a
recent study of 4th grade students showed that blended learning was
associated with increases in students' engagement (Kundu et al., 2021)
566 | VAILLANCOURT ET AL.

11. and in an experimental study of elementary students, greater reading
gains were found for blended group than the control group (Macaruso
et al., 2020). Most of the studies conducted to date have been on adult
learners, so more work is needed to assess this in younger learners
and at‐risk students (Pytash & O'Byrne 2018; Repetto et al., 2018).
Schools need to be safe places that promote optimal learning and
development. Our study suggests that there is a long way to go for
Canada to achieve such a goal.
CONFLICT OF INTERESTS
The authors declare no known conflicts of interest. Parts of this
study, authored by Tracy Vaillancourt, Debra Pepler, and Ann Farrell,
were reported in the Safe Schools Panel Report for the Hamilton‐
Wentworth District School Board.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was funded by grants awarded to Tracy Vaillancourt by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
(grant numbers 833‐2004‐1019, 435‐2016‐1251) and Canadian
Institutes of Health Research (grant numbers 201009MOP‐232632‐
CHI‐CECA‐136591, 201603PJT‐365626‐PJT‐CECA‐136591). Hea-
ther Brittain is supported by a SSHRC Vanier scholarship and Ann H.
Farrell is supported by a SSHRC Banting Fellowship.
PEER REVIEW
The peer review history for this article is available at https://publons.
com/publon/10.1002/ab.21986.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available from
the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
ENDNOTES
1
Students were given the option of skipping any of the questions asked,
therefore not all proportions will equal 100%.
2
Because gender is usually treated as a binary variable (i.e., girls vs. boys),
students who identified as gender diverse (i.e., fluid, intersex, nonbinary/
gender non‐conforming for Grades 7 to 12 and other for Grades 4 to 6)
were not included in these analyses so that comparisons to other pub-
lished studies could be made. These students were included in a sub-
sequent validity check analysis.
ORCID
Tracy Vaillancourt http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9058-7276
Heather Brittain http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6070-3689
Amanda Krygsman http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1398-7572
Ann H. Farrell http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9947-3358
Debra Pepler http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2505-289X
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