New Report on Student Reports of Bullying

Twenty percent of students ages 12 through 18 in grades 6–12 reported being bullied during the 2016–17 school year. Within the population of students who reported being bullied, 13 percent reported being made fun of; 13 percent reported being the subject of rumors; and 5 percent reported being pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on.

The National Center for Education Statistics released a new Web Tables Report today (July 16^th) entitled Student Reports of Bullying: Results From the 2017 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey. This report shows the extent to which students with different characteristics report being bullied, including estimates by student sex, race/ethnicity, grade, and household income as well as the characteristics of the schools they attend.

Key findings from the report are:

• In 2017, approximately 20 percent of students ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied at school. Of these students, 13 percent reported that they were made fun of, called names, or insulted; another 13 percent reported being the subject of rumors; 4 percent reported that they were threatened with harm; 5 percent reported that they were pushed, shoved, tripped, or spit on; 2 percent reported that others tried to make them do things they did not want to do; 5 percent reported that they were excluded from activities on purpose; and 1 percent reported that their property was destroyed by others on purpose.
• Seventeen percent of male students and 24 percent of female students ages 12 through 18 reported being bullied.
• Of the 20 percent of students ages 12 through 18 who reported being bullied, 24 percent reported being bullied once, 17 percent reported being bullied on 2 days, 30 percent reported being bullied on 3 to 10 days, and 20 percent reported being bullied on more than 10 days.
• Forty-one percent of these students also reported that they believed the bullying would happen again, and 33 percent reported being bullied by multiple students acting as a team, or acting both alone and as a team. 

The tables in this report include data from the 2017 School Crime Supplement (SCS) to the National Crime Victimization Survey. The U.S. Census Bureau appended additional data from the 2015–16 Common Core of Data and the 2015–16 Private School Universe Survey to the SCS data to show the extent to which bullying victimization is reported by students in schools with different characteristics.