Qualitative Study Models in Understanding of Aggression, Bullying, and Violence

Aggression in humans is characterised under two categories a) physical and b) Mental aggression. Physical aggression is the Psychological as well as Social behaviour in which an individual literally causes physical harm leading to pain on another individual, whereas mental aggression is the one in which an individual causes emotional pain verbally on another individual. Both the types of aggression damages social well-being of the individuals involved in it. This scenario is similar to the outbreak of Tsunami followed by an Earth quake. In both the situation the consequence is damage. Bullying is a psychological act of provocation as the result of destress by the individuals exhibiting their power on others. Though bullying is very common in school environment, it also occurs in office environment etc. Bullying causes emotional damage to a greater extent compared to physical damage. Violence is the product of aggression and bullying resulting in physical injury as well as emotional break down. The present chapter discusses in detail a qualitative model in understanding of the acts of aggression and bullying resulting in violence as well as suggestions controlling the act of aggression and bullying.


Aggression and Violence
There is strong evidence that aggression leads to violence. Research studies have shown that one of reasons for aggression is the socioeconomic status. Children with low socioeconomic status are found to be more aggressive compared to their peers with moderate and high socio-economic status, the reason being children with low socioeconomic status are vulnerable child abuse affecting their psychological well-being (Caspi et al., 2002). Though aggression mainly depends on biological factors, low socio-economic status acts as a trigger, Zigler, Taussig and Black (1992) suggested that aggressive behaviour leading to violence can be changed with improving cognition and emotion. Therefore, children in their formative years to be targeted to bring in effective change in behaviour having a check of their thoughts and feelings. Many attempts world-wide to check aggressive behaviour leading to violence through "boot camps," individual and group therapy, and "scared straight" programs in rehabilitation centre proved to be unsuccessful unless it is addressed at grass root level by personal interventions by teachers and parents at a tender age. In order to prevent aggressive behaviour among children is to prevent them from exposure to violence in day to day life as well as discouraging them watching violent films, playing violent video games, having a close monitor on children's activities.
Children behaving aggressively are to be diverted with laughter which drastically brings change in their behaviour rather than encountering with aggression. It is necessary to have a check on emotions, otherwise leads to negative behaviour of arousal. Therefore, children are to be trained to think about www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/eshs their feelings, learn the ways to respond negative emotions depending on the situations to find most effective solution to overcome frustration or anger (Berkowitz, 1993).
In most of the cultures world-wide Parents send their children to schools at a very tender age thinking that the school is the best place for their children safety. Whereas, a few children aggressive in nature, have shown violent behaviour indulging themselves in shooting incidents due to the free availability of hand guns and other violent materials. Therefore, school systems must strictly enforce laws to prevent the students from teasing, threatening or any kind of mistreat on fellow students. Countries like Canada, New Zealand and United States have recently passed a legislation to stop cyberbullying. The following are a few suggestions to overcome aggressive behaviour leading to bullying among children and adolescents.
 By reducing the gap in the socio-economic status between rich and poor sections of the society which in turn reduce upward comparison by the poverty-stricken society leading to frustration, aggression eventually to violence.

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By educating Children and adolescents the causes of violence might result in less aggressiveness.

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By giving support and rehabilitation of young adults under the influence of drugs and alcohol as well as making them understand that substance abuse lead to aggressive behaviour.
 By counselling the children to reduce violence who grow up in abusive homes having the opinion aggressiveness is considered as normal behaviour.
 By encouraging the children to think positively and develop concern about other from young age, might result in increase in positive feeling about themselves as well as with others helping them to communicate better, reducing violence and aggression.

Some of the Qualitative Methods on Bullying, Aggression and Violence
Several research studies have been published about Bullying, Aggression and violence for the past three decades in international journals (Bjorqvist, 1994;Hawker & Boulton 2000;Rigby, 2003;Salmon et al., 2000;Smith, 2004;Smith & Brain, 2000). World-wide out of 75 research studies conducted so far 7 are found to be based on qualitative methods and the rest are either quantitative or mixed research.
According to Torrance (2000), qualitative research on Bullying gives implicit understanding as the participants victimized by bullying narrates their personal experiences. This is also supported by Stewin and Mah (2001). According to Yauch and Steudel (2003) quantitative and qualitative methods differ in their approach based on the fact that the quantitative research method involves the collection of the data by survey or other measurement techniques. Whereas the qualitative research involves the collection of the data through interviews, focus groups and participants observation. Smircich (1980) suggested that the researcher has to decide to choose the appropriate method based on the assumptions and nature of the social phenomenon under investigation. Therefore, it is suggested that a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods is recommended to understand the assumptions thoroughly. However, Greene, Caracelli and Graham (1989) confirmed that there are three main reasons for combining the quantitative and qualitative methods.
1) Triangulation for supporting data and obtaining the convergent validity.
2) Complementarity for fully explaining the results of data analysis.
3) Guiding for further data collection, sampling or analysis.
Yauch and Steudel (2003)  involved assessment of a questionnaire from Behaviour Assessment system for Children and Revised Child Self-Report Post Traumatic Stress Reaction Index. Findings from qualitative data revealed that the some of the indicators of bullying are racial minority status based on skin colour, Physical differences, perceived sexual differences that is labelled as gay or lesbian by peers and a new student in the school.
The qualitative research findings were complementary to quantitative analyses. Therefore, both quantitative and qualitative research methods to understand in depth about aggression, bullying and violence are proved to be effective in data collection, analysis and interpretation. They are several research studies carried out by mixed methods reported divergent findings posing certain limitations, Linkroums (2006) examined the coping mechanism of coping bullying among 213 African American middle school students who were randomly selected by administering a questionnaire to find out their experiences in bullying, semi structured interviews were conducted on 80 students qualitatively to know about their coping strategies. The findings showed 15 coping strategies, 13 strategies out of 15 were found to form a social cluster. However, the regression model derived from quantitative data was found to be not in agreement with the responses obtained from interview qualitatively. Divergence in findings reported from Self-report and interview considered as the limitations of the mixed methods. Another research study by Cowie and Olafsson (2000) reported divergence in qualitative and quantitative data findings. They examined the impact peer support services program adopted by a high school with high rate of bullying to reduce the aggressive behaviour. The program consisted of students serving as peer supporters meeting the other students during lunch and instructing them to be vigilant on incidences of bullying and to intervene appropriately. The researchers conducted evaluation administering the questionnaire quantitatively twice to collect pre-test and post-test data. The result of the analysis showed insignificant differences between pre-test and post-test showing that the peer support service program did not reduce bullying. Whereas, qualitative research conducted by taking interviews with peer supporters, students and the students who received interventions (victims). The results showed that the incidents of bullying reduced by adopting peer support services and the students who are victims felt that peer supporters were helpful with timely intervention. Therefore, the rich qualitative data proved the strength of peer student support service program in reducing the incidents of bullying, otherwise merely going by the results of quantitative data one would infer that peer student support service program as ineffective in reducing bullying. Pool et al. (2010) suggested that mixed methods often lead to inconsistency involving both quantitative and qualitative analysis, no attempt has been made to find out the reasons for such inconsistencies in research findings. Though there is lots of scope for research on bullying the methods adopted, mixed methods are widely used in the research on bullying. Another study by Swearer and Esplelage (2011) focused to find how technology is used in bullying and violence by students used mixed methods. This type of bullying is referred as cyber bullying, digital harassment. Therefore, more mixed method research is necessary to find the loop holes in networking sites, blogging communities, virtual communities. There is strong evidence to show why mixed methods are recommended in the studies  To find out the strategies to reform aggressive behaviour.

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To feel the pain of victimization.