New Approaches to Defender and Outsider Roles in School Bullying

Using latent profile analysis, this study refined the traditional defender and outsider roles in bullying research and examined intrapersonal, interpersonal, and contextual factors associated with subtypes of roles. Participants were 1,373 adolescents (40% girls, M age : 14 years) from 54 classrooms in six middle schools. The results revealed that defenders could be classified as either assertive or comforting and that outsiders could be...