“Another person’s suffering is my joy”: A mixed-methods study of bullying and cyberbullying in rural, conflict-affected communities of Northern Colombia

Abstract Background Bullying affects one in three students worldwide and can have long-lasting psychological effects that extend into adulthood. These impacts may be especially relevant in communities affected by armed conflict and severe deprivation. Moreover, populations with these characteristics remain under-represented in the research literature. Methods A convergent mixed-methods design was employed. In the quantitative strand, 202 pupils aged 10–17 completed a free-word-association task, yielding 1,737 evoked words (928 for “bullying” and 809 for “cyberbullying”). Terms were grouped into conceptually related categories, and their distributions were examined by age group and gender. Because pupils generated multiple associations, inferential comparisons were conducted using participant-level permutation tests that preserved the clustering of responses within pupils. In the qualitative strand, codebook Thematic Analysis was conducted on data from five focus groups ( N = 43), during which participants discussed their definitions and experiences of bullying and school violence. Results Quantitatively, canonical bullying and cyberbullying elements comprised most evoked words. The distribution of conceptual categories differed modestly across age groups (permutation p = .016): violence- and aggression-related terms accounted for 65.0% of responses among 10–12-year-olds, compared with 55.2% among 13–14-year-olds and 58.8% among 15–17-year-olds, whereas discrimination and exclusion accounted for 2.7%, 9.7%, and 7.1%, respectively. No evidence of gender differences was observed (permutation p = .894). Qualitatively, participants vividly described physical, verbal, sexual and online peer-aggression but did not always reference repetition when defining bullying and cyberbullying; some used “bullying” and “school violence” interchangeably. The power imbalance dimension was most often framed as unfair treatment tied to appearance, gender, race or social class. Although boundaries between bullying/cyberbullying and everyday school violence occasionally blurred, pupils demonstrated an overall understanding of core bullying and cyberbullying elements. Conclusions Interventions in similar settings should target the distinctions between bullying, cyberbullying and broader violence in younger pupils, tailoring content to pupils’ own definitions and experiences. Moreover, programmes should integrate components that address prejudice and power imbalances to enhance detection and prevention of harm.