Perceptions of Bullying amongst Spanish Preschool and Primary Schoolchildren with the Use of Comic Strips: Practical and Theoretical Implications

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review: "Perceptions of bullying amongst Spanish preschool and primary schoolchildren with the use of comic strips: Practical and theoretical implications "

 

I reviewed the above-noted article and found it to be an interesting, well organized, and well written... The authors address an important research topic.

 

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend publication of the manuscript primarily because I’m not convinced the methodology is acceptable. I recognize that the methodology was used in previous studies, but that alone doesn’t justify it being used again. Particularly, comics provide very little context of the situations in which acts occur. Viewing a comic is not the same as viewing a physical act, which would be accompanied by much greater context. What viewers see in the current approach is an act that could be bullying, or it could not be. Personally, I couldn’t come to a conclusion, thus I’m not sure about the credibility of responses from young children.

 

The authors note that bullying is currently considered “a complex group phenomenon in which the aggressor or aggressors’ main goal is to achieve a certain position of power within the group” (p.1). Very little (if anything) of what is important in this definition can be identified in a comic strip. For all we know, the characters could be playing a game. I’m not convinced that anyone (adults or children) could determine what caused the act depicted in the comic, or deduce that the act was the result of previous conflict; two key aspects of the work. There is not enough context to provide a valid response to the questions used to measure the key components of the research.

 

Another limiting factor is the small sample size. Including only 30 children in each grade (half of whom were girls, the other half boys) does not permit particularly power statistical analyses, and is not very generalizable. The authors made quite a leap when they noted that their results “have a good external validity and … are representative” of students from ages 5-9 in Spain and in other western countries. Along these lines, I’m a bit concerned that a “significant proportion of interviewees” were either unable to answer the questions, or provided overly ambiguous responses. Removing them makes a small sample smaller in terms of quality responses, and their inability to answer the questions makes one question the validity of the responses from the other children in the sample, who are a similar age.

 

There is also a lack of description regarding the data. A table noting the descriptive statistics of the sample and findings would have helped. The figures are nicely done, but tables depicting the data would have been more helpful.

 

I apologize if I’m overly critical of this work. I’m simply not convinced that the methodology and approach taken are appropriate for measuring perceptions of bullying. It is, to be sure, an important topic that warrants additional consideration.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I fully agree with the authors that research on violence among children of pre-school age or younger is still unique. This group requires a special methodology appropriate to their age. Although the mechanisms of violence are well understood, there is still a gap in research of this kind, which has been filled in part by researchers from Spain, Romania, Poland and the Dominican Republic. Despite the validity, I have some comments and questions about the text:

1. In the abstract and keywords, information about the year of the study and the study area should be added.
   As part of the theoretical framework, the definition of violence and aggression should be separated.
2. I also suggest showing the differences and similarities of violence between children of younger school age and later school age This will allow the reader to understand some nuances relating to this topic. This theme was poorly discussed in the introductory section. A diagram may prove useful.
3. In section 2, hypotheses emerge. However, it is not clear what underlies these hypotheses. What were their sources?
4. A weakness of this text is the selection of respondents. The selection is uneven across countries. In addition, cultural conditions mean that violence may be perceived differently by children in Spain, Romania, Dominican Republic. I propose to focus on one country with the largest sample due to the asymmetrical selection of the research sample.
5. Issues of research procedure are not clearly described. Who conducted the research? What was his/her background in working with children of younger school and preschool age?
6. In section 4.1 there should be a time limit, for example aggression or violence over the last week or in the 'recent past'. Similarly, the time period is narrowed down in studies such as EU KIDS Online. It is important to know roughly to which period we can limit the phenomenon.

Overall, the text is interesting and I keep my fingers crossed for improvements.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I think you have done an exceptional job. With this study, the gaps that still exist regarding the phenomenon of bullying in childhood are beginning to dissolve.
Although I have not detected significant gaps in this study, I have missed a section to introduce the ethical values required when working with human participants.

Author Response

Please, see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The article has been modified as indicated in the first review. The text is an interesting attempt to show the phenomenon of bullying among children. Studies of this type are still rare. Researchers tend to focus on adolescents rather than younger school-age or pre-schoolers when investigating such phenomena. This is due to the fact that research in this group is much more difficult. 

I congratulate the study and recommend the text for publication.