Summary
This systematic review examines the prevalence and completeness of contextual information in empirical research on school bullying, analysing 201 articles spanning 1976–2015. Smith and Berkkun find that whilst most studies report participant and country details, only approximately one quarter explicitly state the year of data collection—a significant omission given that societal changes across even short periods can meaningfully affect bullying prevalence and characteristics. The authors recommend that year of data collection become standard practice in bullying research reporting.
UK applicability
The findings are applicable to UK research on school bullying and related fields, establishing benchmarks for contextual reporting standards that UK journals and researchers might adopt. The recommendations align with broader moves towards transparency and reproducibility in social science research, which are relevant to UK policy contexts around education and child safeguarding.
Key measures
Proportion of articles reporting: participant number, participant age, gender balance, country of data collection, and year of data collection; average gap between data collection and publication (years)
Outcomes reported
The study analysed the prevalence of contextual information (participant details, country, year of data collection) across 201 empirical articles on school bullying published between 1976 and 2015. It measured the frequency and completeness of reporting on participant numbers, age, gender, country of study, and year of data collection.
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