I would control for traditional yet study both.  It would be interesting to learn the correlative pattern between the two to see if there is a correlation or causative factors.  Remember correlation is not necessarily causation.

This is an excellent question but I do not know of any research in the field. I do, however, have a hunch. Regarding school bullying, I suspect that traditional bullies, especially boys, prefer a live as opposed to a digital audience when they victimize other pupils. Bullies often have a little court - apprentices if you will - and the bully likes to be cast in the main role. A live audience is, I think, probably more of a reinforcer for a macho masculine type than a Facebook insult, notably, when bullying involves physical violence as opposed to the symbolic variety. Sorry for being a bit too speculative when I know you are interested in controlling for possible variables.

Good luck, Paul ([email protected])

Have a look at my article below. I think it is downloadable. If not, send me your email and I will post a copy.

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Article Preventing and confronting school bullying: A comparative st...

I would control for traditional bullying or study both, often there is a correlation between both types of bullying . See for instance a special issue about cyberbullying in Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 23, 2013, 7-24

Kind regards,

Mieneke Pouwelse

It occurred to me that a large part of the cyberbullying has to do with perceived anonymity. Where physical bullying usually has one central coward surrounded with hanger-on, follow-me losers, cyberbullies can bully in perceived privacy in an environment what seems to invite the piling on effect by other insecure personalities who believe they are invisible. Since a bully can take on any identity he/she wants by simply creating a fake account in a social media network. 

Thank you all for elucidating this matter.

The reason I have asked you this question is because controlling for traditional bullying entails that many effects of interesting variables disappear when I enter traditional bullying as a control... The predictive power of traditional perpetration in explaining cyberbullying is so strong that the predictive value of other variables seem to be suppressed... 

What I basically mean is that I think both are correlated, but one is not predictive of the other. In the same vein, fast driving in a car is probably highly correlated with fast driving on a motor bike, but does this mean that the one form of fast driving predicts the other?

In the hypothetical situation of fast driving and motorcycle riding, there are, I suspect many variables, in particular, a thrill of speed and danger. If an individual starts to drive a car first and enjoys fast driving, this might be one of several predictors of taking up fast motorcycle riding. Things could, of course, be the other way round if the individual begins motorcycling and enjoys the adrenaline rush of speed before taking up car driving. On another issue, get in touch with Dan Olweus, a founding thinker in the field of bullying. He has helped me in the past. You would need to google contact details. I think, among other things, he will tell you that traditional face to face bullying is much more frequent than the cyber variety.

Thanks Paul, I know Dan Olweus and we also find a lot more traditional bullying than cyberbullying...

You are very welcome Wannes. Please keep me posted. Another colleague/friend of mine in Professor Chris Kyriacou. He has published work on cyberbullying and is at the University of York. He, a Greek colleague and myself have recently submitted a statistical study (n: c. 500) of student teachers/welfare professionals regarding their perceptions of school bullying. One interesting issue concerned attributing blame to the victim of bullying. Norway stood out from England and Greece here, with a significantly lower number of students blaming the victim in that country. I think this has, in part to do with the notion, strongly advocated by Dan, that bullying is an infringement of another´s human rights. That message chimes well with Nordic values in general. BW Paul

An article written by Qing Li (2006) “Cyberbullying in schools: A research of gender difference  illustrates that there is a large number of incidents not reported to authority or adults by victims and bystanders. I wonder if the situation has improved, especially in the part of bystanders’ intervention.

Ref: Li, Q. (2006). Cyberbullying in schools a research of gender differences. School psychology international, 27(2), 157-170.

Hi Wannes,

I think the question you have to ask yourself is “why do I want to control for traditional bullying?”. Traditional bullying and cyberbullying are indeed often highly correlated (as you know from the existing literature), as are traditional victimization and cybervictimization and these four groups together (e.g., cybervictim becomes offline bully, or offline bully becomes cybervictim, etcetera).

In my research, I try to understand why adolescents who are victims of traditional (offline) bullying become cyberbullies (if you’re interested, I can send you some papers by e-mail). In this respect, I don’t control for offline bullying behavior. I don’t control for offline bullying, because I’m not only interested in the group of adolescents that is only a victim, but also the group that is both a victim ánd a traditional bully. Do you get my point?

@Arthur; I am familiar with the paper that you mention and can fortunately tell you that a lot of research has been done since 2006 on bystander behavior in cyberbullying (and reporting the cyberbullying incidents). For example, see research of our Flemish colleagues Sara Bastiaensens, Sara Pabian, Heidi Vandebosch and Karolien Poels.

@anouk: the reason I ask is because reviewer 2 often urges me to control for traditional bullying.

thanks for the reference to the excellent work of my flemish mios-colleagues

Okay, I see your urge for carefully thinking this through. I still think that it depends on your research question or hypothesis whether you control for traditional bullying. 

I think this topic is open for debate and I'm curious whether there are researchers who think one should always control for traditional bullying. 

Reviewer 2 does ;-)

Hei Wannes. If you have not done so already, have a look at this paper.

Adolesc Health. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2013 Sep 5.

Published in final edited form as:

J Adolesc Health. 2012 Jul; 51(1): 59–65.

Published online 2012 Feb 22. doi:  10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.11.019

PMCID: PMC3763991

NIHMSID: NIHMS360174

Longitudinal predictors of cyber and traditional bullying perpetration in Australian secondary school students

Sheryl A. Hemphill, PhD,1 Aneta Kotevski, DPsych,1 Michelle Tollit, MEd Psych,1,2 Rachel Smith, MPsych,2 Todd I. Herrenkohl, PhD,3 John W. Toumbourou, PhD,4 and Richard F. Catalano, PhD3

A small minority of students (7%) in the current study engaged in both cyber and traditional bullying. Overall, this result suggests that most students who engage in cyber bullying do not engage in traditional bullying. Previous research has shown overlap between cyber and traditional bullying and victimization [4, 5]. It is possible that some students who engage in cyber bullying but not traditional bullying do so due to anonymity and the perception that this form of bullying is less likely to be detected. Cyber bullying may also rely on different forms of power where some students who are typically the recipients of traditional bullying use superiority in technological skills (rather than physical dominance) to bully others online. Future research should investigate these possibilities.

These articles may interest you:

Cyberbullying and its correlation to traditional bullying, gender and frequent and risky usage of internet-mediated communication tools

By Özgür Erdur-Baker (2009)

http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/1/109.abstract

======================================================

New bottle but old wine: A research of cyberbullying in schools

By Qing Li (2207)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563205000889

I don't know if you can read french and if it can be helpful for your reflexion but I recently read this paper:

Arsène, M., & Raynaud, J. P. (2014). Cyberbullying (ou cyber harcèlement) et psychopathologie de l’enfant et de l’adolescent: état actuel des connaissances. Neuropsychiatrie de l'enfance et de l'adolescence, 62(4), 249-256.