I am guessing that most educators don’t spend a lot of time scanning the latest educational research. Retired or not, this is what I do. Because educators have reported anecdotes related to this issue, I thought they might be interested in this study.
I would suggest that the election of 2016 had a unique and problematic character. I usually vote for Democrats, but it is not the outcome per se that bothered me. I was troubled by the character and style of the Republican presidential candidate.
In the aftermath of the election, anecdotes surfaced of children using some of the language and behaviors of the Republican Presidential candidate. We all like to share examples to support our perspectives, but anecdotal evidence is regarded as weak because one can find a case for pretty much any argument you want to make.
When I taught advanced students, I often encountered some who did not share my interest in reading the actual research studies. I used to encourage them to consider the creative methods researchers came up with to investigate important topics. How do you go about getting the kind of data you need to answer questions that on the surface are deceptively simple? How do you rule out what others might raise as alternate explanations?
Huang and Cornell (2019) developed this approach. The state of Virginia contains counties reliably voting Democrat or Republican. The difference in the Republican vote varies from 11% to 82% by county. School districts in Virginia tend to be either county or big city districts. Virginia administers a statewide school climate survey in alternate years and has data available from 2013, 2015, and 2017. Several items from the survey deal with teasing and bullying – e.g., Bullying is a problem in this school. Students in this school are teased or put down because of their race or ethnicity. These are what I consider the key characteristics of the study. Of course, the journal article provides much more detail.
The Huang and Cornell research focused on middle school students. The study compared that data on bullying across schools in Republican and Democratic districts in the three target years. The study found significant differences in bullying only in 2017. The researchers tested whether the difference remained after controlling for other variables population density, % of students requiring subsidized lunches, level of education of parents, % of white voters. The study used sophisticated statistical procedures (e.g., path analysis) to test complex models involving multiple variables and test alternative explanations. The researchers concluded that the party prevalence had a unique influence in 2017. There was uniquely more bullying reported in Republican districts in 2017.
Politicians, depending on the election, have recently used to phrase “elections matter” to justify actions they were taking. It appears that some elections do and I am guessing increasing the frequency of bullying is not what the Republican politicians’ use of the phrase is intended to justify.
Huang, F. L., & Cornell, D. G. (2019). School teasing and bullying after the presidential election. Educational Researcher, 48(2), 69-83.
