Victimized student's experiences of bullying: A phenomenological approach

Today, bullying is one of the most common problems in schools. Many quantitative researches have been conducted to understand the different aspects of this phenomenon, but very few qualitative researches have been performed in this area. Therefore, this study was undertaken to examine bullied student's experiences of victimization in order to understand the nature of victimization more deeply. This qualitative research has been based on the interpretative paradigm and conducted using the phenomenological approach. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 11 bullied students who had the inclusion criteria. Data were analyzed using Colaizzi’s method. The findings revealed three main themes of "reasons for victimization", "the consequences of victimization", and "ways to deal with bullying" and twelve subthemes. Investigation of experiences of bullied students revealed that victimization has various psychological, social, behavioral, and academic consequences for these students. Moreover, data analysis showed that schools and families are major factors in the incidence of bullying and can also have a major role in dealing with bullying.