Bullies and Victims: How bullying incidents vary across grades and how they are reported by University of California, Davis

We analyzed a friendship and aggression network collected from a group of high school students (8th–12th graders). We depicted social behaviors among the studied subjects by designing a visualization that allows us to answer questions like ‘Do bullying tendencies change among students in grades?’ and ‘How likely is a bullying incident would be reported by the victim, other peers, or the bully?’ A node-link diagram succinctly shows the relationships between individuals. Its layout was designed to reveal both friendship and grade information, while directionally animated edges indicate the type of social relationships between students. Node color indicates each student’s tendency to be a bully or a victim, and size denotes the number of reported bully-related incidents, as an aggressor or a recipient.