Student anti-bullying and harassment policies at UK universities

ABSTRACT

This article provides the first analysis of all available UK university anti-bullying policies, summarising, comparing, and contrasting the content of policies acquired from university websites. The importance of anti-bullying policies is known from policy research in schools and workplaces but has previously not been investigated in Higher Education. A new coding framework and guidelines were developed to enable our analysis, and universities were given a score. Scores indicated variation between policies, suggesting some students may have inadequate support when consulting their university policy. The findings indicate that all universities should create and implement an anti-bullying policy. Students could be involved in the development of interventions or policies, as co-created initiatives may be more influential. University policy must be up-to-date, inclusive, comprehensive yet concise, and it must be publicised. We propose that our novel coding framework could be of use to policy makers and researchers investigating bullying policy within higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy
• bullying
• harassment
• higher education
• students
• university

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.