SHORT COMMUNICATION Prevalence of workplace bullying and risk groups: a representative population study Adriana Ortega Æ Annie Høgh Æ Jan Hyld Pejtersen Æ Ole Olsen Received: 12 October 2007 / Accepted: 6 June 2008 / Published online: 27 June 2008 Ó Springer-Verlag 2008 Abstract Objectives To estimate the prevalence of bullying and to identify risk groups in a representative population sample. Methods The data for this study was taken from the second Danish Psychosocial Work Environment Study (DPWES). The sample consisted of 3,429 employees between 20 and 59-years. The response rate for the study was 60.4%. Results The study showed that 8.3% of the respondents had been bullied within the past year, 1.6% of the sample reported daily to weekly bullying. Co-workers (71.5%) and managers/supervisors (32.4%) were most often reported as perpetrators of bullying, but bullying from subordinates (6%) was also reported. We found significant differences in the prevalence of bullying for both occupational status and work process, a variable characterizing the employees main task in their job. Unskilled workers reported the highest prevalence of bullying, while managers/supervisors the lowest prevalence. People working with things (male- dominated occupations) and people working with clients/ patients (female-dominated occupations) reported higher prevalence of bullying than people working with symbols or customers. No significant gender or age differences were found. Conclusions These findings suggest that types of work and gender ratio are risk factors in the onset of workplace bullying. Future studies should take into account the type of work and the gender ratio of the organization. Keywords Workplace bullying Á Population study Á Gender ratio Á Work characteristics Á Occupations Introduction Bullying has been identified as a serious problem in the workplace and the empirical evidence shows that it is a relatively prevalent problem in many countries (Zapf et al. 2003; Zapf and Einarsen 2005). However, there are great differences in the prevalence of bullying at work (Moayed et al. 2006; Zapf and Einarsen 2005). These variations and differences in the prevalence of bullying have been attributed to the (a) different operational criteria used to measure prevalence and incidence of bullying in organi- zational context; (b) differences in the organizational culture prevailing in the workplaces or departments under study and/or (c) cross-cultural differences (Zapf et al. 2003; Hoel and Cooper 2000; Agervold and Mikkelsen 2004; Mikkelsen and Einarsen 2001). Although there is no commonly accepted definition of bullying, some consistencies in the approaches to the def- inition of workplace bullying have emerged in recent years. According to the general agreement in the literature bul- lying consists of persistent negative actions directed towards one or more targets, it involves more than a single act and the targets or victims end up unable to defend themselves (Hoel et al. 2003). These acts entail work- related and/or person-related negative actions or behavior (Einarsen et al. 2003). Work-related bullying might take the form of excessive monitoring of work, unreasonable deadlines, unmanageable workload, and meaningless tasks; while person-related bullying may take the form of obvious verbal abuse, persistent criticism, overt threats, or more cunning acts like excluding or isolating the person, gossip A. Ortega (&) Á A. Høgh Á J. H. Pejtersen Á O. Olsen National Research Centre for the Working Environment, Lersø Parkalle ´ 105, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: aor@nrcwe.dk 123 Int Arch Occup Environ Health (2009) 82:417–426 DOI 10.1007/s00420-008-0339-8