The present study examined the influence of family and classroom environments on the development of particular individual characteristics, including level of empathy, attitude to institutional authority and perceived social reputation, and the role these characteristics may in turn play in school aggression. Participants were 1319 adolescents aged 11–16 (47% male) drawn from state secondary schools in Valencia (Spain). Since previous studies suggest that these variables may contribute differentially to aggressive behaviour depending on adolescent gender, two different mediational structural models were calculated, respectively, for boys and girls. Results obtained confirmed the associations expected among the variables considered in the structural equations tested and pointed out different paths for boys and girls. Overall, our findings suggested that a positive family environment seems to be a stronger protective factor for girls in the development of problems of behaviour at school, whereas for boys this is the case for a positive classroom environment. This model accounted for 40% of the variance in aggression at school for boys and 35% for girls.

El presente estudio tiene como objetivo analizar un perfil psicosocial de adolescentes agresores, víctimas, agresores/víctimas y estudiantes no implicados, considerando las diferencias de género. El perfil psicosocial del adolescente se define en el presente estudio de acuerdo con los siguientes indicadores de ajuste: autoestima general, satisfacción con la vida, sintomatología depresiva, reputación ideal no conformista e implicación en la comunidad. Los participantes del estudio fueron 1884 estudiantes españoles (52% chicos y 48% chicas) con un rango de edad comprendido entre los 11 y los 17 años (M = 13.7, DT = 1.4). Los resultados del análisis de varianza señalan que los adolescentes implicados como agresores/víctimas muestran el perfil psicosocial menos adaptativo y los alumnos no implicados el perfil más saludable de los cuatro grupos analizados. Además, se encontraron diferencias significativas entre chicos y chicas dentro del perfil psicosocial de agresor, víctima y no implicado. Sin embargo, los adolescentes clasificados como agresores/víctimas no muestran diferencias significativas entre los géneros en ninguna de las variables analizadas. Se discuten las implicaciones prácticas de estos resultados.

The present study examined psychosocial adjustment in the following four groups of students: victims, bullies, bully/victims and a control group of adolescents not involved in bullying or victimization problems. Psychosocial adjustment was measured considering as indicators: level of self-esteem, depressive symptomatology, perceived stress, feeling of loneliness, and a general measure of satisfaction with life. Participants (N=1319) were aged from 11 to 16 (47% male) and drawn from seven state secondary schools in Valencia (Spain). ANOVAs revealed significant differences among groups, reporting adolescents not involved a general better psychosocial adjustment; they had higher levels of self-esteem and satisfaction with life, and lower levels of depressive symptomatology, perceived stress and feeling of loneliness. The scores for this group were equivalent to those of bullies with respect to self-esteem, depressive symptomatology and loneliness. However, bullies perceived more stress and expressed less satisfaction with life, as did the other two groups, namely victims and bully/victims. Victims reported the strongest feelings of loneliness. Bully/victims seemed to share characteristics with both bullies and victims, though showing more similarities with the latter and a general poor psychosocial profile.Within the last few decades, violent behaviours among adolescents at school have become an important concern for both educators and researches, due probably to the negative consequences this kind of behaviour exerts on students involved

The aim of the present study was to analyze the relationship between the parenting styles—authoritative, indulgent, authoritarian, and neglectful—and reactive and proactive school violence among peers. These analyses were also performed by sex and age groups. The sample consisted of 2399 Spanish adolescents (50.2% male), aged between 12 and 18 years, mean (M) = 14.69, standard deviation (SD) = 1.82. A multivariate analisys of variance (MANOVA, 4 × 2 × 2) was applied, considering parenting style, sex, and age group (12–14 and 15–18 years) as independent variables to analyze the possible effects of interaction. Reactive, proactive, and pure violence were the dependent variables. The results showed the main effects of parenting styles, sex, and age, as well as an interaction between sex, age, and parenting styles. The interpretation of the findings suggested that the authoritarian parenting style was related to greater engagement in proactive and reactive violent behaviors. In relation to the effect of the interaction between sex, age, and parenting styles, it was observed that adolescents from indulgent families, of both sexes and in any of the studied age groups, obtained lower scores in proactive violence. The discussion highlights the importance of affection and warmth for well-adjusted children’s behavior.

The present study aimed to analyze differences between aggressive and nonaggressive rejected students in four sets of variables: personal, family, school, and social. Participants in the study were 843 Spanish adolescents ranging in age from 11 to 16 years old, of whom 47% were boys. Results indicated that these two subgroups of rejected students show a different profile. Aggressive rejected students informed of lower levels of family self-esteem, less parental support, higher levels of aggression between their parents at home, and a more offensive parent-child communication in comparison with nonaggressive rejected adolescents. Moreover, aggressive rejected students showed lower levels of academic self-esteem, a more negative attitude toward school and studies, poorer relationships with teachers, and more academic difficulties than did adolescents in the nonaggressive rejected subgroup. Finally, aggressive rejected students indicated the presence of more undesirable life events and changes in their lives and, in general, higher levels of perceived stress.