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Central to the definition of bullying is the abuse of power. Power relationships are inherent in social groups, by virtue of differing size, strength, age, socioeconomic status (SES), or social connectedness of individuals. Beyond the influence of these individual characteristics, environmental factors have the potential to affect the power dynamic in bullying and victimization, but are a relatively unexplored research area. In particular, we know little about how the community-level factors relate to bullying in the adolescent population. The present study is guided by a social ecological perspective to gain a deeper understanding of the individual and built community characteristics (e.g., parks, recreational spaces, buildings that facilitate social interaction and community connectedness) that contribute to the power dynamics related to victimization or bullying in traditional and electronic contexts. Data were collected from 17,777 students in Grades 6 to 10 as part of the 2009/2010 Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) Survey, from Geographical Information Systems (GIS) data, and from 2006 Canadian Census data. Two nested models were run using HLM with age, gender, ethnicity, SES, social inclusion factors (e.g., collective efficacy), and community resource factors (e.g., access to recreation) as predictors. Characteristics of individuals that placed them at a power disadvantage (being younger, female, and having low SES) were linked to higher rates of victimization. Lower individual collective efficacy was also associated with higher rates of traditional and electronic victimization. Community recreational opportunities were associated with decreased victimization in both contexts. The relative importance of individual and built environmental factors and conceptualization of bullying interactions within a social ecology model are discussed.

Abstract:The objectives of this project were to: (a) identify early trajectories of delinquency for both boys and girls at ages 8 (Grade 3), 11 (Grade 6), and 14 (Grade 9) in a longitudinal sample of 842 at-risk youth from a multi-informant perspective (i.e., parents, teachers, selfreported youth ratings), and (b) estimate the costs associated with each delinquency trajectory on utilization of resources in the criminal justice system, remedial education, health care and social services, and social assistance. The results indicated six distinct trajectories of delinquency: two low groups, two desisting groups, an escalator group, and a high delinquency group. There were significantly more females than males in the two low delinquency trajectory groups, p < .05 for both analyses. Furthermore, both the youth from the two desisters trajectory groups (13% of the sample) and from the two most at-risk trajectories (escalators and high delinquency, 5% of the sample) each accounted for approximately 40% of the estimated costs to government. It is interesting to note that 80% of the estimated Criminal Justice costs were due to the high delinquency and escalators trajectory groups. Antisocial or delinquent girls cost society more money than antisocial or delinquent boys in all domains, with the exception of the Social Assistance domain. Implications for crime prevention are discussed.

BackgroundDifficult temperament in infancy is a risk factor for forms of later internalizing and externalizing psychopathology, including depression and anxiety. A better understanding of the roots of difficult temperament requires assessment of its early development with a genetically informative design. The goal of this study was to estimate genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in infant negative emotionality, their persistence over time and their influences on stability between 5 and 18 months of age.MethodParticipants were 244 monozygotic and 394 dizygotic twin pairs (49.7% male) recruited from birth. Mothers rated their twins for negative emotionality at 5 and 18 months. Longitudinal analysis of stability and innovation between the two time points was performed in Mplus.ResultsThere were substantial and similar heritability (approximately 31%) and shared environmental (57.3%) contributions to negative emotionality at both 5 and 18 months. The trait’s interindividual stability across time was both genetically- and environmentally- mediated. Evidence of innovative effects (i.e., variance at 18 months independent from variance at 5 months) indicated that negative emotionality is developmentally dynamic and affected by persistent and new genetic and environmental factors at 18 months.ConclusionsIn the first two years of life, ongoing genetic and environmental influences support temperamental negative emotionality but new genetic and environmental factors also indicate dynamic change of those factors across time. A better understanding of the source and timing of factors on temperament in early development, and role of sex, could improve efforts to prevent related psychopathology.