No abstract

The problem of school bullying among Greek primary and secondary school children was investigated by using a translated version of the Olweus Questionnaire with a total of 1,758 students, mainly aged 10—14, from 20 schools in the greater Thessaloniki area. Overall, 8.2 percent of all students were victims, 5.8 percent were bullies and 1.1 percent were bully/victims. In line with earlier findings, more boys were identified as bullies, whereas no sex differences emerged for rates of victimization. Separate results for primary school pupils revealed that boys and girls were equally self-identified as bullies. Younger students were more at risk of being bullied. The most common type of bullying was `general name-calling'. Significant sex differences in types of victimization emerged only for physical bullying, which was more common in boys, and for spreading malicious rumours, which was more common in girls. Survey results were similar to those of other countries with regard to class and gender of the bully and location of bullying. Surprisingly, almost 25 percent of victims reported being victimized in the gym class.

No abstract

Collective efficacy, defined as informal social controls that operate under social norms of trust, is an emerging theoretical concept that has been applied to explain violence rates in neighborhoods, affiliation with deviant peers, partner violence, and adolescent delinquency. This study employed a multilevel design to examine the association between collective efficacy at the class-level and individual-level bullying perpetration and victimization using survey data from 1,729 Greek students, aged 11 to 14 years. School class collective efficacy was defined as cohesion and trust among class members combined with their willingness to intervene in the case of aggressive or bullying incidents. Our findings indicate that individual-level victimization is more frequent in classes with lower levels of collective efficacy. We conclude that the notion of collective efficacy might also prove useful in explaining bullying involvement.