Predicting School Bullying Victimization: Focusing on Individual and School Environmental/Security Factors

Abstract

Bullying behavior continues to be a salient social and health-related issue of importance to educators, criminal justice practitioners, and academicians across the country. While discourse on school bullying is abundant, previous studies are limited in explaining the predictive effect of factors such as individual/demographic variables, school environmental variables, and school antibullying preventive measures. Using a nationally representative sample of 12,987 private and public school students in the United States, the current study examines school safety measures and students’ perceptions about school environments (or climate), especially school rules and punishment. Findings reveal that the variables of security guards, fairness and awareness of school rules, gangs and guns at school, students misbehaving, and teachers’ punishment of students were statistically significant predictors of bullying victimization. Implications of these findings for school anti-bullying programs as well as directions for future research are discussed.

Prevalence and correlates of bullying and victimization among school students in rural Egypt

“…School bullying and victimization have been recognized as major social and health problems worldwide, requiring the integrated efforts of the public, clinical practitioners, public health professionals, and educators [25]. Although it could be assumed that small communities and rural areas are protected from violence, there has been a dramatic rise in reported rural crime during the last few decades.…”

Self-Esteem and Tendency of Bullying among Primary School Children

“…Besides, relational bullying or peer rejection is another form of bullying behaviour. It is a negative social experience in schools which can lead a child to feel loneliness and emptiness (Buhs, 2006;Jeong et al, 2013). Some school age children were found to socially reject victims of bullying from their social circles.…”

“…Bullying, a form of behavioural aggression, is a widespread phenomenon which can happened anywhere (Jeong, Kwak, Moon, & Miguel, 2013). Among different age-based bullying, child bullying has garnered the most research attention.…”

“…Few common key factors are poor self-control (Wang et al, 2009), low selfesteem (Bushman, Baumeister, Thomaes, Ryu, Begeer & West, 2009), psychological disturbance (Nansel et al, 2001), and family disruption (Jeong et al, 2013). While most risk factors are consistently explained bullying behaviour, the influence of self-esteem remains controversial.…”

The Health-Related Quality of Life of Students Involved in School Bullying

“…More specifically, underachievement has been shown to be a risk factor for being an aggressor and low involvement in school and lack of contact with teachers have been identified as risk factors for involvement in bullying [28][29][30].…”