Bullies, Gangs, Drugs, and School: Understanding the Overlap and the Role of Ethnicity and Urbanicity

Abstract

Recent media attention has increased interest in behavioral, mental health, and academic correlates of involvement in bullying. Yet, there has not been much interest in investigating the co-occurrence of other health-risk behaviors, such as gang membership, weapon carrying, and substance use. The potential influence of contextual factors, such as youth ethnicity, urbanicity, and school characteristics, also has been overlooked in previous research. The current study examined different subtypes of involvement in bullying-as primarily a victim, as primarily a bully, as both a victim and bully, and no involvement-and the association with significant health-risk behaviors, including engaging in violence and substance use, as well as academic problems. The analyses use self-report data from 16,302 adolescents (50.3 % female, 62.2 % Caucasian, 37.8 % African American) enrolled in 52 high schools. A series of three-level HLM analyses revealed that bullies and bully/victims were generally at greatest of risk of being involved in violence, engaging in multiple types of substance use, and having academic problems. These findings extend prior research by emphasizing a potential link between involvement in bullying and multiple health-risk behaviors, particularly among urban and African American high school youth.

Emergency Department Visits Resulting From Intentional Injury In and Out of School

“…5 Previous studies have documented that African American race and Hispanic ethnicity are associated with increased likelihood of bullying and its associated mentaland physicalhealth impacts. 18,19,21 Our study also suggests that racial disparity persists for the risk of intentional injury-related EDVs. In addition to students of black race and Hispanic ethnicity, American Indian youth were found to be high risk.…”

“…This gender difference is interesting, especially because previous studies have identified male gender to be a risk factor for injuries in a variety of settings. 6,11,12,14,21,26 Further research is needed to understand why this disparity exists.…”

“…Intentional injuries and violence have immense mental health effects on the victims, and studies have reported that victims may be involved with future violence, either as victims or as perpetrators. 21,22 With the knowledge that intentional injuries continue to be a significant problem in the school setting, and in light of the limited information that these data offer regarding perpetrators, it is clear that more work needs to be done to understand the victim-bully relationship to design preventive efforts.…”

“…14 A number of studies have shown significant health-related issues, including an increase in risk-taking behaviors, poor school performance, and absenteeism related to bullying and violence. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] As a consequence, there have been numerous efforts to reduce injuries in the school setting, including increased supervision of physical activities, improving student:teacher ratio, teaching students how to deescalate bullying, adding safety officers, teaching school staff how to address violence, and extra activities for students such as music and arts classes to avoid unstructured or unsupervised time in school. 2,10,22,24 Pediatric intentional and unintentional injuries have been thoroughly discussed in the literature, 20,[25][26][27][28][29][30] and several studies have identified a need for further research to understand intentional school-based injuries.…”

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].…”