Socio‐economic, socio‐political and socio‐emotional variables explaining school bullying: a country‐wide multilevel analysis

Abstract

Why do some countries, regions and schools have more bullying than others? What socio-economic, socio-political and other larger contextual factors predict school bullying? These open questions inspired this study with 53.316 5th- and 9th-grade students (5% of the national student population in these grades), from 1,000 schools in Colombia. Students completed a national test of citizenship competencies, which included questions about bullying and about families, neighborhoods and their own socio-emotional competencies. We combined these data with community violence and socio-economic conditions of all Colombian municipalities, which allowed us to conduct multilevel analyses to identify municipality- and school-level variables predicting school bullying. Most variance was found at the school level. Higher levels of school bullying were related to more males in the schools, lower levels of empathy, more authoritarian and violent families, higher levels of community violence, better socio-economic conditions, hostile attributional biases and more beliefs supporting aggression. These results might reflect student, classroom and school contributions because student-level variables were aggregated at the school level. Although in small portions, violence from the decades-old-armed conflict among guerrillas, paramilitaries and governmental forces predicted school bullying at the municipal level for 5th graders. For 9th graders, inequality in land ownership predicted school bullying. Neither poverty, nor population density or homicide rates contributed to explaining bullying. These results may help us advance toward understanding how the larger context relates to school bullying, and what socio-emotional competencies may help us prevent the negative effects of a violent and unequal environment.

Bullying and associated factors in adolescents aged 11 to 15 years

“…21 Being called names is considered to be an indirect form of bullying by the relevant literature, 22 and it affected mostly our 11-13-year age groups.…”

The Development of Dating Violence: What Doesn’t Develop, What Does Develop, How Does it Develop, and What Can We Do About It?

“…There is emerging research showing a strong association between the level of bullying and other forms of interpersonal aggression among children and youth with the level of income inequity for a municipality (Chaux et al 2009) and for a country (Elgar et al 2009). In their research on national levels of income inequity, Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) illustrate the strong association between national levels of income inequities and indices of IPV.…”

Investigating Bullying Determinants and Typologies with Social Network Analysis

“…Additionally, the male students seem to be more often involved in aggressive communication as assailant or victim [19]. [20] supported that most high levels of bullying which are mostly associated with male students at schools, lower levels of empathy, and belong to the most authoritarian or violent families. Bullies presented a higher level of externalization, while victims more internalizing symptoms [21].…”