Determinants of Bullying at School Depending on the Type of Community: Ecological Analysis of Secondary Schools in Poland

School Mental Health, Jan 2017

Ecological studies, when the school is the unit of analysis, may help to design and evaluate school intervention programs. The paper discusses selected contextual determinants of bullying, using data collected in Poland in 2015 and aggregated to school level (4085 students; 70 junior high schools). The main hypothesis is related to the neighborhood social capital as protective factor and the type of community as a modifier. The main dependent variable was the combined index of bullying which included three perspectives (victim, perpetrator, bystander). Student delinquent behavior was taken into account as potential determinant, along with selected characteristics of the school and neighborhood. The analyses were adjusted for the percentage of the surveyed boys. The overall bullying index ranged, depending on the school, from 0.88 to 4.07 points (out of 12 possible); intraclass coefficient ICC = 2.8%. In the entire sample, the main predictors of bullying were student delinquent behaviors as a risk factor and the school social climate as a protective factor (R 2 = 56.3%). The stratification of schools due to their location influences the inference regarding those main determinants. The dominating influence of delinquent behavior is visible only in big cities where bullying index showed the highest dispersion. In smaller towns and rural areas, the neighborhood social capital becomes an important protective factor; highly correlated with the school climate. We can conclude that strong social bonds in the community are supportive for school climate and can reduce the level of bullying at schools.

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Determinants of Bullying at School Depending on the Type of Community: Ecological Analysis of Secondary Schools in Poland

School Mental Health Determinants of Bullying at School Depending on the Type of Community: Ecological Analysis of Secondary Schools in Poland Joanna Mazur 0 1 2 3 Izabela Tabak 0 1 2 3 Dorota Zawadzka 0 1 2 3 0 Dorota Zawadzka 1 Izabela Tabak 2 & Joanna Mazur 3 Institute of Applied Psychology, The Maria Grzegorzewska University , Szcze ̨s ́liwicka 40, 02-353 Warsaw , Poland Ecological studies, when the school is the unit of analysis, may help to design and evaluate school intervention programs. The paper discusses selected contextual determinants of bullying, using data collected in Poland in 2015 and aggregated to school level (4085 students; 70 junior high schools). The main hypothesis is related to the neighborhood social capital as protective factor and the type of community as a modifier. The main dependent variable was the combined index of bullying which included three perspectives (victim, perpetrator, bystander). Student delinquent behavior was taken into account as potential determinant, along with selected characteristics of the school and neighborhood. The analyses were adjusted for the percentage of the surveyed boys. The overall bullying index ranged, depending on the school, from 0.88 to 4.07 points (out of 12 possible); intraclass coefficient ICC = 2.8%. In the entire sample, the main predictors of bullying were student delinquent behaviors as a risk factor and the school social climate as a protective factor (R2 = 56.3%). The stratification of schools due to their location influences the inference regarding those main determinants. The dominating influence of delinquent behavior is visible only in big cities where bullying index Bullying; Ecological analysis; Delinquent behavior; School climate; Urbanization level - Department of Child and Adolescent Health, Institute of Mother and Child, Kasprzaka 17a, 01-211 Warsaw, Poland showed the highest dispersion. In smaller towns and rural areas, the neighborhood social capital becomes an important protective factor; highly correlated with the school climate. We can conclude that strong social bonds in the community are supportive for school climate and can reduce the level of bullying at schools. Introduction The number of papers about bullying in school environments has increased significantly over the last two decades. Special attention is now given to the phenomenon of bullying, defined as repetitive aggressive behavior toward a student or group of students who are weaker and incapable of defending themselves. This may take the form of physical, verbal, or emotional aggression, with cyber bullying being a new, recent form (Selkie, Fales, & Moreno, 2016) . The consequences of bullying experienced in school are usually injuries or trauma, destruction of property, humiliation, social alienation, deterioration in school performance, and even engagement in risk behavior (Fekkes, Pijpers, & Verloove-Vanhorick, 2004; Gini & Pazzoli, 2013; Jime´nez-Barbero, Ruiz-Herna´ndez, Llor-Zaragoza, Pe´rez-Garc´ıa, & Llor-Esteban, 2016; Smalley, Wareen, & Barefoot, 2016; Vaillancourt & McDougall, 2013) . The published studies refer to the prevalence of bullying in various populations as well as its determinants (Craig et al., 2009; Elgar, Craig, Boyce, Morgan, & Vella-Zarb, 2009; Harel-Fisch et al., 2011; Molcho et al., 2009) . There are an increasing number of systematic reviews concerning the background of bullying and the effectiveness of intervention programs (Chalamandaris & Piette, 2015; Jime´nez-Barbero et al., 2016; Park-Higgerson, PerumeanChaney, Bartolucci, Grimley, & Singh, 2008; Ttofi & Farrington, 2011) . An appropriate assessment of the school environment is of key importance for prevention, as bullying occurs in school. Many studies indicate that the atmosphere in the school is a significant contextual variable affecting experience with bullying (Leadbeater, Sukhawathanakul, Thompson, & Holfeld, 2015; O’Brennan, Bradshaw, & Furlong, 2014; Thapa, Cohen, Guffey, & HigginsD’Alessandro, 2013) . Other factors characterizing the school and the students’ social profile, peer influences, and social status within the peer group may also be important (Espelage, Holt, & Henkel, 2003) . Bullying may be an indicator of the overall level of safety in the school, although this is not the only form of violence. The greater the number of students having direct (victims and perpetrators) or indirect (bystanders) contact with bullying, the more dangerous the school. Safety indicators decline in bigger schools which have an unfavorable proportion of students to teachers, in schools located in neglected regions, and in those which have a greater number of students from less affluent families, including families receiving welfare support (Bradshaw, Sawyer, & O’Brennan, 2009) . This shows that it is necessary to look at the wider socioeconomic surroundings of the school. The existence of interaction between various individual and contextual fact (...truncated)


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Joanna Mazur, Izabela Tabak, Dorota Zawadzka. Determinants of Bullying at School Depending on the Type of Community: Ecological Analysis of Secondary Schools in Poland, School Mental Health, 2017, pp. 132-142, Volume 9, Issue 2, DOI: 10.1007/s12310-017-9206-7