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
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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)