The Effects of Gender, Student Achievement, and Poverty on Bullying Victimization in Cross-National Contexts

Document Type

Presentation

Presentation Date

11-20-2013

Abstract or Description

Rates of bullying vary widely across nations, and by type of bullying victimization. For example, according to the 2007 Trends in International Math and Science Studies (TIMSS) data, Thailand, Indonesia, Slovenia, Ghana, and Botswana exhibited the highest rates of students who reported being physically victimized- hit or hurt by another student in school- in the previous month. Ghana, Indonesia, Botswana, Hong Kong, and Colombia exhibited the highest rates of students’ reports of indirect bullying victimization- being teased or made fun of- in the previous month. In this paper, the separate and combined effects of gender, students’ level of achievement on a standardized mathematics exam, age, and measures of poverty are examined using hierarchical logistic regression, to test the effects at the individual, school, and national levels. The analyses are broken down by world region to determine which predictor variables matter most in different cross-national contexts. Findings reveal that students’ gender, and the gender make-up of schools are significant predictors of both direct and indirect violence across world regions, but the effects of students’ math achievement, as well as national and schools’ levels of poverty are more pronounced in schools in Asian and African nations than in Western Europe.

Sponsorship/Conference/Institution

American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting (ASC)

Location

Atlanta, GA

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