Elsevier

Child Abuse & Neglect

Volume 31, Issue 2, February 2007, Pages 161-171
Child Abuse & Neglect

Bullying, violence, and risk behavior in South African school students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2006.08.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Objectives

To examine the prevalence of bullying behavior in adolescents from Cape Town and Durban, South Africa, and the association of these behaviors with levels of violence and risk behavior.

Method

Five thousand and seventy-four adolescent schoolchildren in grade 8 (mean age 14.2 years) and grade 11 (mean age 17.4 years) at 72 Government schools in Cape Town and Durban, South Africa completed self-report questionnaires on participation in bullying, violent, anti-social and risk behaviors.

Results

Over a third (36.3%) of students were involved in bullying behavior, 8.2% as bullies, 19.3% as victims and 8.7% as bully-victims (those that are both bullied and bully others). Male students were most at risk of both perpetration and victimization, with younger boys more vulnerable to victimization. Violent and anti-social behaviors were increased in bullies, victims and bully-victims compared to controls not involved in any bullying behavior (p < .01 in all cases). Risk taking behavior was elevated for bullies and bully-victims, but for victims was largely comparable to controls. Victims were less likely to smoke than controls (odds ratio .83, p < .05). Bully-victims showed largely comparable violent, anti-social and risk taking behavior profiles to bullies. Bully-victims showed comparable suicidal ideation and smoking profiles to victims.

Conclusions

Results were in keeping with Western findings. Involvement in bullying is a common problem for young South Africans. Bullying behavior can act as an indicator of violent, anti-social and risk-taking behaviors.

Résumé/Resumen

French- and Spanish-language abstracts not available at time of publication.

Introduction

Bullying was defined by Olweus (1994) as exposure to the negative actions of one or more persons repeatedly and over time. It encompasses a spectrum of aggressive actions, both physical and verbal. It can be direct (hitting, kicking, threatening, extortion) or indirect (spreading rumors, social exclusion) (Wolke, Woods, Bloomfield, & Karstadt, 2000). Bullying in school is a common problem internationally, with rates ranging from 9% to 54% (Nansel, Craig, Overpeck, Saluja, & Ruan, 2004). Being a victim or perpetrator of bullying has adverse psychological correlates. Victims and perpetrators of bullying report higher levels of psychiatric and physical symptoms (Kumpulainen et al., 1998, Nansel et al., 2004, Salmon et al., 1998). Perpetrators have a propensity towards increased aggressive behavior and domestic violence in adulthood (Farrington, 1995). There is evidence of intergenerational continuity of both perpetration (Farrington, 1995) and victimization (Bernstein & Watson, 1997), such that the consequences of bullying are far reaching.

Although much is known about bullying and its correlates in developed countries, very little is known about bullying in developing countries. In particular, there is a dearth of quantitative data on this subject from developing countries (Ohsako, 1999). With recent evidence linking bullying and victimization at school to exposure to domestic violence (Baldry, 2003), one might expect rates of bullying behavior to be higher in countries like South Africa where rates of community violence are elevated (Seedat, Nvamai, Njenga, Vythilingum, & Stein, 2004).

Perpetration and victimization is more common amongst boys, with younger boys more frequently victimized (Olweus, 1994). Typical victims are anxious, physically weak and tend to have a negative attitude towards violence (Olweus, 1993). Bullies tend to be aggressive, impulsive, with physical strength and a positive attitude towards violence (Olweus, 1993). Those who have both bullied and been bullied have been differentiated. This group, referred to as “bully-victims,” have the greatest number of problems. These include: (a) conduct, school and peer relationship problems (Juvonen, Graham, & Schuster, 2003); (b) concurrent and future psychological and psychosomatic symptoms (Fekkes, Pijpers, & Verloove-Vanhorick, 2004; Forero, McLellan, Rissel, & Bauman, 1999; Kaltiala-Heino, Rimpela, Rantanen, & Rimpela, 2000; Kumpulainen & Rasanen, 2000); (c) referrals to psychiatric services (Kumpulainen, Rasanen, & Henttonen, 1999); and (d) the highest probability of persistence of involvement in bullying (Kumpulainen et al., 1999). This group may be at greatest risk of developing psychopathology and warrant further study.

In addition to the potential causative role of exposure to violence on bullying, bullying and violence are related. Olweus (1999) defines bullying and violence as subcategories of aggressive behavior, between which there is an overlap denoting bullying by physical means. Evidence suggests that children who bully may be more involved in violence independent of their bullying behavior. Bullying at age 5 years is related to fighting at age 6 years (Loeber, Green, Lahey, Christ, & Frick, 1992) and being bullied and bullying others have also been related to weapon carrying and involvement in physical fighting (Nansel, Overpeck, Haynie, Ruan, & Scheidt, 2003). One study showed that bully-victims have significantly greater odds of weapon carrying than other bullying categories and controls (Nansel et al., 2004). This group was also found to have the highest relative risk of severe suicidal ideation (Kaltiala-Heino, Rimpela, Marttunen, Rimpela, & Rantanen, 1999). Suicidal ideation is a phenomenon related to both depression and aggression.

Bullying also has links with delinquency and substance use. Bully-victims and bullies have been found to be more likely to smoke (Forero et al., 1999) and use alcohol and other substances excessively (Kaltiala-Heino et al., 2000). This is not surprising, as bullying forms part of a spectrum of externalizing behaviors (Wolke et al., 2000), and it has been suggested that bullying may be a consequence of underlying behavior problems such as hyperactivity and conduct disorder (Farrington, 1993), both of which predispose to delinquency. In contrast, victims of bullying were found to have lower levels of smoking compared to controls not involved in bullying behavior (Forero et al., 1999).

As there are little data available from developing countries on this issue, we sought to determine whether these findings hold within a South African population and whether bullying behavior may also act as indicators of other risk-taking behaviors, such as walking home alone at night and traveling in an unsafe vehicle. These behaviors pose a substantial risk to adolescents in South Africa where street crime is common and driving under the influence of alcohol or substances is not stringently policed. Anti-social behavior such as theft and vandalism will also be explored in the current study.

Therefore, the aims of this study are: (a) to report the South African prevalence rates of adolescent involvement in bullying, either as victims, bullies or bully-victims, and (b) to investigate whether these bullying behavior categories differentiate levels of violent, anti-social or risk taking behaviors.

Section snippets

Method

This study draws on data obtained from a larger project, the South African Community Epidemiological Network on Drug Use (SACENDU) study (Flisher, Parry, Evans, Muller, & Lombard, 2003), which is a cross-sectional study investigating aspects of adolescent health and risk behaviors. As the study methodology has been described in detail elsewhere (Flisher, Parry, et al., 2003), only a brief description is given here.

Results

Over a third (36.3%) of students were involved in bullying behavior, with a greater proportion of involvement from students in grade 8 (40.4%) compared to grade 11 (32.1%) (p < .01), and males (42.1%) compared to females (32.9%) (p < .01). A similar proportion of grade 8 students were involved in bullying (7.8%) as grade 11 students (8.7%) (p = ns). A higher proportion of grade 8 students were victims, and bully-victims (21.8%, 10.8% respectively), compared to grade 11 students (16.7%, 6.6%,

Discussion

This is the first large-scale study addressing the important issue of bullying in adolescents in South Africa. In addition, it uses school samples drawn from two cities within South Africa, thereby increasing the extent to which the results can be generalized and covering significant numbers of students from all four of the major RDSG of the South African population. The design of the study also differentiates the bully-victim category to allow closer scrutiny of this group which has been

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      Compared with pure victims and perpetrators, some authors reported that perpetrators/victims have a higher risk for externalizing problems, psychological symptoms, school, and interpersonal dysfunction (Fekkes et al., 2004; Kokkinos & Panayiotou, 2004; Sourander et al., 2007). However, there are some studies that showed no differences between perpetrator-victim and pure victims or pure perpetrators (Liang et al., 2007). Longitudinal studies still needed to examine associations between bullying and mental health in a large sample with victims and perpetrators.

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    The project was funded by grants from the World Health Organisation Programme on Substance Abuse, the United Nations Development Programme, the South African Medical Research Council, and the Medical Faculty Research Committee of the University of Cape Town.

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