Dimensions of bullying in Romanian schools: a study among young school-age children
Keywords:
bullying, early schooling, aggressors, victims, eyewitnesses.Abstract
In many countries around the world, bullying is a serious problem that school authorities must solve. Among school-age children in Romania, bullying has started to be investigated especially in the last decade. This quantitative study aimed to examine the relationships between the risk of engaging in/victimization (directly or indirectly) through bullying behaviors in school setting and the socio-demographic characteristics of young school-age children (i.e., sex, age, residence, and family status). Participants included 229 third- and fourth-grade students from nine public educational institutions. There were 122 boys and 107 girls. Students completed the Romanian version of the Illinois Bully Scale-Student Version (IBS; Espelage & Holt, 2001). Participants also completed five items that operationalized the indirect exposure (as an eyewitness) to bullying. Compared to girls, boys scored higher for both aggressor and eyewitness status in bullying. There were no statistically significant differences in age, residence, and family status. For both the total sample and the subsamples differentiated according to students’ sex, the score for aggressor status correlated positively with the indicators of victimization through bullying. Several directions that can be used in developing strategies to prevent and reduce bullying in schools are presented.
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