Attitudes of native and immigrant students towards school bullying in Greece

Abstract

Although school bullying is a serious form of violence, relevant studies do not agree if immigrant students are at higher risk to be involved in bullying than native students in ethnically diverse schools. The purpose of the study was to investigate the attitudes of Greek and non-Greek students about school bullying. The sample composed of 719 native and 120 non-native students attending primary and secondary schools in Greece. Data were collected via a self-report questionnaire, and the Statistical Package SPSS was used for their analysis. Results showed that positive interpersonal relationships between Greek and non-Greek students are associated with low frequency of bullying. A significant percentage of students from both groups had observed bullying between native and immigrant children. However, the majority of them had never been bullied or victimized in their school. Verbal bullying was the most dominant bullying behaviour. The importance of the findings is discussed.