Bullying, Victimization, School Performance, and Mother-Child Relationship Quality: Direct and Transactional Associations

Kostas A Fanti,Stelios N Georgiou

doi:10.1155/2013/289689

Abstract

The current investigation examines longitudinal differences between bullies, victims, and bully victims in terms of the quality of their relationship with their parents and school performance. We also investigate the transactional association between the quality of the parent-child relationship and bullying behavior, after taking into account the longitudinal association among bullying, victimization, and school performance. The sample consisted of 895 mothers and their children who participated in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. According to the findings, children in the cooccurring bully victim group were at higher risk to experience continuous conflict with their mothers and to perform worse academically. The findings also offer support for the hypothesized transactional association between bullying and parent-child conflict and closeness. Further, a positive longitudinal transactional association between victimization and parent-child closeness was identified. Finally, school performance was positively related to victimization but was unrelated to bullying behavior.

Highlights

Bullying at school is a disturbing phenomenon with serious short-term and long-term consequences for both the victim and the perpetrator (e.g., [1,2,3])
We investigate the transactional association between the quality of the parent-child relationship and bullying behavior, after taking into account the longitudinal association among bullying, victimization, and school performance
This study was conducted by the NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (ECCRN) supported by NICHD through a cooperative agreement that calls for scientific collaboration between the grantees and the NICHD staff

Summary

Introduction

Bullying at school is a disturbing phenomenon with serious short-term and long-term consequences for both the victim and the perpetrator (e.g., [1,2,3]). In addition to the bully and passive victim groups, a group of children exhibiting bullying behavior but who are the victims of bullying has been identified This group, named the bully victim or the aggressive victim group, has been linked to greater individual and contextual problems [10,11,12,13]. Based on these findings, the initial purpose of the current investigation is to identify groups of children exhibiting only bullying behavior, experiencing only victimization, and exhibiting cooccurring bullying and victimization across childhood and to examine differences between the identified groups in terms of the quality of their relationship with their parents and school performance using longitudinal data. The second aim of the current study is to investigate the reciprocal association between the quality of the parent-child relationship and bullying behavior, following Sameroff and MacKenzie’s [14] transactional model of development

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion