The how’s and how often’s of school harassment: How do they influence the academic achievement of adolescents over time?

Abstract

A vast body of literature shows that school harassment is negatively associated with academic achievement, particularly in elementary and middle schools. Few studies have examined the influence of forms and frequencies of harassment—whether relational, verbal, cyber, or physical—on academic performance in high schools. We investigate how the how’s and when’s of harassment are associated with the academic achievement of adolescents over time in Chile, using standardized test scores of a sample of schoolchildren (n = 80,117) and fixed effect models. We find that being physically bullied and cyberbullied are linked to poor academic performance, whereas verbal and social abuse are not. These results underline the significance of working with disaggregated measures of harassment in school interventions at different stages.