Perceived School Performance Research Articles

Bullying, Aggression, and Social Fallout

Community Health| July 01 2001 Bullying, Aggression, and Social Fallout AAP Grand Rounds (2001) 6 (1): 4–5. https://doi.org/10.1542/gr.6-1-4 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Bullying, Aggression, and Social Fallout. AAP Grand Rounds July 2001; 6 (1): 4–5. https://doi.org/10.1542/gr.6-1-4 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All PublicationsAll JournalsAAP Grand RoundsPediatricsHospital PediatricsPediatrics In ReviewNeoReviewsAAP NewsAll AAP Sites Search Advanced Search Topics: aggressive behavior, bullying Source: Nansel TR, Overpeck M, Pilla RS, et al. Bullying behaviors among US youth: prevalence and association with psychosocial adjustment. JAMA. 2001;285:2094–2100. To determine the prevalence of bullying and being bullied and their associations with indicators of psychosocial adjustment among US youth, these investigators from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development surveyed 15,686 students attending 6th through 10th grades in US public and private schools during early 1998. The survey contained questions regarding bullying frequency and type (physical, verbal, and psychological), perceived school performance, social/emotional well-being, parental influences, alcohol use, smoking, and problem behaviors. The authors used stratified sampling to obtain a geographically representative sample with an over-sample of black and Hispanic students. Statistical sample weights were developed to adjust for minority oversampling. The authors found: The authors concluded that bullying is a widespread and serious problem meriting further investigation because of the behavioral and emotional difficulties associated with bullying and the potential long-term negative consequences for these youth. Bullying is a repetitive form of interpersonal violence, mostly verbal, sometimes physical, intended to harm, with strong emotional overtones, in which a more powerful person or group of persons attacks a less powerful person or group of persons. The authors note that most of the prior research on bullying has been done in Europe and Australia, that there is considerable variability in prevalence between countries, and that in Norway and England school interventions have resulted in 30–50% reductions in bullying.1,2 Bullying has been connected to media violence, particularly video games.3,4 The AAP’s Committee on Communications alerted pediatricians to this relationship in a Policy Statement,5 citing reports by the US Surgeon General as far back as 1972.6 There is much in the media that conditions our children to be aggressive, to dehumanize their “victims,” and to show no pity or remorse. The National Center for Education in Maternal and Child Health (www.ncemch.org) lists resources that provide information on bullying7 including www.bullying.org, which offers web links to other resources. A recent school shooting in California in which the gunman may have been a target of bullying makes this report especially pertinent. We must not turn a blind eye to these behaviors. We should routinely inquire if our patients are involved in bullying and if so, direct parents and schools to appropriate resources. You do not currently have access to this content.

Truancy and perceived school performance: an alcohol and drug study of UK teenagers.

This study is based on a subsample of 15- and 16-year-old school students from the UK, part of the European School Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD). Information was available on truancy rates, perceived school performance, family structure, lifestyle, and usage of alcohol, cigarettes and illicit drugs in 6409 teenagers. Living in a single-parent family, lack of constructive hobbies, presence of psychiatric symptoms, and an aggressive outgoing delinquent lifestyle bore the strongest associations to truancy and to perceived school performance. There were also strong relationships between both these last two variables and use of alcohol, cigarettes, and illicit drugs. However, the effects of alcohol, cigarettes, and illicit drugs were largely accounted for by other variables. Having at least one parent who both supported the respondent and who exercised some control was predictive of better perceived school performance.

Which Adolescent Experimenters Progress to Established Smoking in the United States

This study examined the adolescent smoking uptake process, specifically, the progression from experimentation to established smoking. Although adolescent smoking uptake has been described as consisting of five stages (preparation, initial trying, experimentation, regular smoking, and addiction), there is no accepted method of identifying which experimenters will proceed to become addicted. Using a nationally representative sample of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 at baseline, we examined their transition from experimentation (had at least a puff but has not smoked 100 cigarettes) to established smoking (smoked at least 100 cigarettes in lifetime) four years later. At follow-up, 31% of the experimenters at baseline had progressed to established smoking. Baseline level of smoking experience was the strongest independent predictor of established smoking, with current experimenters (smoked in the past 30 days but less than 100 cigarettes in lifetime) having the greatest risk of progressing to established smoking compared to puffers (puffed but have not smoked a whole cigarette). Furthermore, this effect was modified by age; older current experimenters at baseline had more than double the risk of younger current experimenters of progressing to established smoking at follow-up. Absence of a firm commitment not to smoke was a significant predictor among older experimenters but not in younger experimenters. Other important predictors of the transition from experimentation to established smoking were exposure to other smokers and perceived school performance. We found that, even among experimenters, there is an identifiable group of adolescents who are at higher risk of progressing to established smoking that can be targeted for intervention.

Influence of Tobacco Marketing and Exposure to Smokers on Adolescent Susceptibility to Smoking

Today the uptake of smoking is primarily an adolescent pursuit. Awareness of tobacco advertising and promotion is high, and evidence suggests that it plays a role in adolescent smoking uptake. We evaluated the influence of tobacco advertising and promotion and exposure to smokers on never-smoking adolescents' susceptibility to smoking. We used data on 3536 adolescent never smokers (those who had never even puffed on a cigarette) from the 1993 California Tobacco Survey. That survey questioned adolescents about smoking history and inclinations. For this analysis, we defined as susceptible to smoking those never smokers who said on the survey that they could not rule out independently deciding to try a cigarette soon or smoking one offered by a friend. Also for this analysis, we devised two indices: 1) a 5-point index of an individual's receptivity to tobacco advertising as determined by the number of positive responses to five survey items (recognition of advertising messages, having a favorite advertisement, naming a brand he/she might buy, owning a tobacco-related promotional item, and willingness to use a tobacco-related promotional item) and 2) an index classifying an individual's reported exposure to family and peer smoking into one of four levels. Using logistic regression, we assessed the independent importance of our indices in predicting susceptibility to smoking after adjustment for sociodemographic variables, including age, sex, and race/ethnicity, and for perceived school performance. Tests of statistical significance were two-sided. Receptivity to tobacco advertising and exposure to smokers were independently associated with susceptibility to smoking, but the relationship appeared stronger for receptivity to advertising. Adolescents exposed to family members and peers (n = 489) who smoked were 1.89 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.30-2.74) times as likely to be susceptible, whereas adolescents who scored 4 or more on the Index of Receptivity to Tobacco Marketing (n = 361) were 3.91 (95% CI = 2.38-6.42) times as likely to be susceptible as those who scored 0. Even adolescents who scored 2 (n = 1090) were 2.03 (95% CI = 1.31-3.15) times as likely to be susceptible. There was no interaction effect between score on the Index of Receptivity to Tobacco Marketing and exposure to smokers. Our results support the hypothesis that tobacco marketing may be a stronger current influence in encouraging adolescents to initiate the smoking uptake process than exposure to peer or family smokers or sociodemographic variables including perceived school performance.