Bullying and Perceived School Climate: Victims’ and Bullies’ Perspective

Abstract

Research shows that school climate has an important effect on the prevalence of peer bullying. Therefore, the aims of our study were to determine: 1) if there are differences in the perceptions of bullying-related school climate by victims, bullies, non-victims and non-bullies, and 2) which sociodemographic and school climate factors predict the roles of chronic victims and bullies. The results suggest that there are more victims in younger students and more bullies among boys. We also found significant differences in perceptions of school climate by victims and bullies and were able to predict a small/moderate amount of variance in the roles of chronic victims/bullies by sociodemographic and school climate variables. Implications of the study findings are also discussed.

Keywords

• bullying
• school climate
• victims