The Individual and Environmental Variables that Affect Victimization by Peer Harassment among Children

아동의 개인적 변인과 환경적 변인이 또래에 의한 괴롭힘에 미치는 영향

This study examined different individual and environmental factors that affect children's experience of harassment from their peers. For the individual variables, gender, behavioral problems, and self-esteem were included in the anal)'sis. For the family variables, mother's parenting style and the socio-economic status of parents were examined, and for the school variables, the supervision of the teacher and the attitudes of the classmates toward bullying were used. Two forms of peer harassment, the overt form and the relational form were examined in this study. The sample consisted of 520 fifth grade children. Statistics and methods used for the data analysis were Cronbach's alpha, factor analysis, frequency, percentage, means, standard deviation, Pearson's correlation, and multiple regression. Several major relationships were found from the analyses. First, the more the children tend to internalize behavioral problems and have lower self-esteem, the more likely they are to get victimized by overt and relational forms of harassment. Boys experience more overt harassment than girls. Second, the more the mother's parenting style is permissive-nonintervening, or rejecting-restricting, and the higher the father's social status is, the more likely the child is subjected to overt and relational forms of harassment. Third, the more the children feel that the teacher is paying attention to bullying, the less the children are subjected to the overt form of peer harassment. Fourth, children's internalizing behavioral problems, mother's permissiveness-nonintervention, children's self-esteem, children's gender, and the supervision of the teacher regarding bullying significantly affected the experience of overt forms of harassment. A twenty two percent variance in the victimization of an overt form was explained by those variables. Children's internalizing behavioral problems, mother's permissiveness-nonintervention, children's self-esteem, and mother's rejection-restriction significantly affected the experience of relational form of peers harassment. Twenty six percent of the variance in the relational form of victimization was explained by those variables.