Investigation of bullying among high school students with regard to sex, grade level and school type

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the peer bullying and victimization levels of high school students with regard to sex, grade level and type of school attended. The data were collected from 600 students from four different high schools, namely industrial vocational high school, general high schools, private high schools and Anatolian high schools. The results showed that boys were significantly more bullied than girls in any of the victimization scales except for the verbal victimization subscale whereas girls were more victimized
than boys. Bully occurrences were also found to be significantly higher amongst boys rather than girls with the exception of the isolation subscale. The data also indicated that there was no significant difference between grade levels in most of the bullying and victimization subscales. However, the 11th grade students were more victimized than the 9th grade students only in sexual victimization. In terms of bullying, 11th grade students were more often found to bully than 9th grade students in total scores. Similarly, 11the grade students were also found to exhibit more bully behaviors than both 9th and 10th grade students in sexual bullying subscales. In terms of school types, the data showed that the most victimized students were from vocational high schools whereas the most bully group was composed of private high school students. The Anatolian high school students were the least victimized and also had the smaller bully group compare to the other groups.