Protecting the mental health of future adults: Disentangling the determinants of adolescent bullying victimisation

Did the prevalence of traditional school bullying increase after COVID-19? Evidence from a two-stage cross-sectional study before and during COVID-19 pandemic

BACKGROUND

COVID-19 has had a range of adverse effects on the behavior and mental health of adolescents globally, including bullying, anxiety and depression. However, there is a lack of comparative studies on the changes of school bullying before and during COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the changes in traditional bullying before and during COVID-19 pandemic and reveal the related risk factors in Shantou, China.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

Two samples of secondary school students were collected in 2018 and 2021 in Shantou, respectively.

METHODS

Bullying history and risk behaviors of students were measured in the past six months. The χ² test was used to analyze differences in baseline information and bullying types. The binary logistic regression with Forward LR method was used to analyze factors that affect the risk of bullying victimization and perpetration before and during COVID-19.

RESULTS

A total of 5782 secondary school students were included, 3071 before COVID-19 pandemic and 2711 during COVID-19. The prevalence of different types of victimization and perpetration all increased during COVID-19 (P < 0.001). Boarding, being a lower secondary school student (as opposed to upper secondary school), being male (as opposed to female), drinking, and playing violent video games were shared risk factors for bullying victimization and perpetration. Living in an urban (as opposed to rural and island) was a risk factor for perpetration. Smoking was a risk factor for perpetration. All differences were statistically significant (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

We found that the prevalence of bullying victimization as well as perpetration increased during COVID-19. It suggests that we need to pay more attention to traditional school bullying prevention and control in China in the pandemic context.

Early childhood parenting and adolescent bullying behavior: Evidence from a randomized intervention at ten-year follow-up

RATIONALE

Bullying in education is a significant public health problem with long-run life cycle consequences, but efforts to reduce bullying were met with mixed results. We ask whether improving early childhood parenting can reduce subsequent bullying behavior by the children.

METHOD

We analyze ten-year follow-up of a randomized intervention where the parents of preschool children received a training aimed at improving parenting techniques, such as disciplinary strategies. 280 parents in 17 preschools were cluster-randomized at the preschool level (intervention group, cluster = 11, n = 186 vs. control group, cluster = 6, n = 94). Their children were followed ten years later, at ages between 12 and 16, with overall attrition rate of 12.5%. Ordinary least squares is used to estimate the intent-to-treat effects, controlling for the baseline characteristics of the child and the mother. Multiple imputation and inverse probability weighting are used to account for attrition and wild-cluster bootstrap test is used for statistical inference with few clusters. We estimate treatment-on-the-treated effects using two-stage least squares to account for noncompliance in the intervention group. Finally, we examine the associations between bullying and externalizing behavior.

RESULTS

Adolescent children are significantly less likely to bully their peers if their parents received the parenting training when their children were in preschools. The effects are stronger for boys and for aggressive forms of bullying such as 'beating' and 'threatening'. Treatment-on-the-treated effects are greater in magnitude and more significant than intent-to-treat effects, suggesting that the effects are driven by program participants. No effect is found for cyberbullying and for victimization. The results were robust to using multiple imputation and inverse probability weighting. We also find suggestive evidence that the effects on bullying are not explained by changes in externalizing behavior.

CONCLUSION

We show that improving early childhood parenting can have important public health benefits through reduction in adolescent bullying behavior.