Objective  To explore the prevalence of campus bullying, sense of belonging to school and campus security and their correlations among junior high school students.

  Methods  We conducted a self-administered questionnaire survey among 700 grade one and two students recruited with cluster sampling at 6 junior high schools in three cities of Guangdong province during April – June 2016. Three Chinese version scales, including Delaware Bullying Victimization Scale-Student (DBVS-S), the Security Scale (SS), and the School Belonging Scale (SBS) were adopted in the survey.

  Results  Low prevalence of campus bulling, moderate sense of campus security and upper moderate sense of belonging to school were reported by the 588 respondents with valid information, with the mean scores of 1.65 ± 0.54 for DBVS-S, 3.45 ± 0.78 for SS and 4.16 ± 0.86 for SBS and with obvious disparities between student groups. Significant gender and regional differences were observed in some dimensions of campus bullying and sense of campus security, and in sense of belonging to school. Bullying victimization was reversely correlated significantly with the sense of campus security (r = – 0.32, P < 0.001) and with the sense of belonging to school (r = – 0.371, P < 0.001); the sense of campus security was positively correlated with the sense of belonging to school (r = 0.467, P < 0.001).

  Conclusion  Among junior high school students, campus bullying is correlated with the sense of campus security and the sense belonging to school; boy students have higher verbal attack and physical assault and the sense of campus security compared to girl students but girl students have a higher sense of belonging to school compared to boy students; the prevalence of bullying victimization and verbal bullying is reversely related to the grade of the students' home city and the sense of campus security and belonging to school are positively related to the grade of the students' home city.