Prevalence and relative factors of school bullying behaviors among high school students in Shanxi province

  Objective  To explore the prevalence and relative factors of school bullying behaviors among high school students and to provide evidences for the intervention on school bullying.

  Methods  A cross-sectional study was conducted among 9 905 high school students randomly selected from Shanxi province with stratified cluster sampling in 2014 and 2015. A self-administered anonymous questionnaire was used to collect information about school bullying behaviors and risk factors.

  Results  The prevalence of bullying-related behaviors, bully, bully victim, and bully-bully victim during previous 30 days among the students were 8.8%, 4.2%, 6.8%, and 2.3%, respectively; the prevalence of being involved in bullying-related behaviors differed significantly by gender, type of school, family members living together, family economic status, parental marital status, study stress and burden, number of non-student friends, relationships with classmates and teachers, whether drinking alcohol, and whether having history of child abuse (emotional, physical, and sexual abuse) (all P < 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that risk factors of bullying-related behaviors for the students included male gender (odds ratio OR = 1.983, 95% confidence interval 95%CI = 1.683 – 2.336), being a junior high school student (OR = 2.168, 95%CI = 1.671 – 2.813), having three or more social friends (OR = 1.435, 95%CI = 1.170 – 1.759), poor relationship with teachers and classmates (OR = 5.466, 95%CI = 2.538 – 11.770; OR = 2.624, 95%CI = 1.654 – 4.162), living only with his/her mother currently (OR = 1.369, 95%CI = 1.004 – 1.867), occasional quarrel between parents (OR=1.301, 95%CI = 1.100 – 1.539), alcohol drinking (OR = 1.787, 95%CI = 1.453 – 2.197), and with the history of childhood physical, emotional and sexual abuse (OR = 2.333, 95%CI = 1.899 – 2.865; OR = 2.389, 95%CI = 1.760 – 3.243; OR = 3.857, 95%CI = 3.159 – 4.709); whereas better family economic status (OR = 0.648, 95%CI = 0.437 – 0.961) and with lower study stress (OR = 0.677, 95%CI = 0.526 – 0.872) were protective factors against bullying-related behaviors.

  Conclusion  Bullying behaviors is common among high school students in Shanxi province and appropriate measures should be taken by students, schools and families to cope with campus bullying.