Individual and family correlates of bullying roles among junior high school students in Taiwan

Objectives: Bullying is an important public health issue. The aims of this study were to demonstrate the prevalence of bullying roles and to investigate individual and family correlates of these roles among 7th to 9th graders in Taiwan. Methods: Participants included 3,441 students from 120 classes in 20 schools via stratified, multistage, random cluster sampling. To estimate the prevalence of roles in bullying, the weighting index was calculated from the inverse of the sampling rates. Descriptive analysis and multinomial logistic regression were performed using SAS Survey Analysis PROCs software. Results: Our survey revealed that 18.63% of the students were involved in bullying with 8.71% as bullies, 7.01% as victims, and 2.91% in both roles. Gender, level of impulsiveness, self-perceived popularity, parental educational attainment, the frequency of family conflict, scolding, and corporal punishment were significantly related to the probability of being classified in one bullying role or another. Conclusions: School bullying is not uncommon in Taiwan. Our results suggested that individual characteristics and family factors associated with bullying roles should be taken into account in the development of programs to prevent bullying. (Taiwan J Public Health. 2013;32(4):372-381).