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Longitudinal Examination of the Bullying-Sexual Violence Pathway across Early to Late Adolescence: Implicating Homophobic Name-Calling

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Abstract

The Bully-Sexual Violence Pathway theory has indicated that bullying perpetration predicts sexual violence perpetration among males and females over time in middle school, and that homophobic name-calling perpetration moderates that association among males. In this study, the Bully-Sexual Violence Pathway theory was tested across early to late adolescence. Participants included 3549 students from four Midwestern middle schools and six high schools. Surveys were administered across six time points from Spring 2008 to Spring 2013. At baseline, the sample was 32.2% White, 46.2% African American, 5.4% Hispanic, and 10.2% other. The sample was 50.2% female. The findings reveal that late middle school homophobic name-calling perpetration increased the odds of perpetrating sexual violence in high school among early middle school bullying male and female perpetrators, while homophobic name-calling victimization decreased the odds of high school sexual violence perpetration among females. The prevention of bullying and homophobic name-calling in middle school may prevent later sexual violence perpetration.

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Authors’ Contributions

D.L.E. conceptualized and designed the study, collected the data, maintained ethics board approval, drafted the initial manuscript, and reviewed and revised the entire manuscript; K.C.B. helped conceptualize and design the study, drafted the initial discussion, edited the initial introduction, and reviewed and revised the entire manuscript; R.W.L. and T.N.H. helped conceptualize and design the study, edited the initial Introduction, helped draft the initial discussion, and reviewed and revised the entire manuscript; J.P.D. helped conceptualize and design the study, carried out the analyses, wrote the methods and results sections, and reviewed and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

Middle school data in this manuscript were drawn from a grant from the CDC (1U01/CE001677) to D.E. (PI). High school data in this manuscript were drawn from a grant from the National Institute of Justice (Grant #2011- 90948-IL-IJ) to D.E. (PI). Analyses and manuscript preparation was supported through an inter-personnel agency agreement (IPA) between University of Florida (Espelage) and the CDC (17IPA1706096).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Dorothy L. Espelage

  2. Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Kathleen C. Basile, Ruth W. Leemis & Tracy N. Hipp

  3. University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Jordan P. Davis

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  1. Dorothy L. Espelage
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  2. Kathleen C. Basile
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Correspondence to Dorothy L. Espelage.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This study was approved by the University of Illinois Institutional Review Board. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Espelage, D.L., Basile, K.C., Leemis, R.W. et al. Longitudinal Examination of the Bullying-Sexual Violence Pathway across Early to Late Adolescence: Implicating Homophobic Name-Calling. J Youth Adolescence 47, 1880–1893 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-018-0827-4

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