Abstract
Peer interactions are an important part of children’s everyday life and can significantly affect their psychosocial development. Satisfaction with peer relations contributes to their satisfaction with life in general, as well as to their development of positive self-image, which confirms the importance of peer relations for child well-being. Peer interactions can be categorized as positive (e.g. peer support) and negative (e.g. peer violence). They can occur in direct “face to face” contacts, as well as in virtual environment and attention of professionals should be directed to both settings. Negative peer interactions present a developmental risk for children who experience behaviours such as peer violence. Bullying and cyberbullying have some specifics depending on the context in which peer violence occurs and they both have a significant impact on quality of life and child well-being. Countries of southeast Europe have different approaches in dealing with peer violence phenomena and available legislation and interventions but especially in collecting data about its prevalence. Some of the countries of southeast Europe tend to collect internationally comparable data, while others are still developing national strategies in the field. However, it is clear that in these countries there is still a lack of clear conceptualization and operationalization of offline and online peer violence, as well as a lack of systematic and continuous approach to developing models of good practices in (cyber)bullying prevention. Inclusion in international studies in the field of child well-being has an important role in providing extensive data and the possibility of their comparison with other countries, which enables the development of effective evidence-based interventions that aim at improving the circumstances in which children grow up, ensuring their safety and protecting children’s rights.
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Notes
- 1.
The European Commission also included Austria, Greece, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and parts of Italy and Ukraine as potential candidates for funding in the Programme “South-East Europe” for the period 2007–2013, https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/atlas/programmes/2007-2013/crossborder/operational-programme-south-east-europe-see.
- 2.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/eca/publication/south-east-europe-regular-economic-report.
- 3.
Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania and Slovenia.
- 4.
One of the largest international surveys that includes children and where data are collected every four years. In 2017/2018 survey data was collected from over 220,000 young people in 45 countries and regions in Europe and Canada. Participants in the study were children aged 11, 13 and 15 and the methodology of the survey required national representative data.
- 5.
Only Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro from SEE countries were not included in the survey.
- 6.
North Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia and Bulgaria.
- 7.
In the final quarter.
- 8.
Third wave of the study has been conducted between 2016 and 2019 and it collected data from more than 200,000 children from 35 countries from all over the world. In most countries, three age groups of children were included—eight, ten and twelve year olds.
- 9.
Offline peer violence was measured with three items—How often in the last month have you been: (1) hit by other children in your school (not including fighting or play fighting) (physical violence), (2) called unkind names by other children in your school (verbal violence) and (3) left out by other children in your class (relational violence). Children gave their answers on 4-point scale (never, once, two or three times, more than three times).
- 10.
Croatian sample was 3470 children aged 11, 13 and 16 years, 34-item questionnaire, where half of the questions were aimed to detect different types of perpetrated violent acts and the other half experienced peer violence.
- 11.
representative for the Romania school population (middle school and high school students under 18 years of age), sample of 1120 Romanian children.
- 12.
The nationally representative sample included 2844 Slovenian 14-year olds and they were asked how often they experienced different types of bullying behaviours in the last three months.
- 13.
Sample of with 26,628 nine to fourteen year old children from 50 primary schools all over Serbia.
- 14.
the similar project was also conducted in Croatia.
- 15.
several times in the last three months or almost every day.
- 16.
PUI is an umbrella term that encompasses various activities and all potentially problematic online behaviors that include online gaming, online gambling, online shopping, porn content, social media behavior, cyber-bullying, cyberchondria and other behaviors (Fineberg et al., 2018).
- 17.
- 18.
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Moldova, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia.
- 19.
(HBSC) introduced two new mandatory questions on cyberbullying victimization in the 2013/2014 study wave and a set of questions about internet use and cyberbullying was further elaborated with the frequency of online communication, preference for online social interaction and problematic social media use in 2018.
- 20.
Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Moldova, Romania, Slovenia.
- 21.
The data were collected from 25,101 children by national teams between autumn 2017 and summer 2019.
- 22.
Croatia, Romania, Serbia.
- 23.
Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia.
- 24.
Considering the fact that Global kids online is a collaborative initiative of the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and EU Kids Online network these results will be presented jointly with the results of the EU kids online study.
- 25.
Albania, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia.
- 26.
Slovakia, Croatia and Italy.
- 27.
Sample of 10930 children from 14–17 years old, cyber victimization was measured with only 1 item.
- 28.
ECIPQ, 11 items for cyber bullying and 11 items for cyber victimization on a 5-point Likert scale (from never to several times a week), sample of 5679 children in 6 countries.
- 29.
EU kids online framework in line with Olweus questionnaire adapted for this research.
- 30.
The research used Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire” (ROBVQ).
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Vejmelka, L., Sušac, N., Rajhvajn Bulat, L. (2022). Offline and Online Peer Violence: Significance for Child Well-Being in Southeast Europe. In: Tiliouine, H., Benatuil, D., Lau, M.K.W. (eds) Handbook of Children’s Risk, Vulnerability and Quality of Life. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01783-4_11
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