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A Social Disorganization Perspective on Bullying-Related Attitudes and Behaviors: The Influence of School Context

  • Original Paper
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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

Social disorganization theory suggests that certain school-level indictors of disorder may be important predictors of bullying-related attitudes and behaviors. Multilevel analyses were conducted on bullying-related attitudes and experiences among 22,178 students in 95 elementary and middle schools. The intraclass correlation coefficients indicated that 0.6–2% of the variance in victimization, 5–10% of the variance in retaliatory attitudes, 5–6% of the variance in perceptions of safety, and 0.9% of the variance in perpetration of bullying was associated with the clustering of students within schools. Although the specific associations varied somewhat for elementary schools as compared to middle schools, the hierarchical linear modeling analyses generally suggested that school-level indicators of disorder (e.g., student–teacher ratio, concentration of student poverty, suspension rate, and student mobility) were significant predictors of bullying-related attitudes and experiences. Student-level characteristics (i.e., sex, ethnicity, status in school) were also relevant to students’ retaliatory attitudes, perceptions of safety, and involvement in bullying. Implications for school-based research and violence prevention are provided.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Dr. Rhonda Gill and Mrs. Lucia Martin from the Maryland public school system for providing access to the data. This project was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (1U49CE000728 and K01CE001333-01) and the Hamilton Fish Institute on School and Community Violence, as part of its Field-Initiated Studies Program, under Grant No. 2005-JL-FX-0157 awarded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Justice, or the Hamilton Fish Institute.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 N. Broadway, Baltimore, MD, 21205, USA

    Catherine P. Bradshaw, Anne L. Sawyer & Lindsey M. O’Brennan

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  1. Catherine P. Bradshaw
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  2. Anne L. Sawyer
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  3. Lindsey M. O’Brennan
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Correspondence to Catherine P. Bradshaw.

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Bradshaw, C.P., Sawyer, A.L. & O’Brennan, L.M. A Social Disorganization Perspective on Bullying-Related Attitudes and Behaviors: The Influence of School Context. Am J Community Psychol 43, 204–220 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-009-9240-1

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