A Comparison Of Middle And High School Students: Are Health And School Outcomes For Bullying And Sexual Harassment Different?

Background and Purpose: For nearly three decades, theories and research methodologies on bullying and sexual harassment have followed separate paths of development even though they often focus on similar health and performance outcomes. Consequently, researchers have rarely studied these problems together. So, obvious questions such as “Which is more common in schools—bullying or sexual harassment?” or “Which has more harmful effects on student's health and school performance?” or “Are there differences in outcomes by age group?” remain unanswered. This study examines the effects of bullying and sexual harassment, using the same formats (i.e., structure of questions and response categories, time frames), in order to directly compare victimization rates and outcomes.

Methods: In this study, a nonprobability sample of 322 (45%) middle and 389 (55%) high school students from two school districts in the U.S. were surveyed using a paper and pencil ten-item bullying scale (Espelange & Holt, 2001) and a fourteen item sexual harassment scale (AAUW, 2001). Student grade(6th-12th), race (70% White), sexual orientation (12%), and gender (44% female) were examined. Outcome variables included self esteem, mental health, academic performance, and school stress.

Results: Preliminary analyses comparing high school and middle school students showed bullying was a significantly more frequent victimization experience than sexual harassment for both middle and high school students. When bullying and sexual harassment were entered together in regression analyses with each outcome for four groups (girls, boys, sexual minority students and non-whites) either bullying or sexual harassment predicted an outcome in 13 of 16 equations (4 groups X 4 outcomes). The coefficients for sexual harassment were considerably larger than the corresponding ones for bullying in all thirteen, in particular for mental health and school stress.

Conclusions and Implications: School bullying and sexual harassment prevention programs have been competing for resources and media attention for more than a decade. With schools' emphasis on promotion of zero tolerance, bullying prevention has gained increasing momentum at the same time attention to sexual harassment has waned. This study cautions that while bullying experiences at school are more common than sexual harassment, the harms of sexual harassment appear to be greater. School administrators, educational policymakers, and educators, as well as parents and students can use these findings to advocate for prevention training in schools that focuses equally on both bullying and sexual harassment.