Cumulative Bullying Experiences, Adolescent Behavioral Health, and Academic Achievement: An Integrative Model of Perpetration, Victimization and Bystander Behavior

Background/Significance: Bullying roles (i.e., victim, perpetrator, bystander) are often stable over time, resulting in the need to examine the deleterious effects of chronic bullying involvement, which is a more severe stressor than cursory or episodic involvement. However, limited research has examined how cumulative experiences of victimization, perpetration, and bystander behavior beginning in middle school impact adolescent behavioral health and academic achievement outcomes at the end of high school. Further, although extensive, past bullying research has focused on victimization, perpetration, and bystander behavior separately, the current study aims to synthesize these disparate roles within one integrative model by ascertaining how ongoing involvement as a victim, perpetrator, negative bystander, or prosocial bystander over five years beginning in middle school was associated with adolescent behavioral health (i.e., aggression, internalizing symptoms, self-esteem, future optimism) and academic achievement (e.g., grades) at the end of high school. This integrated model permits a direct comparison of the various bullying roles in order to form a more comprehensive view of bullying dynamics.

Methods: The analytic sample consisted of 8,030 middle- and high-school aged adolescents in a low-income, violent, rural community. The race/ethnicity of the sample reflected the diversity of the surrounding community and 29.6% identified as Caucasian, 26.1% as African American, 25.2% as American Indian, 11.4% as mixed race/other, and 7.8% as Hispanic/Latino. Data were collected using the School Success Profile Plus, an online assessment that measures adolescents’ perceptions of school, friends, family, neighborhood, self, and health. Scales addressing bullying victimization, perpetuation, and bystander behavior were also included. Following multiple imputation, a Structural Equation Model was run.

Results: The model had excellent fit. Results indicate that cumulative victimization was positively associated with aggression and internalizing symptoms, and negatively associated with self-esteem and future optimism. Cumulative perpetration was positively associated with aggression and negatively associated with future optimism. Cumulative negative bystander behavior was positively associated with aggression and internalizing symptoms and negatively associated with academic achievement and future optimism. Cumulative prosocial bystander behavior was positively associated with internalizing symptoms, academic achievement, self-esteem, and future optimism.

Implications: As victimization experiences accumulate over time, victims are at risk for displaying aggression, which could anger the perpetrator, ultimately increasing and perpetuating their victimization.  Further, cumulative victimization was also associated with increased internalizing symptoms and decreased self-esteem and future optimism, resulting in a feedback loop where depressed, anxious, insecure, and pessimistic youth are targets for bullying, which then fuels their poor mental health, resulting in more victimization. Cumulative bullying perpetration was inversely associated with future optimism, indicating that as youth engage in this anti-social and aggressive behavior their outlook on life is negatively impacted. Both cumulative negative and prosocial bystander behavior was positively associated with internalizing symptoms, indicating that witnessing bullying is detrimental to adolescent mental health. Findings highlight the need to support youth who have been enmeshed in ongoing bullying dynamics, even if they are bystanders.