Bullying Profiles of School-Aged Adolescents in the U.S. and Association with Weight Statues: A Latent Class Analysis

Background/Purpose:

Over the past few decades, childhood obesity has remarkably increased worldwide. The prevalence of obesity among U.S. children and adolescents nationwide was 16.9% in 2009-2010 (Ogden et al., 2012). Overweight and obesity in childhood are known to be linked to not only adverse health problems but also bullying victimization. However, the association between weight status and different forms of co-occurring victimization encounters (e.g., verbal, physical, relational, cyber and sexual) remains unclear. This study aims to examine patterns of bullying victimization amongst U.S. adolescents and the association between these patterns and weight status. Gender and grade differences are also explored.  

Methods:

This study used data from the 2009-2010 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study. The analytical sample included 8,745 U.S. 6th-10th graders (51.7% females; 48.3% white, 16.3% black, and 17.4% Hispanic). Patterns of bullying victimization were identified through latent class analyses (LCA). Multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to investigate the association of the victim classes with gender, grade, and race/ethnicity. Body mass index (BMI) for age was categorized into four groups: underweight (BMI<5th percentile), normal-weight (BMI=5th-84.99th percentile), overweight (BMI=85th-94.99th percentile), and obese (BMI≥95th percentile). To investigate the association between bullying victimization classes and BMI, posterior probability Wald chi-square tests were used to compare the BMI measure across the bullying classes. All analyses were conducted separately by gender and grade.  

Results:

The LCA revealed three classes of victimization: verbal-relational victim with medium probabilities of verbal and relational victimization and lower probabilities of other type victimization (23.8%), all-type victim with higher probabilities of all types of bullying victimization (8.9%), and non-involved with minimal or low probabilities of bullying victimization (67.3%). Male adolescents were less likely to experience all types of victimization compared to their female counterparts. Compared to grade 9-10, other graders were more likely to be both verbal-relational (OR=1.45) and all types (OR=1.23). Black and Hispanic adolescents were less likely to be a verbal-relational victim (OR=.78 and .73, respectively) compared with other racial/ethnic groups.

The association between BMI and bullying victimization classes varied across gender and grade level. For male students, nonvictims reported the least categorical BMI which is statistically different from mean scores of BMI of verbal-relational victims and all type victims. However, females’ categorical BMI across each class were not statistically significant. For grade 5-6 and 7-8 students, nonvictims’ categorical BMI, which is lower than other classes, differs statistically from all type victims. Nonvictims in grade 9-10 have different mean scores of BMI than verbal-relational victims only.

Conclusions/Implications:

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by providing the information regarding the patterns of adolescent bullying and the gender and grade level differences in the relationship between these bullying subgroups and weight status. Findings highlight the need for intervention programs for overweight and obese children and adolescents involved in bullying. More specifically, school social workers and health practitioners should consider specific education programs to prevent weight-based bullying for students.