Predicting bullying: maladjustment, social skills and popularity

Abstract

In order to prevent bullying, research has characterised the adolescents involved in terms of their social skills, maladjustment and popularity. However, there is a lack of knowledge concerning the relationships between these variables and how these relationships predict bullying involvement. Moreover, the literature has focused on pure bullies and victims, despite the fact that bully-victims are known to be the most troubled. The aim of this work is to study the relationships between these variables and their predictive value, focusing on the bully-victim role. The sample (N = 641) is made up of adolescents aged between 12 and 17 years. The results mainly indicate that the level of maladjustment and social skills predicts sociometric popularity, which is a significant predictor of bullying involvement. Differences in the social roles were observed, suggesting that social skills and maladjustment serve a different purpose for bully-victims than for the other roles involved.

Keywords:

• bullying
• adolescence
• sociometric popularity
• social skills
• maladjustment
• path analysis

Notes

aModels are based only on cases for which social role = bully (n = 82).

bModels are based only on cases for which social role = bully-victim (n = 34).

cModels are based only on cases for which social role = victim (n = 104).