A model of achievement and bullying: analyses of the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth data

Abstract

Background: Bullying occurs largely at school. Given that the primary purpose of schools is to enhance student learning, it is important to examine the relationship between bullying and academic achievement.

Purpose: A model of childhood bullying and school achievement using several family and school characteristics was developed.

Sample: The sample consisted of children age 10–11 years (n = 2084) drawn from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, which is a stratified random sample of 22,831 households in Canada.

Design and methods: From scale and factor analyses, several factors were created and included in a latent variable path model.

Results: The model fit the data well (Comparative Fit Index = 0.96), and the model converged in six iterations, χ²(32) = 300.00, p < 0.001 with a standardised residual error of 0.05. These results indicate that children who are bullied at school are likely to obtain low levels of achievement, particularly if they show little conscientiousness and enjoyment of school, and if their parents provide little support for their children's education.

Conclusions: The results are discussed according to Eccles's Expectancy-Value Theory.

Keywords:

• bullying
• peer harassment
• National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth

Notes

This research was supported by the Initiatives on the New Economy grant no. 539-2003-0013 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

1. The alpha coefficients are almost identical when weighted data are used.

2. The statistical weighting procedure developed by Statistics Canada using the child as the unit of analysis was used to describe the sample as shown in Table 1.