A Multilevel Cross-National Analysis of Direct and Indirect Forms of School Violence

Abstract

The detrimental effects of school violence on students' physical and emotional health are well studied, and research has shown that school violence affects students in every nation across the globe. However, few cross-national studies have compared direct, physical forms of school violence to indirect, emotional forms such as teasing. Using multilevel linear analysis, the factors that predict the levels of both direct and indirect school violence in 36 nations as reported by eighth graders in the 2007 Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) are examined and compared. The national and school level of students' math achievement predict direct violence, along with schools' level of achievement variation and age composition, while the size of the school and eighth grade, percent female students, national level of low SES students, and schools' linguistic heterogeneity are linked to the level of indirect violence in schools across nations.

[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Journal of School Violence for the following free supplemental resource: Appendix Tables A1–A4. Table A1 displays descriptive statistics by nation, Table A2 displays the correlations among variables, and Tables A3 and A4 display the results of three-level hierarchical generalized linear models for each dependent variable.]

Keywords:

• bullying
• school violence
• cross-national
• student achievement
• linguistic heterogeneity

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank James E. Hawdon, John Ryan, Ted Fuller, Haiyan Zhu, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments.