The Impact of Social Network Characteristics and Gender on Covert Bullying in Australian Students with Disability in the Middle Years

ABSTRACT

Addressing bullying victimization of students with disability is a significant challenge for schools. While social support can protect against bullying victimization in the general population, its role in mediating the relationship between disability and bullying is under-researched. This paper examined covert bullying prevalence (encompassing relational, social and indirect aggression) and its relationship to social support (peer, family, and teacher) among a national sample of 4,753 Australian 8–14 year olds, 490 of whom self-identified as living with disability. Positive teacher and peer support predicted the reduced probability of bullying victimization among students overall, but low support levels among students with disability negated this effect. Interventions to address covert bullying of students with disability need to focus on whole-school approaches that reduce opportunities for victimization of students with disability.

KEYWORDS:

• covert bullying
• self-identified disability
• routine opportunities theory
• middle years
• social support
• gender
• national survey

Human subjects approval statement

Jurisdictional educational authorities and university human research ethics committees approved the research. Informed parental and student consent was obtained in all cases.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the Australian Child Wellbeing Project and those that provided funding to the ACWP: ARC Grant LP120100543; Co-funded by the Australian Government Departments of Education and Training and Social Services, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Survey data used in this paper are available for analysis through the Australian Data Archive (https://dataverse.ada.edu.au/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.26193/MGM2TM). We thank Vanessa Maurici for her assistance in editing the final drafts of the manuscript and Philip Holmes-Smith for his statistical expertise and comments. We are also grateful for the constructive comments of the Editors and two anonymous reviewers.

Competing interests

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Australian Government; Australian Research Council [LP120100543]; Australian Government Department of Social Services; Australian Bureau of Statistics; Australian Government Department of Education and Training.