School Bullying as a Result of Presence and Absence of Opposites Sex Peers among Adolescents

School bullying seems to vary with respect to gender, age, as well as type of bullying instance (direct- physical, verbal; indirect- social, cyber), with boys engaging in bullying more than girls, irrespective of the type of bullying studied, while girls only show indirect forms of bullying. School bullying doesn’t take place in isolation, rather it is embedded in the context. Thus, schools that have both boys and girls studying together as compared to schools with only boys or only girls are expected to show different types of bullying episodes. With this view, the present paper aims to bring to forefront the dynamic nature of school bullying with respect to the presence and absence of opposite sex peers in school. Using the Indian adaptation of Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument, data was collected from 1408 students (boys= 901; girls=507) from classes 7 through 12 (middle school= 517; secondary school= 481; senior secondary school= 410), belonging to three types of schools (co-educational school= 661; boys school= 465; girls school=282). Findings of factorial MANOVA reveal main effects (age group; gender; school type) on the 8 subtypes of bullying and victimization. Interaction between age group and school type was also found to be significant across the subtypes of school bullying. Therefore, different intervention strategies are required for schools with respect to its population, as the nature of bullying incidences also varies when there are same sex peers as compared to schools having opposite sex peers.

Keywords: school bullying, peers, adolescence, gender, same sex bullying