Child- and school-level predictors of children’s bullying behavior: A multilevel analysis in 648 primary schools

A great deal of bullying behaviour takes place at school, however, existing literature has predominantly focused on individual characteristics of children associated with bullying with less attention on school-level factors. The current study, comprising 23,215 children (51% boys) recruited from year 4 or year 5 (M = 9.06 years, SD = .56 years) from 648 primary schools in England, aimed to examine the independent and combined influence of child- and school-level predictors on bullying behaviour in primary school. Children provided information on bullying behaviour and school climate. Demographic characteristics of children were obtained from the National Pupil Database, and demographic characteristics of schools were drawn from EduBase. Multi-level logistic regression models showed that individual child gender, ethnicity, deprivation and special educational needs status all predicted bullying behaviour. Of the school-level predictors, only overall school deprivation and school climate were predictive of bullying behaviour once child-level predictors were taken into account. There was a significant interaction between child- and school-level deprivation; high-deprivation schools was a risk factor for bullying only for children that came from non-deprived backgrounds, whereas deprived children reported engaging in bullying behaviour irrespective of school-level deprivation. Given the independent and combined role of child- and school-level factors for bullying behaviour, the current study has implications for targeted school interventions to tackle bullying behaviour, both in terms of identifying high-risk children and identifying high-risk schools.