Citation

Rambaran JA, van Duijn MAJ, Dijkstra JK, Veenstra R. Aggressive Behav. 2019; 45(5): 561-570.

Affiliation

Department of Sociology and Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, International Society for Research on Aggression, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1002/ab.21851

PMID

31241190

Abstract

Although peer victimization mainly takes place within classrooms, little is known about the impact of the classroom context. To this end, we examined whether single-grade and multigrade classrooms (referring to classrooms with one and two grades in the same room) differ in victim-bully relationships in a sample of elementary school children (646 students; age 8-12 years; 50% boys). The occurrence of victim-bully relationships was similar in single-grade and multigrade classrooms formed for administrative reasons, but lower in multigrade classrooms formed for pedagogical reasons. Social network analyses did not provide evidence that peer victimization depended on age differences between children in any of the three classroom contexts. Moreover, in administrative multigrade classrooms, cross-grade victim-bully relationships were less likely than same-grade victim-bully relationships. The findings did not indicate that children in administrative multigrade classrooms are better or worse off in terms of victim-bully relationships than are children in single-grade classrooms.

© 2019 The Authors. Aggressive Behavior Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Language: en

Keywords

classroom context; dominance; evolutionary; peer victimization; social networks