Bullying victimization and adjustment among Ethiopian elementary school students

Pages: 595-601
Waktole Demisew Hirpa, Damanjit Sandhu, and Kirandeep Kaur (Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala, Punjab)

Bullying is a repeated behavior by one or more individuals that are intended to inflict physical and psychological harm to and social isolation of one or more victims through physical, verbal, and relational aggression for an extended period of time. Involvement in bullying can have serious and long-term consequences for both the victim and the bully. Though there are variations in reporting the magnitude, almost all studies agree that school bullying is a widespread problem. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study is to estimate the prevalence rate of bullying victimization and to examine the adjustment correlates of bullying victimization among elementary school students of Ethiopia. 809 (50.2 % male and 49.8 % female) students from grades 6 and 7 aged between 11 to 18 years were sampled from a total of 8 elementary schools using multistage sampling technique. 95.4 % of the participants were from Oromo ethnic group, 3.3 % from Amhara and the remaining 1.3 % from other ethnic groups. Data were collected using: 1) The Revised Olweus Bully/Victimization Questionnaire; and 2) Bell’s Adjustment Inventory. It is reported that 37.6 % of the participants were bully victimized. Higher proportions of male students were bully victimized than female students, 2(1, n = 808) = 3.993, p<.05. There was a strong, negative correlation between bullying victimization and adjustment, which was statistically significant (r = -.351, n = 796, p = .000). It can be concluded that bullying victimization is common in Ethiopian elementary schools and highly negatively associated with pupils' adjustment.