Beyond the Schoolyard: A Multilevel Examination of Individual, School and School District Variables Associated with Trad
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Beyond the Schoolyard: A Multilevel Examination of Individual, School and School District Variables Associated with Traditional and Cyber Peer Aggression Karla Dhungana Sainju1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Background Peer aggression is defined as acts intended or perceived as intended to cause harm. Most research has focused on either micro or macro-level associations, however, less attention has been given to the collective contributions of both micro and macro levels. Objective The present study focuses on verbal, physical, and cyber aggression, and addresses two research questions. First, controlling for individual-level variables, how are school-level and school district-level variables associated with peer aggression? Second, what are the shared and unique characteristics of face-to-face aggression and cyber aggression? Method The study used hierarchical linear modeling and a single cross-section of data consisting of 41,098 students, nested across 681 schools, and 62 school districts. Results The majority of the individual-level variables were found to be related to peer aggression. However, little to no impact was found at the school and school district-level. Despite the lack of significant findings at the contextual level, the study found notable differences between verbal, physical, and cyber aggression. Conclusions The limited significant findings at the contextual level suggest that future examinations need to consider different contextual variables or ecological environments. The limited findings related to cyber aggression also indicates that it may be associated with factors that are not commonly connected with face-to-face aggression. The unique and shared characteristics between the different types of aggression highlight the considerations that should be given to family, school, and demographic characteristics when creating prevention and intervention programs, and the caveat that one-size-fits-all approaches may not be the appropriate response for peer aggression. Keywords Verbal aggression · Physical aggression · Cyber aggression · Multilevel analysis · Social bonds · School climate The author, Karla Dhungana Sainju, was previously associated with the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University where the study was conducted. The author is now at the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Parts of this paper were reported as part of the author’s dissertation. * Karla Dhungana Sainju karla.dhungana‑[email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Vol.:(0123456789)
Child & Youth Care Forum
Introduction Peer aggression can be defined as acts intended or perceived as intended to cause harm (Finkelhor et al. 2012), and can include verbal, physical, relational, or cyber aggression (Donoghue and Raia-Hawrylak 2016). Decades of research suggest that there is no single variable related to these behaviors, rather, factors at
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