907360

research-article2020
JIVXXX10.1177/0886260520907360Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceXu et al.

Original Research
Journal of Interpersonal Violence
2022, Vol. 37(1-2) N  P104­–NP124
School Bullying © The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0886260520907360
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School Students in journals.sagepub.com/home/jiv

China: Prevalence and

Associations With
Personal, Relational,
and School Factors

Shuqing Xu,1,2* Jun Ren,3* Fenfen Li,3 Lei Wang,2

and Shumei Wang3

Abstract
This study poses the following research questions: What is the prevalence
of bullying in vocational schools in China? What are the differences between
different genders and professions? How should individuals, families, and
schools do to affect school bullying? What can we do to improve and to
respond school bullying, to reduce its occurrence and consequences? This
cross-sectional study was conducted in 2018 with 95,873 students from
85 vocational schools. The main outcome indicators were self-reported
involvement in bullying (perpetrator, victim, perpetrator-victim, or
uninvolved). Multinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted, with
personal characteristics, relational characteristics, and school climate as
predictors. A total of 30.4% of participants reported being bullied, 2.9%

1
China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou, China
2
Jiangsu Union Technical Institute, Nanjing, China
3
Fudan University, Shanghai, China

*S.X. and J.R. are both the first authors for this article.

Corresponding Author:
Shumei Wang, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Ministry of Education-Department of
Children and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Fudan University, No. 130, Dongan
Road, Shanghai 200032, China.
Email: smwang@fudan.edu.cn
2Xu et al. Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceNP105
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reported bullying others, and 21.7% reported being bullied and bullying
others. Majors related to primary and secondary industries are more likely
to involvement in bullying than majors related to tertiary industries. Boys
were more involved in physical or verbal bullying, whereas girls were more
involved in relational bullying and cyberbullying. Sex, history of fighting, and
emotional/mental state were the strongest individual factors associated with
bullying. Having friends was inversely associated with bullying involvement;
moreover, a positive relationship with parents and a good parenting style
(warmth, democracy, and mutual concern) protected students from bullying
others as well as being bullied. School bullying programs, happiness at school,
and insecurity at school were strong negative predictors of bullying. Bullying
is prevalent among vocational school students in China. An appropriate
response to school bullying requires strengthening student capacity
to correctly understand and deal with bullying, identifying victims and
vulnerable groups, developing school-based interventions, involving parents
in prevention programs, and enhancing students’ sense of responsibility in
supervision, reporting, and creating a friendly environment.

Keywords
bullying, adolescent, vocational school, epidemiology, prevention and control

School bullying is a serious public health problem and a social problem, which
has negative effects on both victims and perpetrators’ academic performance
(Smith, 2000), prosocial behavior, and mental health (Hawker & Boulton,
2000; Nansel et al., 2001; Roland, 2002). Worldwide, nearly one-third of ele-
mentary and middle school students are involved in school bullying, which
includes not only victims and perpetrators but also other various roles such as
bystanders and people who fan the flames (United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2017). In China, several small sample
studies from different areas showed that the prevalence of self-reported tradi-
tional bullying victimization and perpetration ranged from 2% to 66% and
from 2% to 34%, respectively (Chan & Wong, 2015; Guo et al., 2016; Han
et al., 2017; Hazemba et al., 2008; Lam et al., 2013; Zhou et al., 2015).
However, these studies lack of a clear and uniform definition or measures of
school bullying, leading to the wide range of prevalence. It was not until
November 2017, in the “Integrated Governance Program for Strengthening
School Bullying Management Among Primary and Middle School Students,”
that bullying was in any way clearly defined at the level of national policies
and institutions. We have not retrieved any empirical research report on the
status of school bullying in China using the new definition.
Xu et al.
NP106 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)3

Researchers have shown that bullying is influenced by a variety of social con-

textual factors simultaneously interacting with one another (Brookmeyer et al.,
2006; Foster & Brooks-Gunn, 2012; Krug et al., 2002; World Health Organization
[WHO], 2016). In terms of family factors, Flouri and Buchanan (2016) found
that the impact of father–child relationship depends on the closeness of mother–
child relationship. Parental support, family structure, and parental attitudes
toward bullying all affect one’s involvement of bullying (Barboza et al., 2009).
Other risk factors associated with bullying include school climate factors, such as
relationships with peers, school connectedness, school environment, and teach-
ers’ quality (Barboza et al., 2009; Lee, 2011), and community and social factors,
such as media, neighborhood relationships, cultural norms and beliefs, and reli-
gious affiliation (Hong & Espelage, 2012). However, most of the evidence on
risk and protective factors comes from high-income developed countries.
Vocational schools are an important part of China’s education system. After
9-year compulsory education, students have two choices. One is to attend
ordinary high school to prepare for college. The other is to attend vocational
school and to start working directly after graduation. Generally speaking, stu-
dents with better academic performance will choose to attend ordinary high
school, whereas students with lower academic performance are more likely to
attend vocational schools. In addition, vocational school students and ordinary
high school students have significant differences in school bully influence fac-
tors including family connections, socioeconomic status, socio-cultural back-
ground, psychological state, and healthy behaviors. A study on precollege
school types in seven provinces in China shows that vocational school stu-
dents are more vulnerable to school bullying than students of other types of
schools (Han et al., 2017). This happens not only in China. In many countries,
school bullying occurs more in vocational schools (Horvath et al., 2018;
Thurnherr et al., 2008). In 2018, there were 16-million students in vocational
schools in China (China Statistical Yearbook, 2019). With the strong national
support, this number is expected to continuously rise.
This study raises the following research questions: What is the prevalence
of bullying in vocational schools in China? What are the differences between
different genders and professions? How should individuals, families, and
schools do to affect school bullying? What can we do to improve and to
respond school bullying, to reduce its occurrence and consequences?

Methods
Study Design and Participants
This cross-sectional study was conducted in Jiangsu province, China from
October to November 2018. We recruited participants via the Jiangsu Union
4Xu et al. Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceNP107
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Technical Institute, a public institution directly under the education depart-

ment of Jiangsu province. All 85 five-year vocational schools affiliated with
this institute were included in the study. Compared with students in second-
ary-level vocational schools, students in higher vocational schools complete
their education over 5 years; the first 3 years are the same as the secondary
vocational stage, with the final 2 years make up the higher vocational stage.
The sample covered more than 150 majors in 16 major categories. All data
were collected via an anonymous self-administered electronic system, which
students could access on their computers or smartphones. For students from
Years 1 to 4, a head teacher allocated time to administer the questionnaire
during regular school hours; for students of Year 5, who did not have a uni-
fied schedule because of their internships, head teachers merely encouraged
them to complete the questionnaire when they were able. Students were told
that they had the right to not answer the questionnaire, or to withdraw at any
point. A total of 182,101 students were enrolled in the study from sample
schools, and 95,873 valid questionnaires were collected.

Ethical Issues
The privacy of students was protected by allowing for anonymous and volun-
tary participation. The study was reviewed and approved by the Ethics
Committee of Fudan University (international registration number: 112
IRB00002408, FWA00002399).

Instrument and Procedure

We designed a self-reported questionnaire containing 96 items to collect data
on students’ involvement in different types of school bullying, sociodemo-
graphic variables, behaviors, relationships with family and classmates, and
school climate.

Bullying. School bullying is a sensitive topic in Chinese culture. To prevent

students from concealing their bullying experiences when answering the
questionnaire, we did not use the expression “bullying” anywhere in the
questionnaire. Instead, we described eight specific behavioral phenomena as
the “Chinese Adolescent Health Related Behavior Questionnaire” (Appendix
Table 1 in Supplemental Material), which is widely used in China and has
been well tested for reliability and validity (Chen et al., 2021; Huang et al.,
2009; Ji, 2007). We used two parallel questions for each type of bullying to
assess the frequency (never, sometimes, or frequently) of involvement in the
past 12 months; one question asked about perpetration and the other about
 Table 1. Percentage of Victims, Perpetrators, Perpetrator-Victims, and Individuals Noninvolved in Bullying in Different Subgroup
(n [%]).
NP108

Categories Total Uninvolved Victim Perpetrator Perpetrator-Victim

Total 95,873 (100) 43,045 (44.90) 29,227 (30.49) 2,767 (2.89) 20,834 (21.73)
Sex
Male 43,863 (45.75) 15,352 (35.00) 12,778 (29.13) 1,625 (3.70) 14,108 (32.16)
Female 52,010 (54.25) 27,693 (53.25) 16,449 (31.63) 1,142 (2.20) 6,726 (12.93)
Grade
Year 1 24,539 (25.60) 11,194 (45.62) 8,122 (33.10) 610 (2.49) 4,613 (18.80)
Year 2 21,052 (21.96) 8,928 (42.41) 6,492 (30.84) 613 (2.91) 5,019 (23.84)
Year 3 21,197 (22.11) 9,336 (44.04) 6,247 (29.47) 687 (3.24) 4,927 (23.24)
Year 4 17,856 (18.62) 8,074 (45.22) 5,212 (29.19) 523 (2.93) 4,047 (22.66)
Year 5 11,229 (11.71) 5,513 (49.10) 3,154 (28.09) 334 (2.97) 2,228 (19.84)
Industry
Primary industry 2,031 (2.12) 739 (36.39) 687 (33.83) 71 (3.50) 534 (26.29)
Secondary industry 25,018 (26.09) 9,425 (37.67) 7,308 (29.21) 895 (3.58) 7,390 (29.54)
Tertiary industry 68,824 (71.79) 32,881 (47.78) 21,232 (30.85) 1,801 (2.62) 12,910 (18.76)
Only child
Yes 48,539 (50.63) 22,872 (47.12) 14,409 (29.69) 1,569 (3.23) 9,689 (19.96)
No 47,334 (49.37) 20,173 (42.62) 14,818 (31.31) 1,198 (2.53) 11,145 (23.55)
Depression
No 16,438 (17.15) 9,055 (55.09) 3,714 (22.59) 1,181 (7.18) 2,488 (15.14)
Yes 79,435 (82.85) 33,990 (42.79) 25,513 (32.12) 1,586 (2.00) 18,346 (23.10)
(continued)

5
Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)
6
Xu et al.

Table 1. (continued)

Categories Total Uninvolved Victim Perpetrator Perpetrator-Victim

Mother’s parenting style
Emotional warmth 67,776 (70.69) 33,905 (50.03) 20,169 (29.76) 2,052 (3.03) 11,650 (17.19)
Strictness or punishment 6,676 (6.96) 2,092 (31.34) 2,267 (33.96) 179 (2.68) 2,138 (32.03)
Overinvolvement 6,354 (6.63) 1,569 (24.69) 1,993 (31.37) 158 (2.49) 2,634 (41.45)
Favoritism 3,248 (3.39) 974 (29.99) 957 (29.46) 87 (2.68) 1,230 (37.87)
Others 11,819 (12.33) 4,505 (38.12) 3,841 (32.5) 291 (2.46) 3,182 (26.92)
School program on bullying
No 23,502 (24.51) 8,257 (35.13) 6,754 (28.74) 1,140 (4.85) 7,351 (31.28)
Yes 72,371 (75.49) 34,788 (48.07) 22,473 (31.05) 1,627 (2.25) 13,483 (18.63)
Number of friends
<3 6,803 (7.10) 2,476 (36.40) 1,959 (28.80) 494 (7.26) 1,874 (27.55)
3 or more 89,070 (92.90) 40,569 (45.55) 27,268 (30.61) 2,273 (2.55) 18,960 (21.29)
NP109
Xu et al.
NP110 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)7

victimization. Based on their responses, participants were categorized into

one of four groups: perpetrator, victim, perpetrator-victim, or uninvolved.
The Cronbach’s α was .876 for the victimization data and .937 for the perpe-
tration data.

Personal characteristics. The personal characteristics considered were sociode-

mographic variables, emotional/mental state, and fighting experience. The
sociodemographic variables included sex, grade, pocket money received
every month, major, satisfaction with family income, and whether they are
the only child in the family. The 150 specific professional names filled in by
students are classified into 16 professional categories according to the cata-
log of secondary vocational schools (Catalog of Secondary Vocational
Schools, 2010) published by the Ministry of Education, and then classified
into three major categories according to three industries according to employ-
ment orientation. Emotional/mental state was evaluated using the Center for
Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and three additional
questions. The 20-item CES-D was used to evaluate depressive symptoms
(Radloff, 1977); scores above 24 indicated the presence of depression (Rob-
erts et al., 1991; Rushton et al., 2002). The Cronbach’s α of the CES-D in this
study was .930. The other three questions evaluated the frequency of “feeling
unhappy because of study pressure or grades,” “losing sleep worrying about
something,” and “feeling very sad or hopeless for 2 weeks or more and stop-
ping normal activities” in the past 12 months. Starting from the three aspects
of study pressure, sleep condition, and anxiety, which are closely related to
students, it not only complemented the psychological condition other than
depression but also made its significance more direct and sensitive. We also
assessed students’ involvement in a fight in the past 12 months.

Relationships. Family relationships included mother’s and father’s parenting

style, family atmosphere, and family function. Family function was evalu-
ated using the Family APGAR (Smilkstein, 1978), which included five ques-
tions, whose response options were “frequently (2 score),” “sometimes (1
score),” or “hardly (0 score)”; the total score of 0 to 3 is “serious disorder,” 4
to 6 is “moderate disorder,” and 7 to 10 is “good” for the family function.
This questionnaire has been well validated in other family relationship stud-
ies (Cheng et al., 2017), and the Cronbach’s α of this scale in our study was
.905. Students were simply given an explanation of each point and asked to
indicate which seems to best fit their parents’ parenting style in terms of emo-
tional warmth, strictness or punishment, overinvolvement, favoritism, and
others factors after. Family atmosphere was evaluated using the following
categories: the democratic type, where parents and children love and respect
8Xu et al. Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceNP111
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each other; the orthodox type, where parents are serious, well-behaved, strict
with their children, and never praise their children; the conflict type, where
parents quarrel or engage in domestic violence; the arranged type, where par-
ents are hard-working and desire obedient children; and the laissez-faire type,
where parents entrust their children to a nanny or relatives because they are
busy working, or parents are simply more freewheeling.
We also asked two questions about how many male or female friends the
student had. Participants were then classified according to the total number of
friends (<3 or 3 or more).

School climate. We calculated the school level variables using the mean of
each variable for its pupils. We first calculated the mean value of students in
a particular school, determined the median value of all schools, and used this
value as a classification standard to classify schools, and finally assigned the
classification result of schools to each student in that school. Four questions
were used to evaluate school-level variables: “Do you feel happy at school?”
(Classes 1–4), “Have you felt insecure going to and from school in the past
12 months?” (Classes 1–5), “Does the school have a program on bullying?”
(yes = 1 or no = 2), and “What is the teachers’ attitudes toward bullying?”
(concern = 1 or others = 2). Besides, school types were divided into engi-
neering schools (with more than 70% of students majoring in engineering)
and others.

Statistical Analysis
We used two steps of analysis: descriptive statistics and multilevel analysis.
Descriptive statistics were used to determine the prevalence of involvement
in bullying and being bullied in each type of school bullying, and the preva-
lence for each of the four bullying classifications. We used the Pearson’s
chi-square test to compare the differences in each type of bullying between
boys and girls, and followed by Student–Newman–Keuls Test (SNK) after
rank transformation to compare the differences in each type of bullying.
Multilevel multinomial logit models with random intercept were used to
evaluate the associations between variables at student and school level and
being a perpetrator, victim, or perpetrator-victim (compared with uninvolved).
Before the regression analysis, we performed multicollinearity test and cor-
relation analysis on the data (Appendix Table 2 and 3 in the Supplemental
Material). As the data were nested in 16 majors from 85 schools, we use
schools as the second level. Models that use major as a independent level
revealed no major importance to our model. An empty model was initially
used to determine the clustering of bullying by school. Through this model,
Xu et al.
NP112 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)9

we obtained the variance of bullying across schools. The “latent variable

method” was used to obtain the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). All
analyses were conducted using SAS version 9.4.

Results
Prevalence of Bullying
The sample comprised 45.24% boys and 54.76% girls; 24.8% of the partici-
pants were in Year 1, 22.0% in Year 2, 22.1% in Year 3, 18.5% in Year 4, and
12.7% in Year 5 (Table 1).
Prevalence rates of involvement in school bullying (Table 1) are given for
the total sample, and across each category of school program on bullying,
number of friends, parenting style, and four demographic variables. Overall,
30.4% of the participants had reported being bullied, 2.9% reported bullying
others, 21.7% reported both being bullied and bullying others, and 44.99%
were uninvolved in all types of bullying.
Tables 2 and 3 show the prevalence of being bullied or bullying others for
each of the eight types. For all types of bullying, the percentages of bullying
others were much lower than were those for being bullied; however, the rank-
ing of types was roughly the same between the respondents who reported
involvement in bullying and those being bullied. “Make fun of or tease in a
hurtful way” was the most common type for both bullying behavior and vic-
timization. Boys were typically involved in “making fun of others with sex-
ual comments/gestures,” “threatening or intimidating others.” Girls, on the
other hand, were typically involved in “excluding others from activities on
purpose,” “belittling others about physical defects or looks,” and “threaten-
ing, spreading rumors, or insulting others through social media, instant mes-
saging, or text messaging.”

Multilevel Analysis
Personal characteristics. Compared with girls, boys had greater odds of being
involved in bullying; this difference was especially pronounced for perpetra-
tor-victims. Moreover, compared with respondents in Year 1, those in Years
4 or 5 had lower odds of being victims, whereas respondents in Years 3, 4,
and 5 had higher odds of being perpetrator-victims. Students who were more
satisfied with their family income (“general” to “very satisfied”) had lower
odds of being perpetrators, whereas moderate satisfaction with family income
(“dissatisfied” or “general”) was associated with higher odds of being vic-
tims (Table 4).
 Table 2. Participants Who Reported Being Bullied for the Eight Types of Bullying by Sex (n [%]).

10
Types of bullying Never Sometimes Frequently χ2 p SNK Grouping
Xu et al.

Being made fun of or teased in a Total 58,625 (61.15) 31,851 (33.22) 5,397 (5.63) A
hurtful way Boys 23,441 (53.44) 16,768 (38.23) 3,654 (8.33) 2,443.3399 <.0001 A
Girls 35,184 (67.65) 15,083 (29.00) 1,743 (3.35) A
Being extorted property Total 84,599 (88.24) 8,615 (8.99) 2,659 (2.77) E
Boys 36,379 (82.94) 5,581 (12.72) 1,903 (4.34) 2,228.9164 <.0001 F
Girls 48,220 (92.71) 3,034 (5.83) 756 (1.45) F
Being excluded from activities Total 74,315 (77.51) 18,750 (19.56) 2,808 (2.93) B
on purpose Boys 33,439 (76.24) 8,835 (20.14) 1,589 (3.62) 164.0892 <.0001 C
Girls 40,876 (78.59) 9,915 (19.06) 1,219 (2.34) B
Being threatened or intimidated Total 82,922 (86.49) 9,847 (10.27) 3,104 (3.24) D
by others Boys 35,066 (79.94) 6,550 (14.93) 2,247 (5.12) 2,999.1943 <.0001 D
Girls 47,856 (92.01) 3,297 (6.34) 857 (1.65) E
Being cyberbullied Total 85,859 (89.55) 8,656 (9.03) 1,358 (1.42) F
Boys 37,989 (86.61) 4,907 (11.19) 967 (2.20) 850.2066 <.0001 H
Girls 47,870 (92.04) 3,749 (7.21) 391 (0.75) F
Being hit, kicked, pushed, or Total 86,546 (90.27) 7,276 (7.59) 2,051 (2.14) F
shoved Boys 37,224 (84.86) 5,147 (11.73) 1,492 (3.40) 2,694.5452 <.0001 G
Girls 49,322 (94.83) 2,129 (4.09) 559 (1.07) G
Being made fun of by others Total 75,812 (79.08) 15,430 (16.09) 4,631 (4.83) B
with sexual comments/ Boys 29,761 (67.85) 10,285 (23.45) 3,817 (8.70) 6,514.5626 <.0001 B
gestures Girls 46,051 (88.54) 5,145 (9.89) 814 (1.57) D
Being belittled by others for Total 79,913 (83.35) 13,231 (13.8) 2,729 (2.85) C
physical defects or looks Boys 35,034 (79.87) 7,044 (16.06) 1,785 (4.07) 841.3189 <.0001 E
Girls 44,879 (86.29) 6,187 (11.90) 944 (1.82) C

Note. Total (N = 95,873), boys (n = 43,863), girls (n = 52,010). p values are derived from the adjusted Wald test to determine sex differences in each type of bullying,
α = .05. SNK groupings were derived from Student–Newman–Keuls Test (the alphabetical order indicates the frequency of the eight types of bullying among all
NP113

students, boys, and girls, respectively, with A indicating the most frequent; SNK groups with the same letter are not significantly different), α = .05. SNK = Student–
Newman–Keuls Test.
 Table 3. Participants Who Reported Bullying Others for the Eight Types of Bullying by Sex (n [%]).
Types of bullying Sex Never Sometimes Frequently χ2 p SNK Grouping
NP114

Making fun of or teasing Total 79,516 (82.94) 12,833 (13.39) 3,524 (3.68) A
others in a hurtful way Boys 32,500 (74.09) 8,721 (19.88) 2,642 (6.02) 4,524.6594 <.0001 A
Girls 47,016 (90.40) 4,112 (7.91) 882 (1.70) A
Extorting property Total 87,655 (91.43) 5,892 (6.15) 2,326 (2.43) E
Boys 37,770 (86.11) 4,330 (9.87) 1,763 (4.02) 2,922.7057 <.0001 F
Girls 49,885 (95.91) 1,562 (3.00) 563 (1.08) F
Excluding others from Total 87,028 (90.77) 7,622 (7.95) 1,223 (1.28) B
activities on purpose Boys 38,233 (87.16) 4,729 (10.78) 901 (2.05) 1,315.4019 <.0001 C
Girls 48,795 (93.82) 2,893 (5.56) 322 (0.62) B
Threatening or intimidating Total 87,034 (90.78) 6,261 (6.53) 2,578 (2.69) D
others Boys 37,351 (85.15) 4,603 (10.49) 1,909 (4.35) 3,058.8003 <.0001 D
Girls 49,683 (95.53) 1,658 (3.19) 669 (1.29) E
Cyberbullying Total 90,271 (94.16) 4,582 (4.78) 1,020 (1.06) F
Boys 39,870 (90.90) 3,200 (7.30) 793 (1.81) 1,583.0709 <.0001 H
Girls 50,401 (96.91) 1,382 (2.66) 227 (0.44) F
Hitting, kicking, pushing, or Total 89,110 (92.95) 5,236 (5.46) 1,527 (1.59) F
shoving others around Boys 38,807 (88.47) 3,901 (8.89) 1,155 (2.63) 2,467.6152 <.0001 G
Girls 50,303 (96.72) 1,335 (2.57) 372 (0.72) G
Making fun of others with Total 84,986 (88.64) 8,669 (9.04) 2,218 (2.31) B
sexual comments/gestures Boys 35,410 (80.73) 6,691 (15.25) 1,762 (4.02) 5,036.6131 <.0001 B
Girls 49,576 (95.32) 1,978 (3.80) 456 (0.88) D
Belittling others’ physical Total 87,065 (90.81) 6,971 (7.27) 1,837 (1.92) C
defects or looks Boys 37,628 (85.79) 4,838 (11.03) 1,397 (3.18) 2,475.468 <.0001 E
Girls 49,437 (95.05) 2,133 (4.10) 440 (0.85) C

Note. Total (N = 95,873), boys (n = 43,863), girls (n = 52,010). p values are derived from the adjusted Wald test to determine sex differences in each type of bullying,
α = .05. SNK groupings were derived from Student–Newman–Keuls Test (the alphabetical order indicates the frequency of the eight types of bullying among all

11
Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)

students, boys, and girls, respectively, with A indicating the most frequent; SNK groups with the same letter are not significantly different), α = .05. SNK = Student–
Newman–Keuls Test.
 Table 4. Relationships of Personal Characteristics, Relational Characteristics, and School Climate Factors With Involvement in

12
Bullying According to a Multinomial Logistic Regression Analysis (N = 95,873).
Xu et al.

Victim Perpetrator Perpetrator-Victim

Categories OR (95% CI) OR (95% CI) OR (95% CI)
School level
School type (reference: mainly for the secondary industry) 0.98 [0.90, 1.08] 1.05 [0.92, 1.19] 1.01 [0.90, 1.14]
School program (reference: no) 0.85 [0.79, 0.92]* 0.90 [0.80, 1.00] 0.83 [0.75, 0.93]*
School atmosphere (reference: pleasant) 1.13 [1.03, 1.25]* 1.11 [0.96, 1.27] 1.14 [1.00, 1.30]*
School safety (reference: security) 1.15 [1.04, 1.27]* 1.04 [0.89, 1.21] 1.20 [1.04, 1.38]*
Individual level
Sex (reference: male) 0.56 [0.54, 0.58]* 0.52 [0.47, 0.57]* 0.19 [0.18, 0.20]*
Year (reference: Year 1)
2 1.07 [1.02, 1.12]* 1.12 [0.99, 1.27] 1.42 [1.34, 1.51]*
3 1.01 [0.96, 1.06] 1.14 [1.01, 1.29]* 1.38 [1.3, 1.47]*
4 0.94 [0.9, 0.99]* 0.98 [0.86, 1.12] 1.26 [1.18, 1.34]*
5 0.89 [0.83, 0.94]* 0.93 [0.8, 1.08] 1.05 [0.98, 1.14]
Only child (reference: yes) 1.06 [1.02, 1.09]* 1.02 [0.93, 1.11] 1.16 [1.12, 1.21]*
Major categories (reference: tertiary industry)
Primary industry 1.11 [0.96, 1.30] 1.02 [0.75, 1.40] 1.17 [0.97, 1.40]
Secondary industry 1.05 [1.00, 1.11] 1.01 [0.91, 1.13] 1.09 [1.03, 1.15]*
Satisfaction with family income (reference: very dissatisfied)
Dissatisfied 1.46 [1.28, 1.67]* 1.09 [0.88, 1.35] 1.11 [0.98, 1.27]
General 1.24 [1.12, 1.37]* 0.49 [0.42, 0.57]* 0.48 [0.43, 0.52]*
Satisfied 1.01 [0.91, 1.12] 0.45 [0.38, 0.53]* 0.37 [0.33, 0.41]*
Very satisfied 0.91 [0.81, 1.02] 0.44 [0.36, 0.54]* 0.43 [0.38, 0.48]*
NP115

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 NP116

Table 4. (continued)

Victim Perpetrator Perpetrator-Victim

Categories OR (95% CI) OR (95% CI) OR (95% CI)
Depression (reference: negative) 1.49 [1.42, 1.56]* 0.55 [0.50, 0.61]* 1.64 [1.54, 1.73]*
Feeling sad or hopeless (reference: no) 1.95 [1.87, 2.03]* 3.40 [3.11, 3.72]* 2.60 [2.48, 2.73]*
Feeling unhappy because of study pressure or grades (reference: never)
Rarely 1.34 [1.28, 1.41]* 0.74 [0.65, 0.83]* 1.58 [1.49, 1.68]*
Sometimes 1.81 [1.72, 1.90]* 0.80 [0.69, 0.92]* 1.94 [1.82, 2.06]*
Frequently 2.73 [2.49, 2.99]* 1.13 [0.87, 1.46] 3.37 [3.04, 3.74]*
Always 2.71 [2.28, 3.21]* 1.14 [0.74, 1.75] 4.13 [3.47, 4.91]*
Mother’s parenting style (reference: emotional warmth)
Strictness or punishment 1.26 [1.17, 1.35]* 1.13 [0.95, 1.35] 1.57 [1.45, 1.7]*
Overinvolvement 1.22 [1.13, 1.32]* 1.16 [0.95, 1.42] 1.72 [1.57, 1.87]*
Favoritism 1.18 [1.06, 1.30]* 1.18 [0.92, 1.52] 1.73 [1.55, 1.94]*
Others 1.00 [0.94, 1.07] 0.98 [0.83, 1.16] 1.19 [1.11, 1.28]*
Number of friends (reference: <3)
3 or more 0.85 [0.80, 0.91]* 0.63 [0.56, 0.72]* 0.74 [0.69, 0.80]*

Note. Asterisk (*) indicates that the confidence intervals excluded 1.0. Pocket money every month; losing sleep worrying about something; father’s
parenting style; family function; and family atmosphere. An α of .05 was used as the significance level. OR = odds ratio; CI = confidence interval.

13
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14
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As for emotional/mental state, depression and unhappy because of study

were positively correlated with victimization and negatively correlated with
perpetration. Feeling sad or hopeless has the same effect on the victimization
as on the perpetration.

Relational characteristics. An emotional warmth parenting style was protec-

tive factor against involvement in bullying. Moreover, participants with a
higher number of friends had lower ORs for all three outcomes, particularly
for perpetrators.

School climate. School atmosphere and school safety were associated with
victimization and victimization-perpetration for the individual, whereas
school type did not remain significant in the final model. Schools with bully-
ing education programs had lower victimization rates. None of the school-
level factors showed a significant correlation with perpetration. The ICC
estimated in the empty model demonstrated that 5.8% of the variance of bul-
lying is at school level.

Discussion
We found that more than half (55.1%) of the students in vocational schools
involved in school bullying. Specifically, 30.4% of students reported being a
victim, 2.9% reported being a perpetrator, and 21.7% reported being a perpe-
trator-victim. Both incidence rates of bullying and being bullied among male
students were significantly higher that among female students. Senior stu-
dents are less vulnerable to school bullying. In all types of bullying, the inci-
dence rate of being bullied is significantly higher than bullying others.
Consistent with previous studies (Wang et al., 2009), “make fun of or tease
others in a hurtful way” was the most common type of bullying. Possible
reasons include the following: (a) students are not aware that their actions are
harming other people, (b) the bully is unwilling to admit their bullying behav-
ior, and (c) there is one person bullying multiple victims. According to the
“School Violence Judicial Big Data Special Report “ released by the Supreme
People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China in 2017, 55.12% of school
violence cases were caused by minor issues such as quarrels and frictions
among students. Therefore, schools should strengthen the education of bully-
ing, correctly understand school bullying, cultivate students’ positive atti-
tudes toward life and good peer relationships, help students use nonviolent
means to solve problems, and prevent inappropriate jokes or small conflicts
from worsening.
Xu et al.
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Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)

Our findings showed that specific bullying education from school, a

campus atmosphere where students feel happy, and a sense of security at
school are protective factors for school bullying. At school, bullying creates
an atmosphere of fear and insecurity. Therefore, when student do not want
to go to school, or have truancy, or always take unnecessary sick leave,
teachers and parents should promptly communicate with the student and
ask whether the student has been bullied. School-based interventions have
proven effective (Hahn et al., 2007), and WHO (2010) also emphasized the
role of schools in preventing school bullying. Schools should strengthen
management and develop relevant codes of conduct to create safe, secure,
and open-minded learning environment. Compared with students who are
not involved in bullying, friendship not only protects adolescents from bul-
lying but also isolates bullies (Boulton & Smith, 1994; Hodges et al., 1999).
Our research also confirmed that the number of friends is inversely propor-
tional to the involvement of bullying. When school factors and family rela-
tionships do not significantly affect the perpetrator, friendship is particularly
important. Schools should give full play to students’ power when formulat-
ing intervention plans, such as providing more student interaction activi-
ties, advocating anti-bullying information among students, and curbing
bullying through positive peer pressure.
In terms of family, previous studies have confirmed that parental bias is
positively related to the formation of children’s anxiety and hostility.
Inadequate parental supervision, harsh discipline, and family violence are
family-related risk factors for adolescent violence. Disharmony between sib-
lings increases the risk of bullying behavior (Kellermann et al., 1998; WHO,
2016). Our research showed that a warm parenting style can protect students
from bullying. But nearly half of the parents of the respondents adopted par-
enting style such as punishment, excessive interference, and parental favorit-
ism. Warm family education is good to foster a child’s positive, independent,
and confident character. The result also shows that the only child is a protec-
tive factor of school bullying. Because Chinese people advocate courtesy and
generosity; thus, when siblings have conflicts, parents may neglect children’s
negative emotions. If the negative emotions cannot be digested by them-
selves, it may lead to the occurrence or continuity of bullying or being bul-
lied. Therefore, the whole society should pay attention to scientific parenting
method, and correct parents’ wrong parenting concepts and methods.
Our research found a strong correlation between emotional/mental state
and school bullying involvement. Students who are depressed or unhappy
due to stressful learning pressure are more likely to the victim. Sad or hope-
less students have higher possibility to be victim and to be the perpetrator.
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Previous research has also found that anxiety and depression are the strong
psychological predictors of all three types of school bullying involvement
(Fekkes et al., 2004; Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Kaltiala-Heino et al., 2000;
Turcotte Benedict et al., 2014). This reminds us that, on one hand, we need to
pay attention to students’ emotional fluctuations, and to help them handle
negative emotions in a timely manner; on the other hand, teachers and parents
should also pay attention to whether school bullying occurs when students
have emotional fluctuations.
This study has several limitations. First, the nonparticipation of certain
schools and students might have resulted in selection bias. We conducted
consistency tests for grade, gender, and major factors among students who
participated in the survey and those who did not (Appendix Table 4 in
Supplemental Material). The comparatively low response rate in this study
is mainly because so many fifth-year students were participating in their
enterprise internship, and thus were not at school. However, the large sam-
ple size ensured a balance of basic conditions among students. Second, the
cross-sectional nature of the study limits our ability to infer causal relation-
ships. In the future, longitudinal studies should be conducted to confirm the
predictive effects of emotional/mental state and relational characteristics
on bullying. Third, all data were self-reported by students, which could lead
to misreporting of bullying and some of the independent variables, and
could limit the inferences that can be drawn from these data. Fourth, the
study only considered the perpetrator and victim, and did not consider
bystanders, who are another important group. Future studies should include
this group of students as well.
Despite these limitations, the results have important practical implications
and extend previous literature. In terms of outcome measurement, we chose
specific behavioral phenomena rather than relying on a definition of bullying,
which not only aided in students’ understanding and reduced measurement
errors but was also more consistent with Chinese cultural characteristics. It
was of great practical significance to select vocational schools as the target,
given their high incidence of bullying and diverse student body, and the fact
that they are rarely targeted for research. This study was carried out in Jiangsu
Province, which is located in the central part of the eastern coastal region of
China and the students come from all over China. The results of this study
can be applied to most parts of China, both in terms of economic develop-
ment level of the region and from the perspective of student sources. In some
extent, it may also bring inspiration to other developing countries.
The purpose of this study is to understand the prevalence and influencing
factors of school bullying in vocational schools, and to explore possible inter-
ventions. The results of our research describe in detail about the prevalence
Xu et al.
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Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)

of various forms of school bullying and school bullying participation; con-

firm importance of friendship support, positive family relationships, and
school climate in preventing school bullying; and provide a good solution to
our researched problems.
The United States has more than 20 years of research on school bullying
and has been working on its reform and development. They actively guided
various roles to monitor school bullying and received good results. In addi-
tion, Germany and Norway also launched prevention projects on school bul-
lying at the end of the last century. In China, school bullying is reported
frequently recent years, and research on school bullying is lagged behind.
Our research targets a specific group of population, which are vocational
school students. Due to the close relationship between academic choices and
academic performance, this population is relatively poor in academic perfor-
mance and has more behavior problems. However, past research has lower
attention to this group of people. School bullying is the main injury problem
for adolescent at this age group. As there is a huge number of vocational
school students in China, it is urgent to explore a targeted and operable school
bullying intervention strategies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

ORCID iD
Shumei Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6649-3117

Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.

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Author Biographies
Shuqing Xu is a professor in Jiangsu Union Technical Institute and a PhD student in
China University of Mining and Technology. His research focuses on students’ men-
tal health and education. He hopes to develop the most effective and feasible school
programs to guide students’ mental health development through student education
and joint efforts with parents.
Jun Ren is a master student in the School of Public Health, Fudan University. Her
research focuses on prevalence of injury and community-based or school-based
Xu et al.
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Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37(1-2)

interventions. She hopes to find out the deep-seated injury problems and causes, apply
the intervention strategies into practice, and improve the current situation of adoles-
cent injury.
Fenfen Li is a master student in the School of Public Health, Fudan University. Her
research focuses on safe communities, injury interventions, and adolescent health.
She hopes that evaluation results can be used to provide strong evidence for policy
making and health communication, and to identify mechanisms for translating
research into practice.
Lei Wang is a professor in Jiangsu Union Technical Institute. Her research focuses on
education, examining the impact of school, family, and peers on issues such as mental
health and violence.
Shumei Wang, PhD, is a professor in the School of Public Health, Fudan University.
Her research focuses on safe communities, injury interventions, and adolescent mental
health. Efforts to provide evidence for policy making, community, and school inter-
vention programs.