The European Journal of Public Health Advance Access originally published online on March 8, 2005
The European Journal of Public Health 2005 15(2):128-132; doi:10.1093/eurpub/cki105
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Youth Health |
Bullying and symptoms among school-aged children: international comparative cross sectional study in 28 countries
Pernille Due1, Bjørn E. Holstein1, John Lynch2, Finn Diderichsen1, Saoirse Nic Gabhain3, Peter Scheidt4, Candace Currie5 and The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Bullying Working Group*
1 Department of Social Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
2 Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Institute for Social Research and Centre for Human Growth and Development, University of Michigan, United States
3 Department of Health Promotion, University College Galway, Galway, Ireland
4 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, United States
5 Unit of Child & Adolescent Health Research, Department of Physical Education, Sport & Leisure Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland
Correspondence: Dr. Pernille Due, Department of Social Medicine, Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 3, DK-2200 Copenhagen, Denmark, tel. +45 35 32 79 65, fax +45 35 35 11 81, Email: p.due{at}socmed.ku.dk
Background: There have been no large-scale international comparisons on bullying and health among adolescents. This study examined the association between bullying and physical and psychological symptoms among adolescents in 28 countries. Methods: This international cross-sectional survey included 123,227 students 11, 13 and 15 years of age from a nationally representative sample of schools in 28 countries in Europe and North America in 1997–98.The main outcome measures were physical and psychological symptoms. Results: The proportion of students being bullied varied enormously across countries. The lowest prevalence was observed among girls in Sweden (6.3%, 95% CI: 5.2–7.4), the highest among boys in Lithuania (41.4%, 95% CI 39.4–43.5). The risk of high symptom load increased with increasing exposure to bullying in all countries. In pooled analyses, with sex stratified multilevel logistic models adjusted for age, family affluence and country the odds ratios for symptoms among students who were bullied weekly ranged from 1.83 (95% CI 1.70–1.97) to 2.11 (95% CI 1.95–2.29) for physical symptoms (headache, stomach ache, backache, dizziness) and from 1.67 (95% CI 1.55–1.78) to 7.47 (95% CI 6.87–8.13) for psychological symptoms (bad temper, feeling nervous, feeling low, difficulties in getting to sleep, morning tiredness, feeling left out, loneliness, helplessness). Conclusion: There was a consistent, strong and graded association between bullying and each of 12 physical and psychological symptoms among adolescents in all 28 countries.
Keywords: Bullying, children, international survey, symptoms
*For a complete listing of The Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Bullying Working Group, please see the Acknowledgements at the end of this article.
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