Situational Context of Student Bullying Victimization and Reporting Behavior: A Conjunctive Analysis of Case Configurations

• Author: Timothy C. Hart,Terance D. Miethe,Jennifer L. Hart
• Published date: 01 December 2013
• Date: 01 December 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3818/JRP.15.2.2013.43
• Subject Matter: Article

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SITUATIONAL CONTEXT OF STUDENT BULLYING

VICTIMIZATION AND REPORTING BEHAVIOR: A

CONJUNCTIVE ANALYSIS OF CASE CONFIGURATIONS

Timothy C. Hart

Griff‌ith University

Queensland, Australia

Jennifer L. Hart

Terance D. Miethe

University of Nevada - Las Vegas

JUSTICE RESEARCH AND POLICY, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2013

© 2013 Justice Research and Statistics Association

DOI: 10.3818/JRP.15.2.2013. 43

* Abstract

Bullying victimization is a growing problem for students, parents, teachers, and school

administrators. Despite existing scholarship on various aspects of school bullying, cer-

tain facets of this important social issue remain underexplored. Using a pooled sample

of 6th through 12th graders (N = 16,244), the current study analyzes the situational

context of school bullying victimization. Findings from a conjunctive analysis of case

conf‌igurations suggest that incidents of school bullying victimization are highly con-

textual, with few relevant factors demonstrating a constant “main effect” across situ-

ational prof‌iles. Analyzing the situational context of bullying provides new insight into

the dynamics of bullying, which are well documented in the literature. Results are

discussed in terms of their contribution to the existing research and their implications

for future study and policy.



Figures recently released from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the Na-

tional Center for Education Statistics (NCES) paint a dire picture of bullying in

our nation’s schools. During the 2007–08 school year, for example, a quarter of all

public schools surveyed reported that bullying occurred among their students on a

daily or weekly basis (Baum, Dinkes, Kemp, & Snyder, 2009; Neiman, DeVoe, &

Chandler, 2009; Robers, Zhang, Truman, & Snyder, 2010). Even more startling

than the number of schools that reported chronic student bullying is the number

of children being victimized. About one third of all students surveyed between the

ages of 12 and 18 reported that they were bullied, including 7% who indicated

that they were bullied every day. The 2007–08 level of school bullying identif‌ied

by the BJS/NCES survey represents a 400% increase over the level recorded during

the 1992–93 school year. While some of this increase may be a product of growing

awareness or reporting, it also ref‌lects a real problem for students, parents, teach-

ers, and school administrators (Kaufman, Ruddy, Chandler, & Rand, 1999).

Academic interest in school bullying emerged nearly four decades ago (see Ol-

weus, 1973, 1978) and remains the focus of a growing international literature that

spans multiple disciplines. From this scholarship, individual and contextual predic-

tors of bullying victimization have been identif‌ied (Cook, Williams, Guerra, Kim,

& Sadek, 2010; Craig & Pepler, 2003; Haynie, Nansel, & Eitel, 2001; Petrosino,

Guckenburg, DeVoe, & Hanson, 2010). Consequences of bullying are also well

documented, including specif‌ic types of dangerous short-term and long-term inter-

nalizing/externalizing behaviors of both school bullies and their victims (Gendron,

Williams, & Guerra, 2011; Gini & Pozzoli, 2009; Hourbe, Targuinio, Thuillier, &

Hergott, 2006; Nansel et al., 2001; Olweus, 1994; Salmon, James, & Smith, 1998;

Sharp, 1995). Intervention strategies have also emerged from the literature, offering

scientif‌ically based programmatic and policy responses to school bullying (Merrell,

Gueldner, Ross, & Isava, 2008; Olweus, 1991, 1994, 1997; Olweus & Limber,

1999; Smith, Schneider, Smith, & Ananiadou, 2004). Finally, theoretical explana-

tions of the bully-victim dynamic have been offered (Espelage & Swearer, 2003;

Farrington, 1993; Guerra & Huesmann, 2004; Pepler et al., 2006; Swearer & Doll,

2001). Despite the current literature on bullying, certain facets of this important so-

cial issue remain underexplored. To date, for example, no known large-scale inves-

tigation of the situational context of bullying victimization has been undertaken.

In response to this gap in the literature, the current study uses data collected

from the School Crime Supplement (SCS) of the National Crime Victimization Sur-

vey (NVCS), combined with an innovative analytic technique to explore the “situ-

ational context” of student bullying, in order to answer three research questions:

(1) Is school bullying characterized by situational clustering or is it uniformly dis-

tributed across contexts; (2) how much contextual variability is associated with the

dominant situational prof‌iles of school bullying; and (3) what are the particular

individual and contextual factors most commonly found within these dominant

situational contexts? In the current study, situational context ref‌lects the combina-

tions of risk factors (i.e., covariates) viewed as a single case that produces a specif‌ic