engleski

Analysis of offense levels with respect to child age and town size

Research on bullying in schools in Croatia have just been started, so every study connected to school bullying represent great contribution to better understanding of bullying and its consequences on physical, psychological and social child development. Results of these research could help creating bullying prevention programs. The main goal of this research was to find differences in children's offence levels with respect to child age and size of town in which school was placed. The research was conducted on sample of 4768 students old from 10 to 15, one class form every generation in one school (forth to eight grade). The research included 15 towns from every part of Croatia and they are: Zagreb, Osijek, Vukovar, Varaždin, Dubrovnik, Split, Zadar, Šibenik, Knin, Drniš, Rijeka, Poreč, Petrinja, Sisak and Bregana. Bullying Questionnaire (2003), constructed according to Bully/victim questionnaire (Dan Olweus, 1996), was used in the study. The offence level was consisted of 11 behavioural items that present different forms of bullying. Factor analysis was performed on all statements. One- factor solution was obtained by scree-plot analysis (lambda=0, 86). The total score range was 11 to 33. Variable town size was divided in four groups: Zagreb, big town, middle size town and small town. One-way ANOVA was used to compare the average total score between gorups and Scheffe test for post hoc analysis. Correlations between variables were also calculated. All statistical values were considered significant at the p level of 0, 05. Statistical analysis of data was performed using SPSS version 11.01. The results showed that there was significant difference among subjects in offence levels with respect to child age (F=26, 12 ; p>0, 01) older subjects were more violent than the younger ones. With respect to the size of town where pupils lived, there was no statistically significant difference in offence levels (F=.743 ; p>0, 05). Here we discussed possible reasons why older children were more violent and that bullying in schools is just as big problem in small towns as in the big ones. We compared our results with results of other research. Older respondents were more violent than the younger ones. Bullying in schools is equally presented in different sized towns.

bullying; school; age; town size

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