Parents of Bullied Students: Examining the Association Between School Climate, Form of Bullying, and School Policies

Introduction: Parents are important for helping their children cope with being bullied; it is recommended that parents inform the school of the bullying and collaborate with the school to manage it. However, if parents of bullied youth feel less connected or engaged with the school, or view the school as unequitable this could influence their likelihood of informing and collaborating with the school. The current study aimed to explore the extent to which school-level bullying practices and policies are associated with parents’ perceptions of school climate, and the extent to which these views vary as a function of their child’s type of involvement in bullying (i.e., in-person vs. online/cyberbullied).

 

Methods: Data come from 1,443 parents of adolescents attending 43 Maryland high schools involved in a statewide school climate initiative. Multi-level models fit in Mplus 7.3 examined the association between parent-report of their child’s victimization through bullying (both in-person and cyber) and their own perceptions of school climate (i.e., child-school connectedness, parent-school connectedness, school involvement, school rules, equity). We also examined if school-level factors (i.e., teachers feeling efficacious handling bullying, the school having a bullying prevention policy, and teachers receipt of training on a bullying prevention policy) were associated with parent-level perceptions.

Results: Approximately 14% of parents reported their child told them they were bullied in the past 30 days, 10.5% reported their child was cyberbullied. Results of the multi-level models indicated that parents of bullied youth reported lower child-connectedness (in-person = -0.55, p<.001; cyber = -.29, p<.001), parent-connectedness (in-person = -0.35, p<.001; cyber =-.27, p<.001), less involvement (in-person =-0.43, p<.001; cyber = -.25, p<.001), and poorer perceptions of school rules (in-person =-0.42, p<.001; cyber = -.21, p<.001), and school equity (in-person = -0.47, p<.001; cyber =-.28, p<.001). School-level results suggested that the existence of a school anti-bullying policy was positively associated with parents’ reports of child-connectedness (.019, p< .01), parent-connectedness (.02, p< .001), parent involvement (.03, p< .001), perceptions of school rules (p < .01), and equity (.02, p< .005). 

Conclusions. These findings suggest that the experience of having a child bullied or cyber-bullied is associated with a negative view of the school climate.  However, schools’ having a bullying policy was associated with a more favorable perception of the climate. Additional analyses will examine if the presence of a bullying policy moderates the association between the experience of having a child bullied and their view of the school climate.