Developmental Perspectives on Bullying Perpetration and Parental Monitoring: A Cross-Lag Model

Although parental monitoring has been shown to reduce youth risk behaviors, emerging research on bullying perpetration demonstrates mixed findings. We investigated the bi-directional relationships of bullying perpetration and parental monitoring from age 11 to 18 years. We expected parental monitoring would negatively predict bullying perpetration and bullying perpetration will positively predict parental monitoring.

Methods:

Data were from the Illinois Study of Bullying and Sexual Violence, a longitudinal study of 3,549 students in middle school and high school over seven years (fall 2008 to spring 2013; Espelage, Low, Anderson, & De La Rue, 2014). About half of the students were female (50.4%); 49.1% were African American and 34.3% were White. At baseline, students were in grades 5-7 (Mage = 11.81; SD = 1.09). The nine-item Illinois Bullying Scale measured bullying perpetration. Students were asked: “For each of the following questions, choose how many times you did this activity or how many times these things happened to you at school in the last 30 days?”; for example, “I upset other students for the fun of it” (0 = never to 4 = 7 or more times; recoded for interpretability). The Parental Supervision Scale measured parental monitoring with the following question: “How much do you agree with the following statements about your parents?”; for example, “My parents would know if I did not come home on time” (0 = never to 3 = always). Gender, race, and parental education were covariates. For the analytic sample, we selected students age 11 at baseline to age 18 at the final data collection (n = 3,508). We organized data by participant age and conducted a cross lag model.

Results:

Continuity was observed in bullying perpetration and parental monitoring across time (all associations p < 0.000). Parental monitoring predicted lower levels of bullying perpetration from age 13-14 (b = -0.19, SE = 0.06, p = 0.002). Contrary to expectations, bullying perpetration had a negative association with parental monitoring from ages 16-17 (b = -0.09, SE = 0.04, p = 0.016), 15-16 (b = -0.09, SE = 0.03, p = 0.004), 13-14 (b = -0.07, SE = 0.03, p = 0.010), and 11-12 (b = -0.15, SE = 0.05, p = 0.004).

Conclusion:

Results imply that a lack of perceived parental monitoring may embolden youth who bully. To reduce bullying perpetration, the transition to high school may be an important time for parents to monitor youth.