Latent Classes and Predictors of Victimization and Perpetration of Adolescents Experiencing School Bullying

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to classify latent classes of school bullying victimization and perpetration experiences among adolescents, examine the characteristics of latent classes, and to analyze the predictors of latent class membership in order to suggest theoretical and policy implications. This study used data from the 2023 Comprehensive Survey on Children conducted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. The research sample consists of 719 adolescents aged 9 to 17 with recent experiences as victims or perpetrators of school bullying. This study conducted a Latent Class Analysis(LCA) using Mplus to classify adolescents' experiences with school bullying victimization and perpetration, and employed multinomial logistic regression in Stata to analyze the predictors influencing these latent class types. The results of the LCA showed that the latent classes of adolescents' school bullying victimization and perpetration experiences could be classified into three distinct classes: the ‘Multiple School Bullying Victimization Class’(MSBV Class, 10.0%), the ‘Verbal Abuse Victimization Class’(VAV Class, 76.6%), and the ‘Combined Verbal Abuse/Relational Bullying Victimization-Perpetration Class’(CVA/RBVP Class, 13.4%). The results of multinomial logistic regression analysis revealed that depression and national basic livelihood security as individual factors, parent-adolescents relationships as a microsystem factor, and community environment as an exosystem factor were significant predictors. The analysis results showed that adolescents with higher levels of depression were more likely to belong to the ‘MSBV Class’ than the ‘VAV Class’. Additionally, adolescents from national basic livelihood security recipient households and those with more positive parent-adolescents relationships were less likely to belong to the ‘CVA/RBVP Class’. The results also showed that a more positive perception of the community environment was associated with a lower likelihood of belonging to the ‘MSBV Class’ rather than the ‘VAV Class’. Based on these analysis results, this study presents theoretical and policy implications for the prevention of and countermeasures against school bullying among adolescents.