همبستگی رفتار زورگویی در میان یک نمونه از نوجوانان بومیان آمریکای شمالی

Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between familial, educational, and psychosocial factors and bullying among 702 North American Indigenous adolescents aged 11–14 years. The study used multinomial logistic regression models to differentiate correlates of bully perpetration and victimization versus being neither and between being a perpetrator versus being a victim. Analyses reveal that being a bully victim had different correlates than being a perpetrator. Perceived discrimination was associated with increased odds of being either a victim or a perpetrator, relative to being neither. Several factors differentiated being a bully perpetrator from being a bully victim: adolescent age, parental warmth and support, depressive symptoms, anger, and school adjustment. These findings expand upon the limited understanding of the factors associated with bullying among North American Indigenous youth. Bullying intervention and prevention programs that target Indigenous adolescents should be culturally grounded and begin early within the family.

Discussion and conclusions About equal proportions of these Indigenous adolescents had been victimized by bullies (16.7%) or had bullied someone (15.1%) with fewer having been both a victim and a perpetrator of bullying (6.8%). These victimization prevalence rates are slightly higher than those previously reported among general population samples but similar to the perpetration and the bully-victim groups (Nansel et al., 2001). At the bivariate level, bully perpetrators reported more anger compared to adolescents without bullying experiences, which is consistent with previous literature (Bosworth et al., 1999; Champion & Clay, 2007). Contrary to previous research (Baldry & Farrington, 2005; Haynie et al., 2001), bully victims had higher levels of parental warmth and support and school adjustment when compared to perpetrators. It is possible that youth who experience bullying behaviors are more likely to seek out parental and teacher support and assistance in the aftermath of these experiences. They may also be satisfied with the responses of these adults, which would explain the results of the present study. Because the data used in this study are cross-sectional, we cannot confirm this proposition. Therefore, future research should disentangle these divergent findings using a longitudinal sample with Indigenous youth. Perceived discrimination was associated with being a victim and a perpetrator in bivariate and multivariate results, and with being both a perpetrator and a victim in bivariate results. It is possible that minority children are targeted for bullying due to their outsider status (Garandeau et al., 2010; Scherr & Larson, 2010). Race and ethnicity function as a status characteristic, potentially leading to an imbalance of power typical in bullying situations (Olweus, 1993, 2010; Vervoort, Scholte, & Overbeek, 2010). In this sample, only 10.3% of the youth attended tribal schools, and 83.6% attended public schools with a more racially diverse student body and had a greater potential for discriminatory experiences compared to those in tribal schools (Crawford, Cheadle, & Whitbeck, 2010), which has been supported in other studies (Hanish & Guerra, 2000; Shin et al., 2011). It also is likely that adolescents respond with anger and aggression to perceived discrimination (Sittner Hartshorn et al., 2012; Whitbeck, McMorris, Hoyt, Stubben, & LaFromboise, 2002), hence the association between discrimination and victim-bully status. Consistent with other research on bullying, perpetrators were significantly older than victims (Carlyle & Steinman, 2007; Haynie et al., 2001). Younger children are easier, weaker targets and may lack power, status, and social skills to effectively respond to bullying situations or discourage subsequent victimization (Smith, Madsen, & Moody, 1999). Bullying behavior increases with age and then tends to decline after the middle school years (Bauman, 2008; Nansel et al., 2001; Smith, 2010). For some, bullying roles may stabilize as older bullies are labeled as aggressive, enhancing their social standing within unconventional peer groups (Monks, Smith, & Swettenham, 2005; Smith, 2010). In the multivariate analyses, our hypothesis that perpetrators would score higher on the measure of anger was supported, as was our prediction that victims would manifest more depressive symptoms than perpetrators. Although it was not apparent at the bivariate level, the victim-internalizing, perpetrator-externalizing hypothesis was upheld. In additional analyses, bully-victims appear to both internalize and externalize, which is consistent with previous research on other racial and ethnic groups that has linked depressive symptoms (Due et al., 2009; Seeds et al., 2010) and anger (Champion & Clay, 2007) to bullying behaviors. As with the bivariate findings, our hypotheses that parental warmth and supportiveness and positive school adjustment would be associated with decreased odds of victimization were not upheld. We did not find the expected gender difference in perpetration or victimization, but our hypothesis that younger children would be victims was supported. In summary, these findings fit Patterson's (Patterson, 1986; Patterson et al., 1984) model of coercive/aggressive children. Bullies are angrier, have poorer relationships with their parents, and have poorer academic adjustment than their victims. As such, the coercive/aggressive interaction patterns that these youth learned within the home environment are then transferred into school situations, which is consistent with Patterson's model (1986). It is possible that coercive/aggressive adolescents engage in bullying behaviors in order to protect their social status among their peer group (Garandeau et al., 2010; Smith, 2010). That perceived discrimination scores did not differentiate between bullies and victims is noteworthy. We have evidence that discrimination increases both anger and depressive symptoms among Indigenous children (Whitbeck et al., 2002). For the perpetrator, the effect of discrimination is likely through anger, which has been supported in previous research with this sample (Sittner Hartshorn et al., 2012). For victims, the endorsement of discrimination items may reflect being targets of aggression because of their ethnicity. In a nationally representative sample of 6th to 10th graders, approximately 26% had been bullied because of their race or religion in the current school term, yet it was the least common type of bullying reported. Furthermore, adolescents who are targets of bullying because of their race or ethnicity may not attribute their victimization to discrimination (Shin et al., 2011). This could be due to the internalization of discrimination, such as holding more negative beliefs about themselves. It is also possible that adolescents who are bullied because of their minority status and who externalize their feelings (i.e., who are angry or aggressive) may themselves turn to bullying. Limitations These results should be applied with caution across Indigenous cultures. There is substantial diversity among the more than 500 Indigenous cultures within the U.S. and Canada, and the patterns and findings of this study may not generalize across them. Also, this sample is entirely rural and may not reflect experiences of urban Indigenous adolescents. Although our bivariate findings are intriguing, because of the small number of adolescents who were both victims and perpetrators of bullying, we were unable to include them in the multivariate analysis. Future research with a larger group of adolescents who fall into this category would help to identify factors that distinguish this group from adolescents who are just victims or just perpetrators. Furthermore, our bullying measures were limited in their scope as they included broad conceptualizations of bullying instead of the occurrence of specific behaviors. Future studies should include more detailed, expanded measures that include a definition of bullying and specifically ask the frequency in which a wider range of bullying behaviors occur to better capture the respondents' personal bullying experiences. Additionally, disentangling in-group and out-group bullying and the potential variation in impact would provide additional insight into understanding bullying behaviors. It is also possible that there is overlap between discrimination and bullying that should be explored in subsequent research, incorporating both the explicit acts and emotions that are involved. Future studies should also examine the broader context of youths' lives including peer relationships as they are related to both school adjustment and bullying behaviors. Conclusions Bullying interventions and prevention programs are very much in vogue (Olweus, 1993, 2010; Stevens, de Bourdeaudhuij, & Van Oost, 2000) and the elements and processes for bullying behaviors appear to be much the same across cultures. But there are cultural differences that rule out the simple application of non-Indigenous bullying prevention programs to Indigenous children and adolescents, and favor the development of culturally based interventions. First, most Indigenous cultures traditionally abhor bullying. Instead, there are strong cultural norms of sharing, helping one another, and putting the good of the community before that of individuals. Boasting, bragging, and being forward, particularly before elders, are not condoned. These traditional cultural values could be very effectively applied in culturally based bully prevention programs within tribally based organizations or as part of public school diversity programming. For example, other researchers have successfully implemented culturally based HIV/AIDS prevention programs within the Native Boys and Girls Clubs that were well received by the adolescents (Kaufman, Litchfield, & Schupman, 2012). Second, a culturally grounded program would take sources of anger and depression into account, particularly as originating as a response to discrimination. Our research group has long viewed discrimination as an insidious and unaddressed source of school failure, anger and aggression among Indigenous adolescents (Crawford et al., 2010; Whitbeck et al., 2002), and it is important to combat prejudice by educating others to respect different cultures. Bullying preventions are an excellent fit for culturally based interventions. They could build on the strengths of Indigenous cultures: traditions of strong families, emphasis on community versus the individual, modesty, courage, sharing, respectful relationships, and most importantly, the cultural value of the powerful helping those who are weaker. On a more general level, prevention programs should start early and in families with parents modeling and teaching youth about prosocial conflict resolution skills and respectful behaviors. Parents should also monitor their children for signs of emotional distress as depressive symptoms have been found to be indicators of bullying experiences. Also, timing is very important. Early and perhaps targeted interventions are critical because as interactional continuity gains impetus, it becomes more and more difficult to change (Caspi, Bem, & Elder, 1989)