Pesten in relatie tot sociale status

Abstract

Objective. The purpose of this study was to examine whether global bullying, overt bullying and relational bullying are predictors of social status. Social status was operationalized by measuring perceived popularity and social acceptance. In addition, a distinction between gender was made. Methods. The participants in this study were 497 Dutch students from grade 4, 5 and 6. Bullying, peer acceptance and perceived popularity were assessed by peer nominations. Results. The simple regression revealed that a high global bullyingscore was significantly associated with a high level of perceived popularity and a low degree of social acceptance. For both constructs results for boys showed stronger associations in comparison to results for girls. However, after conducting a multiple regression (with the addition of different forms of bullying) only relational bullying was a significant positive predictor of perceived popularity. Again, this was stronger for boys than for girls. Moreover, overt bullying is not related with perceived popularity. Furthermore, only overt bullying is positively related to social acceptance. Finally, a high score of overt bullying was significantly associated with a low degree of social acceptance. The effect was again stronger in the boys group than the girls group. Conclusion. The main result of this study is that the global bullyingscore is a predictor of social status. The score was found to be a predictor for both a high degree of perceived popularity and for a low level of social acceptance. For both outcomes, effects were stronger in the boys group than in the girls group. A remarkable result is that the associations partially disappears when multiple regression is revealed.