Associations among bullying role behaviors and academic performance over the course of an academic year for boys and girls.

ABSTRACT

Although some research has evidenced a negative association between involvement in bullying and academic performance, more work is needed to understand the associations between academic performance and involvement in a more comprehensive range of bully role behaviors. The goals of the current study were to determine (a) the associations among a broader range of bully role behaviors (i.e., bullying, assisting, victimization, defending, and outsider behavior) and academic performance (i.e., grade point average; GPA), and (b) gender differences within these associations. The current study investigated these issues over the course of an academic year with 7794 students in middle through high school. Bullying behaviors were assessed in the fall and GPA data were gathered from school records from the spring of the same academic year. The results identified significant negative associations between bullying (b = -0.07, p = .001), assisting (b = -0.16, p < .001), victimization (b = -0.06, p < .001), and defending (b = -0.04, p < .001) with student GPA, whereas no significant association emerged for outsider behavior and GPA (b = -0.02, p = .13). In addition, several gender differences were found in these associations, including a stronger negative association between assisting and GPA for girls (b = -0.23, p = .001) than for boys (b = -0.08, p = .014) and a significant negative association between victimization and GPA for girls (b = -0.09, p < .001), but not boys (b = -0.02, p = .117). Differences in results across schools were also examined in an exploratory manner. The educational impact associated with bullying behaviors, limitations of the current study, and suggestions for future research are discussed.