Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 25: 141–155 (2015) Published online 9 June 2014 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/cbm.1919
Who becomes more violent among Korean adolescents? Consequences of victimisation in school
SEOKJIN JEONG1, JAYA DAVIS1 AND YOUNGSUN HAN2, 1University of Texas, Arlington, TX, USA; 2Ministry of Justice, South Korea ABSTRACT Background Mainly Western studies suggest that bullying increases risk of subsequent offending. Less is known about risk of violence specifically. Very little such research is from Asia – none from Korea. Aim This study aimed to answer three research questions: Is being a victim of bullying in Korean schools associated with later perpetration of violent behaviour? Does type of bullying influence type of offending? Does school climate or parental control mediate this relationship? Method Juvenile justice intake officers identified 606 young offenders who were asked to complete questionnaires about their school experience, school climate and parental supervision. We used multinomial logit model with maximum likelihood estimation to evaluate relationships between the variables of interest. Results Over half (310) of these young people had committed at least one violent offence. Seventy-six (13%) reported having experienced emotional bullying at school and 31 (5%) physical bullying. Violent offending was over twice as likely as property offending to be associated with emotional bullying history (OR 2.38, CI 1.13–5.01), but three times less likely with physical bullying (OR 0.31, CI 0.11–0.87). In addition, parental control (but not school climate) increased the likelihood of violent offending or other delinquency by 15% (OR 1.14, CI 1.02–1.26; OR 1.16, CI 1.01–1.32, respectively). Conclusions/Implications Our overarching finding of a relationship between childhood experience of bullying and later delinquency is in line with Western findings. Where, however, the latter are equivocal on risk of later violence perpetration, we found that being emotionally bullied raises the risk of becoming violent. Our findings also underscore the importance of having studies from a range of cultures. Predictions from Western studies would be that parental control would be protective and school climate a potential risk factor for later violence, but, in Korea, where parenting styles tend to be highly authoritarian, we found differently. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Introduction A growing body of research has examined school bullying, including vulnerability to it (Olweus, 2001; Elias and Zins, 2003; Espelage and Swearer, 2004; Rodkin and Berger, 2008). It is often difficult to identify and assess bullying (Berger et al., 2008), in part because of the sensitivity of the problem for youths involved in bullying behaviour. Various definitions of bullying and measures for its study have been used (Espelage et al., 2000). Increasingly though, researchers have defined a victim of bullying as someone who is aggressively and repeatedly targeted by other students (Olweus, 1993; Nansel et al., 2003), often reflecting an imbalance of power or strength (Olweus, 1994); it may include not only physical victimisation, but also name-calling, teasing, verbal threats and social exclusions (Espelage et al., 2000). Considerable attention has focused on the negative consequences of bullying. Victims are at higher risk for suicidal ideation and attempts (Kaltiala-Heino et al., 1999; Rigby and Slee, 1999), school dropout (Sharp, 1995) and long-term psychological problems (Hawker and Boulton, 2000). Bullies are significantly more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence (Olweus, 1997; Sourander et al., 2007), experience psychiatric problems (Kumpulainen et al., 1998) and misuse substances (Hourbe et al., 2006). Although all negative consequences of bullying are worthy of study, the relationship between bullying and criminal involvement is of special concern because it transcends individual negative outcomes. Despite extensive research on bullying and later criminality, there are notable omissions in empirical studies in this area. First, although some evidence suggests that victimisation increases likelihood of subsequent offending, such as later involvement in any delinquency (Hay and Evans, 2006) or violent delinquency specifically (Daigle et al., 2007), limited attention has been given to understanding the risk of various types of criminality among school bullying victims. Second, although bullying has been recognised as a serious social problem in many countries, including South Korea (Kim et al., 2004), most studies on its consequences have been conducted in Western countries (Yang et al., 2006). Third, Western research has shown a relationship between school climate and violence (Brookmeyer et al., 2006; Crooks et al., 2007), but little attention has been paid to this among Korean adolescents, and yet social climate of various kinds would be the very circumstances that would be expected to differ across cultures. Along these lines too, although parental control and supervision has also been shown to be relevant in Western cultures (Frey et al., 2009), this has not been much studied in Asian populations. The South Korean context Prevalence of school bullying
Evidence of South Korean students’ dissatisfaction with their education system (Park, 2009) has led to increased attention to bullying and other forms of victimisation in
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
25: 141–155 (2015) DOI: 10.1002/cbm
Who becomes more violent
schools. Yang et al. (2006) found that about 5% of a sample of 1344 primary school children reported being a victim of physical or verbal bullying. In a nationally representative sample, Kim et al. (2004) put the prevalence at about 14%. These rates are fairly low compared with US estimates of 10–45% (Haynie et al., 2001; Nansel et al., 2001; O’Moore & Kirkham, 2001). Differences in definitions and measures of victimisation, as well as differences in school systems, may contribute to differences in prevalence between countries (Kim et al., 2004). Bullying behaviours
There are differences between Western countries and South Korea in forms of bullying. Wang-ta is a Korean form, which is comparable with Western forms, but, in general, it appears that Korean bullying involves more use of emotional or psychological forms of bullying, including social isolation of peers (Koo et al., 2008). School climate
Crooks et al. (2007) reported that students within a better climate of academic achievement, safety and connection were less likely to engage in violent delinquency. Brookmeyer et al. (2006) confirmed that students’ perceptions of the school climate were critical risk factors in the emergence of violent delinquency. In South Korea, student dissatisfaction has apparently led many to study abroad (Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, 2007). Park (2009) investigated the reasons for this further. The students cited low quality of education, high cost of private tutoring in terms of financial, mental and physical burdens, highly stressful and competitive college entrance requirements, uncreative educational methods and ‘unfair educational opportunities based on economic status’(p. 745). A further issue lies in the role of the teacher, which is particularity important in the educational system in South Korea because of the Confucian tradition and emphasises the status difference, reflecting age and role (Park and Cho, 1995). The extent to which this relationship impacts on the school climate, bullying victimisation and future offending has not been researched. Parental control
According to Agnew (2001), inadequate, controlling, rejecting, abusive or neglectful parenting increases the likelihood of delinquent behaviour in the offspring. Studies of South Korean samples have also found inadequate or ineffective parental involvement a key risk factor of delinquency (Moon and Morash, 2004; Moon et al., 2009), but, specifically, South Korean youths were more likely to commit violent, property-related and status delinquent behaviours when they reported a negative relationship with parents. Our aim, therefore, was to answer three questions: • To what extent is school bullying associated with later offending? In particular, how are various types of school bullying and various types of violent offences related?
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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• Does school climate influence subsequent offending, particularly violent offending, in adolescence? • Does the nature of parental control or supervision influence subsequent offending, particularly violent offending in adolescence?
Methods The current study was approved by the Seoul Juvenile Classification Examination Center’s Research Compliance Office. The sample Volunteers were recruited from youths referred to the juvenile justice system in South Korea during the three months, June 1 to 31 August 2012. Inclusion criteria were (i) being of school age, (ii) having attended middle or high school during the 12 months prior to interview and (iii) having been referred to the juvenile justice system. Once an intake officer had identified a potential case, he or she explained that participation was voluntary and anonymous and that participants could withdraw from the study at any time if they wished, without this affecting their management in the system in any way. Consenting youths completed the questionnaire in private and placed it in an envelope free of any personal information such as name or case number. Of 1140 young people referred to the criminal justice system, 658 were eligible, of whom 606 completed the survey (92% response rate). The main reasons for non-participation were study refusal or failure to complete the questionnaire. Measures The dependent variable
The primary outcome measure was officially recorded, offending categorised as property offences (0), other offences (1) and violent offences (2). Property offences include burglary, larceny-theft and arson; other offences included runaway and curfew violation as well as other minor offences and violent offences included murder, forcible rape and aggravated assault (similar to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report). Where multiple charges had been filed against a young offender, for purposes of this study, the offence was the most serious substantiated charge. Independent and control variables
The self-report survey contained measures of several variants of victimisation, including criminal victimisation and teachers’ punishments – physical and emotional – as well as two measures of bullying – again, physical and emotional.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
25: 141–155 (2015) DOI: 10.1002/cbm
Who becomes more violent
The physical victimisation measure consisted of six items, adapted from Kim et al. (2004), referring to the previous year and rated on a five-point scale (0–4): 1. Other students have threatened me saying ‘don’t come to school’ or ‘I will hurt you’. 2. Other students physically attacked me. 3. Other students have threatened or taken my money with force. 4. Other students have coerced me to do work for them. 5. Other students have taken my school supplies and snacks. 6. Other students have taken/damaged my belongings. The internal consistency of the scale is good (α = .890). The emotional victimisation measure consisted of seven items, also rated on a five-point scale: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Other Other Other Other Other Other Other
students students students students students students students
left me out during recess/lunch. ignored me. did not talk to me. have called me names. have spoken ill of me. told lies or spread false rumours about me. left me out of things on purpose.
The internal consistency of this scale was also good (α = 0.807). Thirty-one (95%) of the young offender participants reported no experience of physical forms of bullying, and 76 (87%) no experience of emotional bullying, but because of few responses to some questions about specific sub-types, we created two dichotomous variables for the main analyses – any physical victimisation and any emotional victimisation. Only four offenders experienced both forms of victimisation, and we included these in both totals. The two measures of teachers’ punishment (physical and emotional) were adapted from Moon and Morash (2004), with each item rated on a five-point scale (0 = none to 4 = more than 10 times during the previous school year). A total score was calculated for each. Physical punishment consists of five items (internal consistency α 0.866): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
My My My My My
teachers teachers teachers teachers teachers
pushed or shoved me to punish me. hit, kicked, or punched me to punish me. threw objects or destroyed objects publicly to punish me. threw objects at me to punish me. attempted to hit or hit me using objects to punish me.
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Emotional punishment consists of four items (internal consistency α 0.804): 1. 2. 3. 4.
My My My My
teachers teachers teachers teachers
compared me with others to punish me. treated me unfairly. called me useless. attempt or isolate me from others
Finally, we incorporated two additional measures – school climate and delinquent peers – in the light of prior research indicating their association with violent offending and/or delinquency (Felson et al., 1994). Again, each item was rated on a five-point scale (0 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree), and a total score for each was calculated. School climate (α = 0.799): 1. 2. 3. 4.
Students at my school frequently call each other names. Students at my school move around or make noise during the class. Students at my school frequently get into fights. There is much violence in my school. Delinquent peers (α = 0.893):
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
My My My My My My My My My
friends friends friends friends friends friends friends friends friends
left out other students during recess/lunch. always called other students’ names. physically attacked other students. threatened or took others’ money with force threatened or took other students’ money with force. took other students’ school supplies/snacks. told lies or spread false rumours about other students. hit and pushed other students. coerced other students to do work for them.
Additional measures of individual characteristics were parental control, and participant sex and age. Parental control was measured by combining scores from three items: my parents are familiar with all or most of my close friends; my parents know where I am when I am away from home; and my parents know who I am with when I am away from home. Items were rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), and a total score was calculated, such that a higher score indicates a higher level of parental control (α = .785). Analytic strategy First, descriptive analysis was used to show basic relationships between types of offence and victimisation, school-related characteristics and parental control. ANOVA was used to examine the overall relationship. In the second step, we
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
25: 141–155 (2015) DOI: 10.1002/cbm
Who becomes more violent
used a logit model with maximum likelihood estimation to examine the relationship between violent offending as the dependent variable and victimisation, allowing for other school-related characteristics and parental control. The regression models can be written as: Logitðπi Þ ¼ x’i β; where xi ¼ 1; xi1 ; …; xip ’ and β ¼ β0 ; …; βp ’ We calculated the odds ratios by applying the following equation: E½Y i ¼ expðx’i βÞ = 1 þ expðx’i βÞ Finally, we used a multinomial logit model with maximum likelihood estimation to compare multiple categories of combination of binary logistic regressions. The general multinomial regression model is shown in the following equation: ln½PðY i ¼ 1Þ = PðY i ¼ kÞ ¼ x’i β ln½PðY i ¼ 2Þ = PðY i ¼ kÞ ¼ x’i β; where k is the reference category. This model was used to identify whether each victimisation and school-related characteristic and parental control related to risk of committing property, violent and other offences. All three analyses were performed using STATA 12.0 (StataCorp, College Station, TX).
Results Descriptive analysis Table 1 shows that 189 (31%) of these young people committed property offences, 310 (51%) violent offences and 107 (18%) other offences. One hundred and seven (18%) reported being the victim of physical (n = 31 or 29%) bullying and emotional (n = 76 or 71%) bullying at school. Of the victims of physical bullying, 12 (6%) committed property offences, 16 (5%) violent offences and 3 (3%) other offences. Among the victims of emotional bullying, 16 (9%) committed property offences, 51 (17%) violent offences and 9 (8%) other offences. Of the youthful offenders who were victims of school bullying, juveniles who reported being the victim of emotional bullying were significantly more likely to have committed a violent offence. Reporting of school characteristics did not significantly differ among offenders on the basis of offence type, but violent offenders were significantly younger than property and other offenders, and the violent offenders reported more parental control than property offenders; the ‘other
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179 (96)
12 (6) 1 (1) 3 (2) 2 (1) 0 (0) 1 (1) 4 (2) 16 (9) 3 (2) 3 (2) 3 (2) 8 (4) 3 (2) 4 (2) 1 (1)
105 (98)
3 (3) 1 (1) 0 (0) 1 (1) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 9 (8) 2 (2) 3 (3) 3 (3) 3 (3) 3 (3) 5 (5) 0 (0)
Other (n = 107) n (%)
267 (86)
16 (5) 5 (2) 4 (1) 4 (1) 2 (1) 3 (1) 4 (1) 51 (17) 8 (3) 10 (3) 11 (4) 17 (6) 16 (5) 20 (7) 11 (4)
Violent (n = 310) n (%)
20.36 (0.00)
8.85 (0.01)
1.77 (0.41)
X2 (p)
16.3 (1.32)
8.72 (2.09)
1.14 (2.85) 0.86 (1.89) 8.27 (2.71) 2.43 (3.84)
Property (n = 189) Mean (SD)
16.6 (1.40)
9.27 (2.11)
0.86 (1.86) 0.66 (1.32) 8.10 (2.78) 2.77 (4.71)
Other (n = 107) Mean (SD)
15.9 (1.51)
9.22 (1.79)
1.52 (3.15) 1.18 (2.45) 8.51 (2.67) 3.17 (4.65)
Violent (n = 310) Mean (SD)
(0.09) (0.06) (0.35) (0.20)
8.90 (0.00)
4.44 (0.01)
2.39 2.85 1.05 1.62
F (p)
Note: Total case of physical and emotional victimisation may be less than composite cases of 11 subcategories because some youths experienced various forms of victimisation. Bolded values denote p < 0.05.
Bullying Physical victimisation Threatened Physically attacked Took money with force Coerced to do something Took school supplies Damaged belongings Emotional victimisation Left out during recess Ignored Not talk to me Called names Spoke ill of me Spread false rumours Left me out of things School characteristics Teachers’ physical punishment Teachers’ emotional punishment School climate Delinquent peers Individual/demographic Parental control Sex (1 = male) Age
Property (n = 189) n (%)
Table 1: Descriptive statistics – offence-specific analyses
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offenders’ were significantly more likely to report more parental control than either violent or property offenders. Logistic regression analysis
Our second step was to determine whether the independent variables were associated with the risk of committing violent offences rather than any other offence. Table 2 shows that only one victimisation-related variable proved significant; prior experience of emotional bullying was associated with over twice the likelihood of violent offending (OR, 2.20, CI 1.17–4.14, p < 0.01). Girls were about three and a half times more likely than the boys (OR 3.57, CI 1.44–6.06, p < 0.01) and older students slightly but significantly less likely than younger ones (OR 0.81, CI 0.72–0.91, p < 0.01) to be violent offenders. Multinomial logistic regression analysis
Table 3 shows that the multinomial analysis confirmed that emotional bullying is over twice as likely to be related to violent offending as property offending (OR = 2.38, CI 1.13–5.01, p < 0.05). In contrast, students who had experienced physical bullying were three times less likely to be violent offenders than property offenders (OR = 0.31, CI 0.11–0.87, p < 0.05). Table 2: Results from logistic regression analysis Violent offence SE
eb
95% CI
3.91
1.13
49.91**
5.42–459.71
0.84 0.79
0.51 0.32
0.43** 2.20*
0.16–1.17 1.17–4.14
0.02 0.05 0.01 0.01
0.05 0.06 0.04 0.02
1.02** 1.06** 0.99** 1.01**
0.93–1.12 0.93–1.20 0.93–1.07 0.97–1.06
0.08 0.05 1.28 0.39 0.21 0.06 740.95 47.22 (9)**
1.08** 0.28** 0.81**
0.99–1.18 0.13–0.60 0.72–0.91
Variables
b
Intercept Bullying victimisation Physical victimisation Emotional victimisation School characteristics Teacher’s physical punishment Teacher’s emotional punishment School climate Delinquent peers Individual/demographic Parental control Sex (1 = male) Age 2LL LR chi-Square (df)
SE = Robust Standard Error; eb = Exp(b); CI = confidence interval; 2LL = 2 Log Likelihood; LR chiSquare = Likelihood Ration Chi-Square. Bolded values denote p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. *p < 0.05
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1.01** 0.89** 0.97** 1.05** 1.16** 1.76** 1.16**
1.11 0.53 0.08 0.11 0.05 0.04
1.68 0.21
0.01 0.12 0.03 0.04
0.15 0.07 0.57 0.82 0.15 0.09 1084.48 63.06 (18)**
0.19** 1.24**
0.01**
1.80
4.75
eb
SE
b
1.01–1.32 0.35–8.84 0.97–1.39
0.87–1.18 0.71–1.10 0.88–1.08 0.98–1.12
0.02–1.63 0.44–3.51
0.01–0.30
95% CI
0.13 1.13 0.16
0.03 0.02 0.02 0.03
1.18 0.87
2.96
b
0.05 0.44 0.07
0.05 0.07 0.04 0.03
0.53 0.38
1.27
SE
1.14* 0.32* 0.85*
1.03* 1.02* 0.98* 1.03*
0.31* 2.38*
19.25*
eb
Violent offencesa
SE = Robust Standard Error, eb = Exp(b), CI = Confidence Interval; 2LL = 2 Log Likelihood; LR chi-Square = Likelihood Ration Chi-Square. Bolded values denote p < 0.05. a Property offence is the reference category. **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Intercept Bullying victimisation Physical victimisation Emotional victimisation School characteristics Teacher’s physical punishment Teacher’s emotional punishment School climate Delinquent peers Individual/demographic Parental control Sex (1 = male) Age 2LL LR Chi-Square (df)
Variables
Other offencesa
Table 3: Results from multinomial logistic regression analysis
1.02–1.26 0.14–0.76 0.74–0.98
0.93–1.14 0.89–1.17 0.91–1.06 0.98–1.08
0.11–0.87 1.13–5.01
1.60–230.97
95% CI
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Results of the offence-specific analysis further confirmed the sex and age relationships, but here, higher levels of parental control were more likely in relation to other offences and to violent offences compared with property offending (OR 1.16, CI 1.01–1.32, p < 0.05; OR 1.14, CI 1.02–1.26 p < 0.05, respectively). There were no significant interactions with victimisation. Discussions and conclusions Our finding that emotional victimisation by peers was associated with an increased risk of violent offending adds to an understanding of links between bullying and victimisation of others. Physical victimisation has long been linked to perpetration of violence (e.g. Baron, 2009; Lahlah et al., 2013; Topitzes et al., 2012; Turanovic and Pratt, 2013), but more attention should be afforded to the relationship between emotional victimisation by peers and delinquency. Some research has suggested that aggressive behaviour may increase juvenile popularity (Thunfors and Cornell, 2008; Bowker et al., 2010), so a possible explanation of the relationship is that young people experiencing emotional victimisation may act aggressively/violently to prove themselves to other peers. In addition, bullied youths may view their own violent behaviour as a way of diminishing target attractiveness. Many researchers have pointed to the negative outcomes of being bullied at school on various forms of emotional and psychological maladjustment (e.g. depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, loneliness and suicidal ideation) and physical problems (e.g. headache, stomach ache, backache, feeling nervous and sleep disorder) (Rigby and Slee, 1993; Juvonen et al., 2000; Bond et al., 2001; Espelage and Holt, 2001; Swearer et al., 2001; Menesini et al., 2009; Cook et al., 2010). Victims of bullying have also been shown to engage in non-criminal delinquency, including school avoidance or absenteeism, dropping out of school and poor school performance (Rigby and Slee, 1993; Kochenderfer and Ladd, 1996; Rigby, 1996; Cook et al., 2010), but there has been less research examining such victimisation and criminal outcomes, including violent crime. What has been produced has been mixed. Bijleveld and Van Der Geest (2011) found no relationship between being bullied and re-offending except for juvenile sex offenders, among whom re-offending was significantly less likely in the bullied sub-group. Bender and Lösel (2011) found that such victimisation was not related to anti-social outcomes. We did not find a relationship between school climate and offence type, but the mean response among participants indicated some dissatisfaction with their school experience, so a more general relationship between poor school climate and juvenile offending cannot be ruled out. On the surface, the finding that higher levels of parental control were associated with higher likelihood of the offspring’s violent and other delinquency seems counterintuitive, and in opposition to previous findings where lack of parenting or parental monitoring has been shown to be a risk factor for delinquency (e.g. Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2006;
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Trinkner et al., 2012). There is likely to be a difference, however, between sound parental control and over-authoritative, or frankly punitive parenting, and we had insufficient evidence of the parenting qualities here. Perhaps the most important implication of the doubts raised here would be that parenting programmes focusing on improving parent–child relations should be considered as part of a package of interventions to reduce delinquency. Our findings with respect to gender are worth comment. Much of the extant research indicates that boys are more likely to experience physical bullying and be more likely to display externalising behaviours, whereas girls are more likely to experience emotional bullying and display internalising behaviours. Khatri et al. (2000) found peer victimisation was significantly related with delinquency for girls but not for boys. We found/did not find a sex difference in prevalence of physical and emotional bullying, and that experience of emotional bullying was associated with a higher likelihood of violent acts among the girls than the boys. Further research is needed to establish whether this finding was a quirk of the particular sample, or whether there may be real cultural differences in this respect. Although not a primary aim of the study, we found that among the referred youths, nearly one-fifth (18%) claimed to have been the victim of some form of bullying, which is a higher prevalence than previously found among South Korean school samples of 5–14% (Kim et al., 2004; Yang et al., 2006). Given that that our sample was from the juvenile justice system, having committed a range of delinquent offences, this higher prevalence of bullying would fit with Western findings of an association between bullying and delinquency (Bender and Lösel, 2011; Farrington et al., 2011). Our study adds to the limited knowledge of the relationship between being bullied and delinquency, particularly in a non-Western context; however, it is not without limitations. First, our focus with respect to bullying was on the experience of it, but it is possible that these young offenders were also bullies themselves. Second, the present research was in a single country. Young people in South Korea may perceive and report school experiences differently from those than in other Asian countries, so general observations about possible differences between Western and Eastern cultures must be made with caution. Nevertheless, our findings do suggest a case for examining such questions further, and to remind those who would provide interventions that they may need to factor in the additional factors of cultural variations.
References Agnew R (2001) Building on the foundation of general strain theory: Specifying the types of strain most likely to lead to crime and delinquency. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38: 319–361. Baron Stephen Q (2009) Street youths’ violent response to violent personal, vicarious, and anticipated strain. Journal of Criminal Justice 37: 442–451.
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Address correspondence to: Seokjin Jeong, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Texas at Arlington, Box 19595, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA. Email: [email protected]
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Who becomes more violent among Korean adolescents? Consequences of victimisation in school
SEOKJIN JEONG1, JAYA DAVIS1 AND YOUNGSUN HAN2, 1University of Texas, Arlington, TX, USA; 2Ministry of Justice, South Korea ABSTRACT Background Mainly Western studies suggest that bullying increases risk of subsequent offending. Less is known about risk of violence specifically. Very little such research is from Asia – none from Korea. Aim This study aimed to answer three research questions: Is being a victim of bullying in Korean schools associated with later perpetration of violent behaviour? Does type of bullying influence type of offending? Does school climate or parental control mediate this relationship? Method Juvenile justice intake officers identified 606 young offenders who were asked to complete questionnaires about their school experience, school climate and parental supervision. We used multinomial logit model with maximum likelihood estimation to evaluate relationships between the variables of interest. Results Over half (310) of these young people had committed at least one violent offence. Seventy-six (13%) reported having experienced emotional bullying at school and 31 (5%) physical bullying. Violent offending was over twice as likely as property offending to be associated with emotional bullying history (OR 2.38, CI 1.13–5.01), but three times less likely with physical bullying (OR 0.31, CI 0.11–0.87). In addition, parental control (but not school climate) increased the likelihood of violent offending or other delinquency by 15% (OR 1.14, CI 1.02–1.26; OR 1.16, CI 1.01–1.32, respectively). Conclusions/Implications Our overarching finding of a relationship between childhood experience of bullying and later delinquency is in line with Western findings. Where, however, the latter are equivocal on risk of later violence perpetration, we found that being emotionally bullied raises the risk of becoming violent. Our findings also underscore the importance of having studies from a range of cultures. Predictions from Western studies would be that parental control would be protective and school climate a potential risk factor for later violence, but, in Korea, where parenting styles tend to be highly authoritarian, we found differently. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Introduction A growing body of research has examined school bullying, including vulnerability to it (Olweus, 2001; Elias and Zins, 2003; Espelage and Swearer, 2004; Rodkin and Berger, 2008). It is often difficult to identify and assess bullying (Berger et al., 2008), in part because of the sensitivity of the problem for youths involved in bullying behaviour. Various definitions of bullying and measures for its study have been used (Espelage et al., 2000). Increasingly though, researchers have defined a victim of bullying as someone who is aggressively and repeatedly targeted by other students (Olweus, 1993; Nansel et al., 2003), often reflecting an imbalance of power or strength (Olweus, 1994); it may include not only physical victimisation, but also name-calling, teasing, verbal threats and social exclusions (Espelage et al., 2000). Considerable attention has focused on the negative consequences of bullying. Victims are at higher risk for suicidal ideation and attempts (Kaltiala-Heino et al., 1999; Rigby and Slee, 1999), school dropout (Sharp, 1995) and long-term psychological problems (Hawker and Boulton, 2000). Bullies are significantly more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence (Olweus, 1997; Sourander et al., 2007), experience psychiatric problems (Kumpulainen et al., 1998) and misuse substances (Hourbe et al., 2006). Although all negative consequences of bullying are worthy of study, the relationship between bullying and criminal involvement is of special concern because it transcends individual negative outcomes. Despite extensive research on bullying and later criminality, there are notable omissions in empirical studies in this area. First, although some evidence suggests that victimisation increases likelihood of subsequent offending, such as later involvement in any delinquency (Hay and Evans, 2006) or violent delinquency specifically (Daigle et al., 2007), limited attention has been given to understanding the risk of various types of criminality among school bullying victims. Second, although bullying has been recognised as a serious social problem in many countries, including South Korea (Kim et al., 2004), most studies on its consequences have been conducted in Western countries (Yang et al., 2006). Third, Western research has shown a relationship between school climate and violence (Brookmeyer et al., 2006; Crooks et al., 2007), but little attention has been paid to this among Korean adolescents, and yet social climate of various kinds would be the very circumstances that would be expected to differ across cultures. Along these lines too, although parental control and supervision has also been shown to be relevant in Western cultures (Frey et al., 2009), this has not been much studied in Asian populations. The South Korean context Prevalence of school bullying
Evidence of South Korean students’ dissatisfaction with their education system (Park, 2009) has led to increased attention to bullying and other forms of victimisation in
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schools. Yang et al. (2006) found that about 5% of a sample of 1344 primary school children reported being a victim of physical or verbal bullying. In a nationally representative sample, Kim et al. (2004) put the prevalence at about 14%. These rates are fairly low compared with US estimates of 10–45% (Haynie et al., 2001; Nansel et al., 2001; O’Moore & Kirkham, 2001). Differences in definitions and measures of victimisation, as well as differences in school systems, may contribute to differences in prevalence between countries (Kim et al., 2004). Bullying behaviours
There are differences between Western countries and South Korea in forms of bullying. Wang-ta is a Korean form, which is comparable with Western forms, but, in general, it appears that Korean bullying involves more use of emotional or psychological forms of bullying, including social isolation of peers (Koo et al., 2008). School climate
Crooks et al. (2007) reported that students within a better climate of academic achievement, safety and connection were less likely to engage in violent delinquency. Brookmeyer et al. (2006) confirmed that students’ perceptions of the school climate were critical risk factors in the emergence of violent delinquency. In South Korea, student dissatisfaction has apparently led many to study abroad (Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, 2007). Park (2009) investigated the reasons for this further. The students cited low quality of education, high cost of private tutoring in terms of financial, mental and physical burdens, highly stressful and competitive college entrance requirements, uncreative educational methods and ‘unfair educational opportunities based on economic status’(p. 745). A further issue lies in the role of the teacher, which is particularity important in the educational system in South Korea because of the Confucian tradition and emphasises the status difference, reflecting age and role (Park and Cho, 1995). The extent to which this relationship impacts on the school climate, bullying victimisation and future offending has not been researched. Parental control
According to Agnew (2001), inadequate, controlling, rejecting, abusive or neglectful parenting increases the likelihood of delinquent behaviour in the offspring. Studies of South Korean samples have also found inadequate or ineffective parental involvement a key risk factor of delinquency (Moon and Morash, 2004; Moon et al., 2009), but, specifically, South Korean youths were more likely to commit violent, property-related and status delinquent behaviours when they reported a negative relationship with parents. Our aim, therefore, was to answer three questions: • To what extent is school bullying associated with later offending? In particular, how are various types of school bullying and various types of violent offences related?
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• Does school climate influence subsequent offending, particularly violent offending, in adolescence? • Does the nature of parental control or supervision influence subsequent offending, particularly violent offending in adolescence?
Methods The current study was approved by the Seoul Juvenile Classification Examination Center’s Research Compliance Office. The sample Volunteers were recruited from youths referred to the juvenile justice system in South Korea during the three months, June 1 to 31 August 2012. Inclusion criteria were (i) being of school age, (ii) having attended middle or high school during the 12 months prior to interview and (iii) having been referred to the juvenile justice system. Once an intake officer had identified a potential case, he or she explained that participation was voluntary and anonymous and that participants could withdraw from the study at any time if they wished, without this affecting their management in the system in any way. Consenting youths completed the questionnaire in private and placed it in an envelope free of any personal information such as name or case number. Of 1140 young people referred to the criminal justice system, 658 were eligible, of whom 606 completed the survey (92% response rate). The main reasons for non-participation were study refusal or failure to complete the questionnaire. Measures The dependent variable
The primary outcome measure was officially recorded, offending categorised as property offences (0), other offences (1) and violent offences (2). Property offences include burglary, larceny-theft and arson; other offences included runaway and curfew violation as well as other minor offences and violent offences included murder, forcible rape and aggravated assault (similar to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report). Where multiple charges had been filed against a young offender, for purposes of this study, the offence was the most serious substantiated charge. Independent and control variables
The self-report survey contained measures of several variants of victimisation, including criminal victimisation and teachers’ punishments – physical and emotional – as well as two measures of bullying – again, physical and emotional.
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The physical victimisation measure consisted of six items, adapted from Kim et al. (2004), referring to the previous year and rated on a five-point scale (0–4): 1. Other students have threatened me saying ‘don’t come to school’ or ‘I will hurt you’. 2. Other students physically attacked me. 3. Other students have threatened or taken my money with force. 4. Other students have coerced me to do work for them. 5. Other students have taken my school supplies and snacks. 6. Other students have taken/damaged my belongings. The internal consistency of the scale is good (α = .890). The emotional victimisation measure consisted of seven items, also rated on a five-point scale: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Other Other Other Other Other Other Other
students students students students students students students
left me out during recess/lunch. ignored me. did not talk to me. have called me names. have spoken ill of me. told lies or spread false rumours about me. left me out of things on purpose.
The internal consistency of this scale was also good (α = 0.807). Thirty-one (95%) of the young offender participants reported no experience of physical forms of bullying, and 76 (87%) no experience of emotional bullying, but because of few responses to some questions about specific sub-types, we created two dichotomous variables for the main analyses – any physical victimisation and any emotional victimisation. Only four offenders experienced both forms of victimisation, and we included these in both totals. The two measures of teachers’ punishment (physical and emotional) were adapted from Moon and Morash (2004), with each item rated on a five-point scale (0 = none to 4 = more than 10 times during the previous school year). A total score was calculated for each. Physical punishment consists of five items (internal consistency α 0.866): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
My My My My My
teachers teachers teachers teachers teachers
pushed or shoved me to punish me. hit, kicked, or punched me to punish me. threw objects or destroyed objects publicly to punish me. threw objects at me to punish me. attempted to hit or hit me using objects to punish me.
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Emotional punishment consists of four items (internal consistency α 0.804): 1. 2. 3. 4.
My My My My
teachers teachers teachers teachers
compared me with others to punish me. treated me unfairly. called me useless. attempt or isolate me from others
Finally, we incorporated two additional measures – school climate and delinquent peers – in the light of prior research indicating their association with violent offending and/or delinquency (Felson et al., 1994). Again, each item was rated on a five-point scale (0 = strongly disagree to 4 = strongly agree), and a total score for each was calculated. School climate (α = 0.799): 1. 2. 3. 4.
Students at my school frequently call each other names. Students at my school move around or make noise during the class. Students at my school frequently get into fights. There is much violence in my school. Delinquent peers (α = 0.893):
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
My My My My My My My My My
friends friends friends friends friends friends friends friends friends
left out other students during recess/lunch. always called other students’ names. physically attacked other students. threatened or took others’ money with force threatened or took other students’ money with force. took other students’ school supplies/snacks. told lies or spread false rumours about other students. hit and pushed other students. coerced other students to do work for them.
Additional measures of individual characteristics were parental control, and participant sex and age. Parental control was measured by combining scores from three items: my parents are familiar with all or most of my close friends; my parents know where I am when I am away from home; and my parents know who I am with when I am away from home. Items were rated from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree), and a total score was calculated, such that a higher score indicates a higher level of parental control (α = .785). Analytic strategy First, descriptive analysis was used to show basic relationships between types of offence and victimisation, school-related characteristics and parental control. ANOVA was used to examine the overall relationship. In the second step, we
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used a logit model with maximum likelihood estimation to examine the relationship between violent offending as the dependent variable and victimisation, allowing for other school-related characteristics and parental control. The regression models can be written as: Logitðπi Þ ¼ x’i β; where xi ¼ 1; xi1 ; …; xip ’ and β ¼ β0 ; …; βp ’ We calculated the odds ratios by applying the following equation: E½Y i ¼ expðx’i βÞ = 1 þ expðx’i βÞ Finally, we used a multinomial logit model with maximum likelihood estimation to compare multiple categories of combination of binary logistic regressions. The general multinomial regression model is shown in the following equation: ln½PðY i ¼ 1Þ = PðY i ¼ kÞ ¼ x’i β ln½PðY i ¼ 2Þ = PðY i ¼ kÞ ¼ x’i β; where k is the reference category. This model was used to identify whether each victimisation and school-related characteristic and parental control related to risk of committing property, violent and other offences. All three analyses were performed using STATA 12.0 (StataCorp, College Station, TX).
Results Descriptive analysis Table 1 shows that 189 (31%) of these young people committed property offences, 310 (51%) violent offences and 107 (18%) other offences. One hundred and seven (18%) reported being the victim of physical (n = 31 or 29%) bullying and emotional (n = 76 or 71%) bullying at school. Of the victims of physical bullying, 12 (6%) committed property offences, 16 (5%) violent offences and 3 (3%) other offences. Among the victims of emotional bullying, 16 (9%) committed property offences, 51 (17%) violent offences and 9 (8%) other offences. Of the youthful offenders who were victims of school bullying, juveniles who reported being the victim of emotional bullying were significantly more likely to have committed a violent offence. Reporting of school characteristics did not significantly differ among offenders on the basis of offence type, but violent offenders were significantly younger than property and other offenders, and the violent offenders reported more parental control than property offenders; the ‘other
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179 (96)
12 (6) 1 (1) 3 (2) 2 (1) 0 (0) 1 (1) 4 (2) 16 (9) 3 (2) 3 (2) 3 (2) 8 (4) 3 (2) 4 (2) 1 (1)
105 (98)
3 (3) 1 (1) 0 (0) 1 (1) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 9 (8) 2 (2) 3 (3) 3 (3) 3 (3) 3 (3) 5 (5) 0 (0)
Other (n = 107) n (%)
267 (86)
16 (5) 5 (2) 4 (1) 4 (1) 2 (1) 3 (1) 4 (1) 51 (17) 8 (3) 10 (3) 11 (4) 17 (6) 16 (5) 20 (7) 11 (4)
Violent (n = 310) n (%)
20.36 (0.00)
8.85 (0.01)
1.77 (0.41)
X2 (p)
16.3 (1.32)
8.72 (2.09)
1.14 (2.85) 0.86 (1.89) 8.27 (2.71) 2.43 (3.84)
Property (n = 189) Mean (SD)
16.6 (1.40)
9.27 (2.11)
0.86 (1.86) 0.66 (1.32) 8.10 (2.78) 2.77 (4.71)
Other (n = 107) Mean (SD)
15.9 (1.51)
9.22 (1.79)
1.52 (3.15) 1.18 (2.45) 8.51 (2.67) 3.17 (4.65)
Violent (n = 310) Mean (SD)
(0.09) (0.06) (0.35) (0.20)
8.90 (0.00)
4.44 (0.01)
2.39 2.85 1.05 1.62
F (p)
Note: Total case of physical and emotional victimisation may be less than composite cases of 11 subcategories because some youths experienced various forms of victimisation. Bolded values denote p < 0.05.
Bullying Physical victimisation Threatened Physically attacked Took money with force Coerced to do something Took school supplies Damaged belongings Emotional victimisation Left out during recess Ignored Not talk to me Called names Spoke ill of me Spread false rumours Left me out of things School characteristics Teachers’ physical punishment Teachers’ emotional punishment School climate Delinquent peers Individual/demographic Parental control Sex (1 = male) Age
Property (n = 189) n (%)
Table 1: Descriptive statistics – offence-specific analyses
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offenders’ were significantly more likely to report more parental control than either violent or property offenders. Logistic regression analysis
Our second step was to determine whether the independent variables were associated with the risk of committing violent offences rather than any other offence. Table 2 shows that only one victimisation-related variable proved significant; prior experience of emotional bullying was associated with over twice the likelihood of violent offending (OR, 2.20, CI 1.17–4.14, p < 0.01). Girls were about three and a half times more likely than the boys (OR 3.57, CI 1.44–6.06, p < 0.01) and older students slightly but significantly less likely than younger ones (OR 0.81, CI 0.72–0.91, p < 0.01) to be violent offenders. Multinomial logistic regression analysis
Table 3 shows that the multinomial analysis confirmed that emotional bullying is over twice as likely to be related to violent offending as property offending (OR = 2.38, CI 1.13–5.01, p < 0.05). In contrast, students who had experienced physical bullying were three times less likely to be violent offenders than property offenders (OR = 0.31, CI 0.11–0.87, p < 0.05). Table 2: Results from logistic regression analysis Violent offence SE
eb
95% CI
3.91
1.13
49.91**
5.42–459.71
0.84 0.79
0.51 0.32
0.43** 2.20*
0.16–1.17 1.17–4.14
0.02 0.05 0.01 0.01
0.05 0.06 0.04 0.02
1.02** 1.06** 0.99** 1.01**
0.93–1.12 0.93–1.20 0.93–1.07 0.97–1.06
0.08 0.05 1.28 0.39 0.21 0.06 740.95 47.22 (9)**
1.08** 0.28** 0.81**
0.99–1.18 0.13–0.60 0.72–0.91
Variables
b
Intercept Bullying victimisation Physical victimisation Emotional victimisation School characteristics Teacher’s physical punishment Teacher’s emotional punishment School climate Delinquent peers Individual/demographic Parental control Sex (1 = male) Age 2LL LR chi-Square (df)
SE = Robust Standard Error; eb = Exp(b); CI = confidence interval; 2LL = 2 Log Likelihood; LR chiSquare = Likelihood Ration Chi-Square. Bolded values denote p < 0.05. **p < 0.01. *p < 0.05
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1.01** 0.89** 0.97** 1.05** 1.16** 1.76** 1.16**
1.11 0.53 0.08 0.11 0.05 0.04
1.68 0.21
0.01 0.12 0.03 0.04
0.15 0.07 0.57 0.82 0.15 0.09 1084.48 63.06 (18)**
0.19** 1.24**
0.01**
1.80
4.75
eb
SE
b
1.01–1.32 0.35–8.84 0.97–1.39
0.87–1.18 0.71–1.10 0.88–1.08 0.98–1.12
0.02–1.63 0.44–3.51
0.01–0.30
95% CI
0.13 1.13 0.16
0.03 0.02 0.02 0.03
1.18 0.87
2.96
b
0.05 0.44 0.07
0.05 0.07 0.04 0.03
0.53 0.38
1.27
SE
1.14* 0.32* 0.85*
1.03* 1.02* 0.98* 1.03*
0.31* 2.38*
19.25*
eb
Violent offencesa
SE = Robust Standard Error, eb = Exp(b), CI = Confidence Interval; 2LL = 2 Log Likelihood; LR chi-Square = Likelihood Ration Chi-Square. Bolded values denote p < 0.05. a Property offence is the reference category. **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05
Intercept Bullying victimisation Physical victimisation Emotional victimisation School characteristics Teacher’s physical punishment Teacher’s emotional punishment School climate Delinquent peers Individual/demographic Parental control Sex (1 = male) Age 2LL LR Chi-Square (df)
Variables
Other offencesa
Table 3: Results from multinomial logistic regression analysis
1.02–1.26 0.14–0.76 0.74–0.98
0.93–1.14 0.89–1.17 0.91–1.06 0.98–1.08
0.11–0.87 1.13–5.01
1.60–230.97
95% CI
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Results of the offence-specific analysis further confirmed the sex and age relationships, but here, higher levels of parental control were more likely in relation to other offences and to violent offences compared with property offending (OR 1.16, CI 1.01–1.32, p < 0.05; OR 1.14, CI 1.02–1.26 p < 0.05, respectively). There were no significant interactions with victimisation. Discussions and conclusions Our finding that emotional victimisation by peers was associated with an increased risk of violent offending adds to an understanding of links between bullying and victimisation of others. Physical victimisation has long been linked to perpetration of violence (e.g. Baron, 2009; Lahlah et al., 2013; Topitzes et al., 2012; Turanovic and Pratt, 2013), but more attention should be afforded to the relationship between emotional victimisation by peers and delinquency. Some research has suggested that aggressive behaviour may increase juvenile popularity (Thunfors and Cornell, 2008; Bowker et al., 2010), so a possible explanation of the relationship is that young people experiencing emotional victimisation may act aggressively/violently to prove themselves to other peers. In addition, bullied youths may view their own violent behaviour as a way of diminishing target attractiveness. Many researchers have pointed to the negative outcomes of being bullied at school on various forms of emotional and psychological maladjustment (e.g. depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, loneliness and suicidal ideation) and physical problems (e.g. headache, stomach ache, backache, feeling nervous and sleep disorder) (Rigby and Slee, 1993; Juvonen et al., 2000; Bond et al., 2001; Espelage and Holt, 2001; Swearer et al., 2001; Menesini et al., 2009; Cook et al., 2010). Victims of bullying have also been shown to engage in non-criminal delinquency, including school avoidance or absenteeism, dropping out of school and poor school performance (Rigby and Slee, 1993; Kochenderfer and Ladd, 1996; Rigby, 1996; Cook et al., 2010), but there has been less research examining such victimisation and criminal outcomes, including violent crime. What has been produced has been mixed. Bijleveld and Van Der Geest (2011) found no relationship between being bullied and re-offending except for juvenile sex offenders, among whom re-offending was significantly less likely in the bullied sub-group. Bender and Lösel (2011) found that such victimisation was not related to anti-social outcomes. We did not find a relationship between school climate and offence type, but the mean response among participants indicated some dissatisfaction with their school experience, so a more general relationship between poor school climate and juvenile offending cannot be ruled out. On the surface, the finding that higher levels of parental control were associated with higher likelihood of the offspring’s violent and other delinquency seems counterintuitive, and in opposition to previous findings where lack of parenting or parental monitoring has been shown to be a risk factor for delinquency (e.g. Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2006;
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Trinkner et al., 2012). There is likely to be a difference, however, between sound parental control and over-authoritative, or frankly punitive parenting, and we had insufficient evidence of the parenting qualities here. Perhaps the most important implication of the doubts raised here would be that parenting programmes focusing on improving parent–child relations should be considered as part of a package of interventions to reduce delinquency. Our findings with respect to gender are worth comment. Much of the extant research indicates that boys are more likely to experience physical bullying and be more likely to display externalising behaviours, whereas girls are more likely to experience emotional bullying and display internalising behaviours. Khatri et al. (2000) found peer victimisation was significantly related with delinquency for girls but not for boys. We found/did not find a sex difference in prevalence of physical and emotional bullying, and that experience of emotional bullying was associated with a higher likelihood of violent acts among the girls than the boys. Further research is needed to establish whether this finding was a quirk of the particular sample, or whether there may be real cultural differences in this respect. Although not a primary aim of the study, we found that among the referred youths, nearly one-fifth (18%) claimed to have been the victim of some form of bullying, which is a higher prevalence than previously found among South Korean school samples of 5–14% (Kim et al., 2004; Yang et al., 2006). Given that that our sample was from the juvenile justice system, having committed a range of delinquent offences, this higher prevalence of bullying would fit with Western findings of an association between bullying and delinquency (Bender and Lösel, 2011; Farrington et al., 2011). Our study adds to the limited knowledge of the relationship between being bullied and delinquency, particularly in a non-Western context; however, it is not without limitations. First, our focus with respect to bullying was on the experience of it, but it is possible that these young offenders were also bullies themselves. Second, the present research was in a single country. Young people in South Korea may perceive and report school experiences differently from those than in other Asian countries, so general observations about possible differences between Western and Eastern cultures must be made with caution. Nevertheless, our findings do suggest a case for examining such questions further, and to remind those who would provide interventions that they may need to factor in the additional factors of cultural variations.
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Address correspondence to: Seokjin Jeong, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Texas at Arlington, Box 19595, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA. Email: [email protected]
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