School is considered a part of a micro-system for children after home that has a vital role in both social and emotional development. A child's experience at school can be assumed to have an effect on the learning process and their future life [19]. Reschly et al. showed that positive emotions felt during the school frequently associated with the higher engagement of children with learning, while other negative emotions are associated with low attachment [20]. Fredrickson reported in his study that positive emotions are a sign or an indicator of wellbeing and also form wellbeing in the future [21].
Bullying causes fear and suffering for the victims, and consists of verbal, physical, and psychological attacks performed repeatedly between parties where there are power imbalance and pressure from the powerful children to the less powerful ones, without any provocation from the victim [22]. Previous studies highlighted that bullies try to compensate for their inadequate self-confidence in this way [23], additionally, there is evidence about the relationship between bullying and unhappiness, lack of school love and even depression [24]. In current studies, it was found that the mean bully subscale is mostly near to “never’’. Such result is considered better compared to the results obtained from a study from Turkey in which children expressed that at least 2 times they attempted to bully and exposed to bullying 6 to7 times [25]. Additionally, the prevalence of bullying among primary school children was estimated to be 13% in New Zealand [26].
Moreover, a national survey conducted in 40 western countries [27] reported rates of involvement in all the three groups of bullying (bullies, victims, bully-victims) combined at ranging from 4.8 to 45.2%. Differently, the findings of an Egyptian study revealed a markedly high prevalence (77.8%) of bullying behavior among adolescent rural school students [28], and such high rates of violence were also detected by another study conducted among elementary school children [29]. Such variations in prevalence across countries could be attributed to the methodological and cultural differences in defining the problem and also to variations in target populations and the instruments used.
The current study revealed that there is a relationship between gender and both bullying and victimization, where males have significantly higher bullying and victimization rates. In accordance with these results, significantly higher bullying observed in males compared to females in studies conducted with primary school students [30-33]. Additionally, it was determined that our male students experienced physical and verbal bullying significantly compared to females, and this was in line with Demirbağ BC et al. study [25]. Female students in this study were less prone to be bullies and bully-victims, which could be attributed to cultural factors including that boys are less often punished for misbehavior compared to girls. Similarly, the studies of Cook et al. [34] and Yang et al. [35] found that bullying is more frequent in boys than girls. The fact that boys are more commonly involved in bullying does not necessarily mean they are more aggressive, but probably, they are more likely to adopt such behavior in an overt way such as physical bullying, whereas girls are frequently involved in forms of bullying that may be difficult to identify like gossiping, rejecting, teasing, verbal threatening, and humiliating [36].
In regards to the association between age with bullying behavior in previous studies, the prevalence of being bully-victims was significantly associated with younger age and preparatory grade, which could reflect that older age is a protective factor for involvement in bullying [37, 38]. In contrast to this, our study pointed out that bullying isn’t significantly correlated with age.
There is a paucity of prevalence studies on primary school bullying locations, forms and correlates in Saudi Arabia and even in the Arab world, which makes it difficult to compare our results or ascertain whether the problem is going from bad to better or from bad to worse. Future school bullying prevalence studies are required to project trends in the prevalence rates.
Almost all bullying research done internationally and in the United States has focused on bullying in elementary school, middle school, and high school. A review of this research showed that bullying and victimization are most common in elementary school and become progressively less common by the end of high school [39]. In primary schools, both in Western and non-Western countries, between 20% and 30% of the children are victims of bullying, while between 10% and 20% of the children are bullies [40].
In a previous study titled “The Peer Interaction in Primary School Questionnaire: testing for measurement equivalence and latent mean differences in bullying between gender in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the USA” it was reported that Egyptian and Saudi boys/girls had a higher level of bullying compared to the American boys/girls, whereas no differences were displayed among the three cultures on the victimization subscale. Additionally, Boys had a higher level of bullying than girls in the three cultures, and boys and girls had a similar level of victimization in three cultures [41].
Bullying is considered a personal, social and educational problem, and identifying its possible risk factors, short and long term effects, and planning for prevention activities in the light of these findings seems one of the most important areas of research for children, families, and educators [42]. Teachers and families play an important role in the measures to be taken and interventions to be performed for the reduction and prevention of bullying type behaviors which have negative consequences for children such as not wanting to go to school, a decline in school achievements, and depression.
Ttofi and Farrington in their meta-analysis of 44 school-based intervention programs internationally, found that on average, these reduced bullying by around 20-23% and victimization by around 17-20%; although there is considerable variation in outcomes [43]. They examined, across programs, which program components were most associated with success. They found that reducing victimization rates, videos, disciplinary methods, and parent training/meetings were most associated with success. While for reducing bullying, parent training/meetings, improved playground supervision, disciplinary methods, school conferences, information for parents, classroom rules, classroom management, and teacher training were most associated with success [43].