It’s a hard-knock life for us : a multilevel analysis towards the association between grade retention and being bullied in 25 countries

Across the world, numerous students fall victim to school bullying. Bullying is often caused by a power imbalance between students and, thus, identifying potential sources of power imbalance is an effective way to prevent school bullying. Based on the labeling theory, we expect that being retained can create such a power imbalance and, therefore, increases the likelihood of being bullied. Hence, this study examines the association between grade retention and the self-reported victimisation. Moreover, we investigate the moderating effect of both school- and country retention composition rates on this association, based on the expectation that retainees will be less likely to be bullied in schools and countries with a high amount of other retainees. The contextualised impact of grade retention upon victimisation is assessed by cross-national multilevel analyses on PISA2018 data (25 countries; 8,039 schools; 159,412 students). Overall, our findings indicate that being retained in primary and/or secondary education is associated with victimisation, while the difference between retainees and non-retainees is smaller in countries with a high retention rate. We did not find such a moderation effect at the school level. Implications are discussed.

Jaar van publicatie:2022

Toegankelijkheid:Open