| Abstract: | Background: Being victims of bullying (being bullied) has been recognized recently as a health problem for school children because of its associated with a range of adjustment problems including behavioral, emotional, and social problems. Studies in countries such as U.S, Finland, South Africa, Nigeria, Jerusalem Korea, China, and Taiwan have been done to identify the risk factors associated with this problem. In Indonesia middle schools, there have been a limited number of nationally and internationally sponsored researches which have exploring this phenomenon. The objectives of the present study were to determine the prevalence of victims of bullying and to identify the associated factors among junior high school students in Indonesia.
Methods: This study is a secondary analysis using the Indonesia Global School-Based Students Health Survey (GSHS), 2007 conducted by WHO in collaboration with Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education. The survey used a two-stage cluster sampling procedure to produce data representative of 3116 students in grade 8th and 9th in Java Island and Sumatera Island, Indonesia. From the GSHS original questionnaire form, 2 questions related to being bullied have been taken to form the dependent variable and other 11 questions with potential risk for being bullied were selected as independents for the analysis. Data were analyzed using SPSS 15.
Results: This study showed that the prevalence of bullies was reported 37.0 % and students who being bullied was 50.3%. For victims of bullying prevalence were reported 42.2 % of males and 57.8% of females. Victims of bullying were also reported 55.4% from grade 8 and 44.6 % from grade 9 students. Males were more likely than females to being bullied (OR=1.262, 95% CI=1.052-1.514), smokers were more likely than non-smokers (OR= 2.064, 95% CI= 1.5612.728) to being bullied. Students who never felt sad/hopeless for the past 12 months were less likely than students who always felt sad/hopelessness to being bullied (OR= 0.149, 95% CI= 0.038-0.575), students who ever been felt loneliness for the past 12 months were more likely than students who never felt loneliness to being bullied (OR= 2.261, 95% CI=1.7392.940), this is also for students who worried about something that couldn’t sleep at night for the past 12 months were more likely than students who could sleep without worried past 12 months to being bullied (OR=1.909, 95% CI= 1.251-2.914). Students who ever been bullying others were more likely than students who never bullying others to being bullied (OR= 3.025, 95% CI= 2.459-3.729). The shorter students were more likely than taller students to get bullied (OR=1.291, 95% CI=1.065-1.566). Students with got less support from their peers were more likely than students who having support from their peers to being bullied (OR=1.296, 95% CI=1.024-1.640). In this study, school grade, degree of obese, drinking alcohol, parent’s role and the number of close friends were not significantly associated with being bullied.
Conclusion and Recommendation: The study identified the following risk factors related to being bullied such as; gender, smoking behavior, experience in bullying others, sadness/hopelessness, felt loneliness, could not sleep, height, and peers support factors. In addition, families, schools, policy maker and mental health professionals need to be aware of cultural variations in bullying and work collaboratively with schools and families to develop effective treatment. Also it could be expected to find the suitable prevention program to solve this problem. |
