Bullying Victimization Among Chinese Middle School Students: The Role of Family Violence

This study used the data from a representative sample to investigate the association between family violence (FV) and child bullying victimization (BV) in Xi’an city, China. Data on social demographic information and the prevalence of BV and FV were collected from a randomly selected sample with 3,175 middle school students aged 15 to 17 by self-administrated questionnaires. Results show that 55.9% and 30.3% of the participants have witnessed intimate partner violence (IPV), 37.7% and 30.8% have been victims of child abuse, and 54.9% and 44.6% have been bullied in a lifetime and in the preceding year, respectively. The lifetime and preceding-year co-occurrence rate of FV and BV are 45% and 30.4%, respectively. Multiple logistic regressions confirm FV as a unique risk factor in predicting both direct and relational BV after controlling for a number of confounding factors. This study suggests that FV experiences should be included in the screening and assessment of risk for child BV.