Bullying, Victimization and Witnessing among Secondary School Students in Tanzania: Focus on Gender and School Location

Abstract

Bullying and its associated negative outcomes on adolescents have continued to be a problem of global concern. This paper presents different forms of bullying, victimization and witnessing behaviour among secondary school students. A total of 1,259 students (51% female, Mage = 16.25, SD = 1.52) completed a self-report questionnaire and a subset of 24 students were interviewed. Findings indicated that students were commonly engaged and witnessed more verbal, physical, social bullying, followed by cyberbullying. For victimization, students reported experiencing more physical, verbal and social followed by cyber victimization. Female students were more likely to experience different forms of victimization and witnessing different forms of bullying compared to male students. Further, female students reported to be engaged in perpetrating verbal and social bullying more than male students. On the other hand, students in semi-urban location reported experiencing victimization and witnessing different forms of bullying more than those in urban areas. Contrary to the expectations, students in rural location were more likely to engage in cyberbullying perpetration more than those in urban and semi-urban areas. Thus, findings suggest for holistic anti-bullying and online safety education and awareness programmes that are gender and context specific. Keywords: bullying, cyberbullying, victimization, witnessing