Relations between school violence, gender and stress in teenagers

Abstract

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/198271991304

School violence is a national problem characterized by behaviors that intend to cause harm and involve aggressive acts between students or employees and students. The goal of this study was to investigate whether there is any relation between those stressful behaviors and the types of involvement in school violence, as well as the relation between stress, school violence, and gender. Participants were 109 students, aged 9 to 14 years, of a public school located in a low human development index area in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil. These participants expressed consent and their parents authorized their participation by signing an Informed Consent Form. The students responded to the School Violence Scale and the Infant Stress Scale. Psychological, physical and material violence was observed through the analysis of the following categories: victimization of students by students, victimization of students by employees, and authorship of violence. Nevertheless, most of the students surveyed were not under considerable state of stress. The results showed significant positive correlations between stress and victimization of students by students; stress and suffering from psychological violence by employees; and stress and being perpetrator of psychological, physical, or virtual violence, as well between stress and risky behaviors. It was also found that, compared with boys, girls are more often victimized with respect to psychological violence by students, practice psychological and virtual violence more often, and suffer more stress

Keywords: Infant stress, School violence, Bullying, Gender.