When Violence Breeds Violence: A Systematic Review of the Association between Violence Exposure and Youth Bullying Perpetration
摘要
Bullying affects nearly a quarter of school-aged children and adolescents in the United States each year, presenting numerous challenges to their mental, behavioral, and relational health. Research has found various types of violence exposure to be associated with bullying perpetration; however, there has been a lack of efforts to systematically synthesize and evaluate the accumulated evidence. To develop a more comprehensive understanding of factors related to bullying across multiple social-ecological systems, this systematic review reviewed the quantitative studies (N = 84) examining the impact of violence exposure on youth’s bullying perpetration, with attention to how the contexts of violence exposure (i.e., number and timing of violence exposure) and youth’s identities and social contexts (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status) are addressed in the reviewed studies. The review found that an overwhelming majority of the studies reported significant associations between different forms of violence exposure in varying social-ecological systems and traditional/cyberbullying perpetration. Gaps in the literature were found, as none of the studies considered the contexts of violence exposure in their analyses, and only a small number of the studies examined the role of youth’s identities in shaping the link between violence exposure. The findings from the studies that examined the role of identities reflected nuances and complexities, warranting further research.