Measuring bullying victimization through a closed ended question and a validated measure in a population of tunisian adolescents: What difference does it make?

• Published in: European psychiatry Vol. 64; no. S1; p. S216
• Main Authors: Brigui, N., Guedria, A., Brahim, T., Ayoub, R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Paris Cambridge University Press 01.04.2021
• Subjects: Abstract; adolescent; Bullying; E-Poster Presentation; measurment; prevalence; Teenagers; Victimization
• ISSN: 0924-9338; 1778-3585
• DOI: 10.1192/j.eurpsy.2021.575

Introduction School bullying is a serious problem among tunisian children and adolesent. In our every day practice, we see a considerable number of suicide attempts among bullying victims. Our study tries to provide more information on this phenomenon, in order to organize efficient preventtion measures. Objectives Measuring the prevalence of bullying victimization in the town of Sousse-Tunisia Comparing the prevalence found through a validated measurement tool and a closed end question Methods It is a cross-sectional study among a sample of 1127 adolescents, aged 12 to 17 years old. The adolescents were divided in two groups the first group, composed of 527 adolescents, answered a closed end (yes/no) question “Have you been a victim of Bullying”; the second group, composed of 600 adolescents, responded to the “adolescent peer relation instrument”. Results The first group was composed of 48% of boys and 52% of girls with a mean age of 13,24 ± 0,96. The second group was composed of 50% of boys and 50% of girls with a mean age of 13.76 ±1.37. We found a bullying victimization prevalence of 11% for the first group versus 95.1% for the second group. For both groups we didn’t find a significant difference in the prevalence of bullying victimization according to sociodemographic factors except the higher family income that was associates to less bullying victimisation for the first group (p=0,04) Conclusions The high prevalence of bullying victimization we found using a validated measurement is alarming in terms of the urgency of interventions to prevent bullying in schools.