Connectedness and preadolescents' role in bullying

Background: Relationships or connections with caring pro-social others (e.g., parents, teachers, school, friends, neighborhood, religion) serve as pro-resilience assets that may enhance children's abilities to cope with bullying. This study assessed the relationship between Puerto Rico (PR) preadolescents' connnectedness to others and their role in bullying, namely as perpetrators, victims, bully/victims, or bystanders.

Methods: 426 preadolescents ages 10-12 years old from an community-based afterschool program participated in this exploratory, cross-sectional study, by completing a quantitative questionnaire in paper and pencil format. Data was analyzed overall, by location (i.e., San Juan Metropolitan Area (SJ Metro), Other Municipalities within PR), gender, age, and church attendance.

Results: Half of the participants (50%) were bullying bystanders, 20% were only victims, 5% were perpetrators only, and 16% were bully-victims. They reported the highest connectedness to school, followed by community, parents, teachers, mothers, religion, fathers, and friends. Statistically significant differences were found by location, gender, age and church attendance.

Connectedness was correlated significantly to the participants' involvement in bullying at different roles. Connectedness overall, to mothers, teachers and school was positively and significantly correlated to victimization, whereas connectedness to school was negatively correlated to perpetration. Bully-victimization was negatively correlated to connectedness overall, to parents, mothers, friends, teachers, and school.

Conclusions: Surprisingly, having strong prosocial connections to these sources do not appear to have a reduction impact on participants' bullying victimization. Implications for PR schools and the PR Department of Education, community-based organizations, and other entities will be discussed.