Bullying of Middle School Students With and Without Learning Disabilities: Prevalence and Relationship to Students' Social Skills

by Casale, Silvana Spinelli

Students who experience bullying have been shown to be at greater risk for forms of maladjustment including depression and loneliness (Hawker & Boulton, 2000), and social withdrawal (Olweus, 1993). Research indicates that bullying is especially severe in middle schools (Boulton & Underwood, 1992; NCES, 2002; Olweus 1993). Students with learning disabilities (LD) are considered to be particularly at risk due to the frequent co-occurrence of poor social skills with learning disabilities (Fox & Boulton, 2005). This study examined the percentage of victims, bullies, bully-victims and non-participants in bullying as reported by a sample of 255 students (144 with LD) attending public middle school in a large, urban Southeastern school district. Classification of students into the four bullying groups was based on students responses on the Revised Bullying Victim Questionnaire (RBVQ; Olweus, 1996). Chi-square analysis indicated that students with LD were not more frequently classified as victims of bullying than their peers without LD. Students social skills were measured by means of the Social Skills Rating Scale- Teacher Form (SSRS; Gresham & Elliott, 1990). Results of a discriminant function analysis using scores on the three subscales of the SSRS-T as predictors indicated that students social skills were not significantly associated with victim/non-victim status.