Childhood maltreatment with school bullying behaviors in Chinese adolescents: A cross-sectional study

Objective: Although childhood maltreatment and school bullying are common among Chinese adolescents, their possible connection remains severely under-discussed in this population. This study primarily aims to explore the association between childhood maltreatment experience and school bullying behaviors in a large sample of Chinese teenagers. Method: A school-based sampling survey was implemented with 2579 adolescents in southwest China. Self-administered questionnaire was used to collect relevant information form the participants. Binary Logistic regression models were adopted to estimate the crude and adjusted associations between childhood maltreatment experience and school bullying involvement in general, as well as between different types of child maltreatment and school bullying. Results: Multivariate Logistic regression models revealed that, for adolescents who had experienced any type of childhood maltreatment, their risk of implicating into school bullying significantly increased (OR=1.75, 95% CI: 1.41-2.16). Further analysis revealed that, for all types of childhood maltreatment and school bullying, only child abuse showed prominent association with bullying victimization: adolescents who reported a history of sexual abuse and emotional abuse were found 4.31 (95% CI: 2.79-6.68) and 2.11 (95% CI: 1.32-3.39) folds of odds for bullying victimization. However, the dose-response association was not apparent between the severity of child abuse and bullying victimization based on subgroup analysis of abused participants. Conclusions: Childhood maltreatment, especially sexual abuse and emotional abuse, were significantly associated with increased risk of school bullying victimization among Chinese adolescents. Targeted intervention measures should be designed and implemented to protect the abused adolescents from being bullied at school.