Physical fights involvement in school setting and adolescents’ behaviours : highlights from health behaviour in school-aged children (HBSC/WHO) - fights in school setting and adolescent’s behaviours

Copyright © 2019 Susana Gaspar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and work is properly cited.Aim: To analyse gender differences and associations regarding physical fights and their relationship with other health compromising behaviours. Methods: Participants consisted of 5,423 Portuguese adolescents in the context of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children/World Health Organization study. Independent Chi-Square, Independent Sample T-tests were used to analyse the relationship between physical fights involvement and health compromising behaviour. Binary logistic regressions were conducted to analyse the associations between physical fights involvement and variables with statistical significance for at least one gender in preliminary bivariate analysis. Regression analyses were stratified by gender adjusted by age. Result: 21.3% of the adolescents reported at least one fighting episode. 61.1% of fights occurred in school. Students from 6th grade had a higher involvement in fights than 10th grade students. For both genders, fighting occurrence is related to consumptions (alcohol, drugs use), violence (being bullied, being a bully, carrying weapons and safety perception at school). Boys from Alentejo region, 6th grade and who practice physical activity, reported more physical fights involvement. For boys, carrying weapons decreases the probability of fights occurrence in school. Conclusion: This study confirms the impact of physical fighting in Portuguese adolescents and emphasizes that specific strategies to address this physical fighting are important. Public policies must take gender and age specificities into consideration while designing and implementing preventive interventions with pupils and families, in the school and in the community, in order to promote a safer environment at school and an adolescents’ positive development. Active social support from peers, parents, teachers and school staff is needed so that weapons are not used as a way to secure schools’ environment. National strategies and interventions in school context must be prioritized with regional focus in order to address regional specificities.