of Four- to Five-Year- Olds: Contributing Factors at the School Level

This research was designed to examine how fac-tors within young children’s environment (e.g., school factors, neighborhood) contribute to ex-plaining peer victimization. The sample com-prised 2,003 children (between 4 and 5 years of age) from 98 classrooms in 23 elementary schools in the Netherlands. Teachers were asked to com-plete a questionnaire on exposure to victimiza-tion for each child. Multilevel analyses revealed that gender and social climate of the school were directly related to victimization. Furthermore, results indicated that peer victimization in boys was less prevalent when they attended smaller schools. In low-SES neighborhoods victimi-zation scores were significantly lower when schools had implemented clear antibullying pol-icies. Finally, variation among school classes ap-peared to be strongly associated with victimiza-tion, even more so than variation among schools. These findings support broadening the focus beyond the individual child at risk. Chronic peer victimization has been shown to start at an early age (Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996a, 1996b) and to result in serious forms of maladjustment, including lone-liness, anxiety, depression, and school avoidance (e.g., Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996b; Olweus, 1991). Although relatively few studies on victimization have been carried out among young children (4–5 years old), there is ev-idence to suggest that in this group, in terms of numbers of children affected, vic-timization in the form of being bullied is at its most widespread. Kochenderfer and Ladd (1996a) found that 22.6 % of their sample of kindergarten children had been exposed to a moderate or high level of peer victimization. Even more children (42%–54%) reported that they had been victimized at least “some