A comparison of peer bullying among high school students in Iran and Turkey

AbstractThe research consisted of 874 high school students from Iran and 859 students from Turkey. The “Bully-Victim Determination Scale Adolescent Form” developed by Pişkin & Ayas (2007) was used for Turkish students, whilst the adapted Persian version of the same instrument was used for Persian students. The results revealed that Iranian students were significantly more victimized in Physical victimization than their Turkish counterparts, whereas the Turkish students victimized more in isolation. However, the Turkish students had significantly higher scores than their Iranian counterparts in all bullying subscales. The data also revealed that males were significantly more victimized than females in any type of victimization and also significantly more bullied than females in any type of bullying. However, the 2-way interactions between country and gender showed that in most of the victimization subscales, Turkish males were more victimized than any groups followed by Iranian males. Turkish females were the least victimized group followed by Iranian females. The data also showed that general and vocational high school students did not differ either in victimization or in bullying