The Relation between School Size and Location and Bullying

The aim was to study the relations between of the main characteristics of school and the prevalence of bullying among students. The school size and type of settlement where school is located were basic characteristics. The settlement characteristics and information from schools` social passports was also used. The results of survey of 4364 9th-grade students from 169 schools in the Kaluga region were used. A multilevel regression analysis indicated that the effect of school characteristics were significant in the case of bullying prevalence, but not significant for victims. The effect of school size was very small: in big schools there was more bullying than in small ones. In urban gymnasiums / lyceums and regular schools, the prevalence of bullying was lower than in rural regular schools. The school discipline had a great powerful effect on bullying and victimization in all schools. High disciplinary structure was associated with low prevalence of bullying and victimization. The effect of discipline for bullying was bigger than for victims. These findings confirmed the authoritative school climate theory and suggested to provide an understandable school rules for reducing the level of bullying in all schools regardless their size and location.