The association between social environment and school bullying among middle school students: a mixed-methods study

Adolescent bullying does not occur in a vacuum but is tied to experiences across peer, family, school, and broader social contexts. Employing an ecological perspective, this study used a mixed-methods approach to examine the associations among ecological environmental factors and bullying victimization (BV), bullying perpetration (BP), and bystander emotional reactions (BR) among Chinese middle school students.

We adopted a partially sequential mixed-methods design with a complementary purpose. Quantitative data were collected via questionnaires distributed to 411 students (378 valid cases) at a single middle school, with instruments measuring BV, BP, BR, and ecological environmental factors. Given the sparse distribution and strong right skew of BV and BP data, the current study adopted hurdle-type models to distinguish the occurrence and severity of bullying behaviors, with the false discovery rate (FDR) correction applied to coefficient-level statistical tests. BR was analyzed as a continuous outcome variable, and exploratory moderation analyses were conducted to further explore whether family support moderated the associations between negative peer experiences and bullying-related outcomes. Semi-structured interviews with 16 students were analyzed using inductive coding approach informed by grounded theory principles. Both quantitative and qualitative findings were integrated narratively during the interpretive stage of analysis.

The overall quantitative models predicting BV occurrence, BP occurrence, and BR were statistically significant. For BV and BP, several ecological variables showed significant unadjusted associations with the outcomes, but most of these associations failed to retain significance following FDR correction, and no stable associations were identified in the severity models. For the BR model, gender, parental academic expectations, school environment, and social environment remained significantly associated with BR after FDR correction. An exploratory interaction effect between negative peer experiences and family support was detected only for BP occurrence, which requires cautious explanatory framing. Qualitative findings revealed that students reported bullying-related experiences including peer, family, school, and broader social contexts. Their accounts highlighted peer conflict, social exclusion, behavioral imitation, family relationships, parental expectations, and teacher responses, while also revealing substantial variability in students' family support and school experiences.

Based on data collected from a single school in China, ecological environmental factors demonstrated outcome-specific associations across bullying-related experiences. BR exhibited more consistent ecological correlates than BV or perpetration, suggesting that students' emotional responses to bullying situations warrant attention alongside their behavioral involvement. The qualitative data further illustrate how peer interactions, family expectations, school climate, and broader social influences intersect in students' accounts of bullying-related situations. These findings reflect correlational relationships, and further multi-site and longitudinal studies are needed to assess the robustness and generalizability of the present results.