Description
Bullying and alcohol use is a major public health concern for adolescents in the United States. They are connected to one another and recent and tragic school shootings that have occurred in various locations were attributed to bullying. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between bullying perpetration and alcohol use among school-aged children. According to the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) 2005-2006 survey, about 34.4% of students have reported that they have bullied another student in the past 30 days. Also, 28.6% of the students have reported drinking alcohol at least once in the past month. Dataset from this study was used to perform an analysis of the association between bullying perpetration and alcohol use among the participants (n = 9,227). Results have shown that there is a significant association between bullying perpetration and alcohol use among the students. A logistic regression was performed and after adjusting for gender, grade level, tobacco use, and race, bullying was still significantly associated with alcohol use. The odds of bullying were 1.8 times significantly higher among those that drank alcohol once or twice in the past 30 days than those who did not (95% CI 1.6 - 2.1). In addition, the odds of bullying were 2.2 times significantly higher among those that drank alcohol 3-5 times than those who did not (95% CI 1.8 - 2.7) and 2.5 times significantly higher among those that drank alcohol 6-9 times than those that did not (95% CI 2.1 - 3.0). There are important implications from the secondary analysis of data coming from this study for the prevention of bullying among adolescents in the United States. Further study of factors like gender, race, and amounts of alcohol use are needed.
