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Prevalence of bullying in secondary schools in Port Harcourt

Abstract Background: School bullying is a global problem involving a high proportion of students worldwide. However, its prevalence and types in secondary schools in Port Harcourt is not yet known. Objective: This study aimed to determine the prevalence and types of bullying in secondary schools in Port Harcourt. Subjects: A total of 1160 students from six secondary schools in Port Harcourt comprised the sample. Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional school-based study conducted in Port Harcourt in March 2014. Two mixed schools, two all-boys schools, and two all-girls schools were selected using purposive sampling technique. Stratified random sampling technique, by class strata (senior secondary 1, 2 and 3) was used to select 1160 students from the six schools. A 22-item self-administered questionnaire adapted from a previous study was modified and used in this study. The questions covered the prevalence, type of bullying, and socio-demographic data. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 (IBM SPSS Incorporated, Chicago, IL, USA). Results: About 82.2% reported being victims of bullying, whereas 64.9% reported being bullies. About 9.7% and 11.8% were neither bullies nor bullied, respectively. Bullying was significantly higher in the all-boys (90.8%) and all-girls (82.9%) schools than in the mixed schools (73.5%), p=0.000. More males were victims (53.4%) and bullies (53.3%) but more females (55.4%) were bully-victims. The most common (57.5%) type of bullying was physical bullying. Conclusion: The rate of bullying was found to be very high in secondary schools in Port Harcourt.