Pervasive bullying and its negative consequence on standardized tests of Reading, Science and Mathematics – A comparative analysis of three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa

Kibriya, Shahriar and Zhang, Yu and Anton-Erxleben, Katharina and Naureen, Fatema (2016): Pervasive bullying and its negative consequence on standardized tests of Reading, Science and Mathematics – A comparative analysis of three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Abstract

School bullying is a common yet unfortunate occurrence associated with several hindering outcomes for children’s educational and psychological development. Using a nationally representative data sample of 26,467 students from three sub-Saharan African countries of Ghana, Botswana and South African, we investigate the prevalence of bullying and its ramification on students’ academic performance. The data reveals that more than 50% of the survey participants were bullied regularly in school. We employ a Propensity Score based matching technique to estimate the effect of bullying of their performance on standardized reading, mathematics and science tests. The results of our estimation reveal statistically significant decreases due to bullying in scores on all three types of standardized evaluations between 3% to 8% for all three countries.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: School bullying, academic achievement, Africa
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I20 - General

References

Kibriya, Shahriar, Zhicheng Phil Xu, and Yu Zhang. "The negative consequences of school bullying on academic performance and mitigation through female teacher participation: evidence from Ghana." Applied Economics 49.25 (2017): 2480-2490.

Abadie, A., & Imbens, G. W. (2016). Matching on the estimated propensity score. Econometrica, 84(2), 781-807.

Ammermueller, A. (2012). Violence in European schools: A widespread phenomenon that matters for educational production. Labour Economics, 19(6), 908-922.

Brown, S., & Taylor, K. (2008). Bullying, education and earnings: evidence from the National Child Development Study. Economics of Education Review, 27(4), 387-401.

Eriksen, T. L. M., Nielsen, H. S., & Simonsen, M. (2012). The Effects of Bullying in Elementary School (No. 6718). The Institute for the Study of Labor.

Greene, M., Robles, O., Stout, K. and Suvilaakso, T., (2013). A girl’s right to learn without fear: Working to end gender-based violence at school. Woking: Plan International.

Nansel, T. R., Overpeck, M., Pilla, R. S., Ruan, W. J., Simons-Morton, B., & Scheidt, P. (2001). Bullying behaviors among US youth: Prevalence and association with psychosocial adjustment. Journal of the American Medical Association, 285(16), 2094-2100.

Olweus, D. (1993), Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Blackwell Publishing.

Ouellet-Morin, I., Odgers, C. L., Danese, A., Bowes, L., Shakoor, S., Papadopoulos, A. S., & Arseneault, L. (2011). Blunted cortisol responses to stress signal social and behavioral problems among maltreated/bullied 12-year-old children. Biological psychiatry, 70(11), 1016-1023.

Ponzo, M. (2013). Does bullying reduce educational achievement? An evaluation using matching estimators. Journal of Policy Modeling, 35(6), 1057-1078.

Rosenbaum, P. R., & Rubin, D. B. (1983). The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects. Biometrika, 70, 41-55.