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The COVID-19 pandemic led to drastic changes in schooling. Students, especially older adolescents and girls, felt it had a negative impact on their school performance. Adolescents experiencing a higher number of school closure days during the pandemic were more likely to report school pressure, with lack of personal interaction with teachers and, peers possibly being among the factors behind the link between school closure and school pressure. Remote learning processes may have contributed to feelings of added school pressure through lower learning concentration and engagement, inability to learn from online sources, difficulties in organizing study time and worries about the future. Only one in five adolescents liked school a lot during the pandemic. Adolescents from less well-off families reported more negative impacts on their school performance due to the pandemic. Those from better-off families reported more school pressure and less liking of school. Targeted efforts are needed to address the avoidable differences between the groups of adolescents affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescent experiences of the impact of the pandemic on their school experience should be heard and taken into consideration in the post-pandemic recovery.
Purpose. Social patterns in bullying show consistent gender differences in adolescent perpetration and victimization with large cross-national variations. Previous research shows associations between societal gender inequality and gender differences in some violent behaviors in adolescents. Therefore, there is a need to go beyond individual associations and use a more social ecological perspective when examining gender differences in bullying behaviors. The aim of the present study was twofold: (1) to explore cross-national gender differences in bullying behaviors and (2) to examine whether national-level gender inequality relates to gender differences in adolescent bullying behaviors.
Methods. Traditional bullying and cyberbullying were measured in 11-year-olds to 15-year-olds in the 2017/18 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study (n = 200,423). We linked individual data to national gender inequality (Gender Inequality Index, 2018) in 46 countries and tested their association using mixed-effects (multilevel) logistic regression models.
Results. Large cross-national variations were observed in gender differences in bullying. Boys had higher odds of perpetrating both traditional and cyberbullying and victimization by traditional bullying than girls. Greater gender inequality at country level was associated with heightened gender differences in traditional bullying. In contrast, lower gender inequality was associated with larger gender differences for cyber victimization.
Discussion. Societal gender inequality relates to adolescents' involvement in bullying and gendered patterns in bullying. Public health policy should target societal factors that have an impact on young people's behavior.