Engl. transl.: The Frequency of Peer Violence with Respect to Characteristics of Adolescents and Experienced Violence in the Family

This paper presents the results of the first survey of peer violence conducted in Croatia on a nationally representative sample. The aim of this study was to examine the presence of peer violence and characteristics of children who are involved in such violence in various ways. Special attention was given to the experience of domestic violence and its relationship to their involvement in bullying. The study included 3.470 children aged 11, 13 and 16 (fifth and seventh grade of primary and second grade of secondary school). The results showed that 64.1% of children are not involved in peer violence, 14.8% of them are victims, 6.3% perpetrators, and 14.8% are both victims and perpetrators. Peer violence increases with age when it comes to the number of pupils involved as perpetrators and victims-perpetrators, while the proportion of victims decreases after the seventh grade. Girls are more often victims and victims-perpetrators and are more involved in relational violence, while boys are more often involved in physical and verbal violence. There is a greater proportion of those who have below-average financial status in all groups of children who experience violence, while the perpetrators are more often children from families with an above average financial status. The percentage of children who have experienced violence in the family is the smallest among children not involved in bullying and largest among victims-perpetrators. These results are discussed in the context of the findings of earlier research studies and potential risk factors for the involvement of children in peer violence.

This is a first national research on peer violence in Croatia. As expected, most of the children were not included in peer violence, 64% (it varies with age). According to the sex, girls are more likely to be victims, and victims-bullies, than boys. This also varies with age, so girls in 7th grade are more likely to be victims-bullies, 62,8%, while in 5th grade the percentage is lower - 46,5%. At the same time, boys in 7th grade are 37,2% in this category, but in 5th grade the number is much higher 53,5%. Financial status of the family somewhat plays a role in relation to violence, among victims there is more children who estimate their financial status as a below average, and among bullies, there are more children with above average financial status. "Fewer children experience domestic abuse in relation to psychological aggression and physical punishment, where in turn it is behavior that has been experienced at least once by by a large number of participants. It is noticeable that the children who were not involved in peer violence are in a significantly smaller proportion than other groups that were exposed to domestic violence, in all age groups and with regard to all kinds of domestic violence. Also, in most age groups and types of domestic violence perpetrators-victims are the group in which the largest share was those who had experience domestic violence, followed by victims and then perpetrators." Sušac et al, 2016, 210 (translated by the coder).