Individual and classroom-level associations of within classroom friendships, friendship quality and a sense of peer community on bullying victimization

For most students, attending school entails daily intense social interactions with classmates in a classroom context. While many of these interactions are positive and lead to the development of friendships and a shared classroom community, some students instead suffer peer harassment and bullying. According to the social-ecological theory these disparate social phenomena may be linked. The aim of this study was to examine how number of friends, perceived friendship quality, and a sense of peer community were associated with bullying victimization at both the individual and classroom level. Additionally, to thoroughly investigate the nuances of different types of friendship qualities the concept was analyzed both as one unified construct and as five distinct dimensions (companionship, conflict, help, security, and closeness). Survey data from 587 Swedish upper elementary school students (56.22% girls; Mage = 11.72, SD = 0.96) across 54 classrooms was collected and analyzed using multilevel regression. Results showed that having at least one friend was negatively associated with victimization and that victimization was less prevalent in classrooms where students experienced a shared sense of community. Furthermore, while high-quality friendships were associated with less victimization at both the individual and classroom level, when the five dimensions where considered, only conflictual and helpful friendships were significantly associated with victimization (on both levels of analysis for conflictual friendships and only on the individual level for helpful friendships). Together these results highlights the importance of schools helping students cultivate high-quality friendships, teaching constructive conflict management and promoting a more prosocial classroom community.