Parental Discipline as a Predictor of Bullying among Adolescents in Ethiopia

Abstract

Bullying is one of the most prevalent forms of school violence. Though studies have indicated that parental behaviours are at the heart of children’s antisocial behavior, it is conceivable that their effects are culture bound. The present research was set to examine the extent to which parental discipline predicts bullying among adolescents in Ethiopia. Data were solicited from 404 randomly selected primary school students whose age ranged between 13 and 15 from Bahir Dar city and Debark town, Ethiopia. Parental discipline was measured by adapting child form of Dimensions of Disciplinary Inventory, DDI (Straus & Fauchier, 2011). Whereas, bullying was measured using participant role scale developed by Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Österman, and Kaukiainen (1996). Multiple Linear Regression was used to analyse data. Results showed that the adjusted R2 was .049 suggesting that close to five per cent of the variance in bullying is explained by the combined impact of the predictors. It was also determined that maternal inductive discipline (β= -.27, t= -2.586, p=.01) and paternal power assertive discipline (β= .163, t= 2.351, p=.019) were significant predictors. We concluded that parental discipline is an important predictor of bullying. Based on our findings we recommended among others that parents be sensitive to their child disciplining behaviours. Key terms: bullying, inductive discipline, power assertive discipline