School Fairness as a Bullying Victimization Protective Factor: Structure or Personality?

Recent research finds students' perceived school fairness to be a protective factor against bullying. These findings are consistent with organizational research suggesting organizations and states characterized by more procedural justice have less rule-breaking in their membership. The rationale in extant research is based on structural arguments about the nature of the organization or state, but the research overwhelmingly measures perceived fairness as an individual characteristic. This approach creates omitted variable bias via the personality trait of agreeableness, which has a robust negative relationship with bullying victimization and is likely to be correlated with an individual's perception of school fairness. Further, extant research tends to define fairness narrowly as fairness around punishments, neglecting fairness in grading. Using a nationally representative sample of 3,098 Tunisian middle and high school students in 40 schools, this study addresses these gaps using multilevel models to test relationships between structural (school-level) academic fairness averages while controlling for individual-level perceived academic fairness. Item non-response is handled via multiple imputation using chained equations, and survey weights are used to produce national prevalence estimates. About 21.1% of Tunisian students were victims of physical bullying, and 52.7% of Tunisian students were victims of verbal bullying by other children. Controlling for academic performance and other risk factors for bullying victimization, individual-level perceived academic fairness was associated with significantly less physical and verbal bullying victimization. Controlling for individual-level perceived academic fairness, average school academic fairness (using school-level means for the same variable) was associated with significantly less verbal bullying victimization. Neglect was also significantly associated with both types of bullying victimization, and intimate partner violence exposure was significantly associated with physical bullying victimization. Findings suggest the need to target or include structural fairness as part of the protective measures for bullying in schools.