Bullying Victimization Among Music Ensemble and Theatre Students in the United States

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the prevalence of reported school victimization through physical, verbal, social/relational, and cyberbullying aggression among music ensemble and theatre students in the middle and high schools of the United States as compared to their peers involved in other school-based activities. We analyzed nationally representative data from five waves (2005–2013) of the biannual School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a joint project of the U.S. Bureau for Justice Statistics and the National Center for Education Statistics. Logistic regression results showed that music ensemble and theatre students were significantly more likely to be victimized by in-person bullying than their non-arts peers. A significant interaction between sex and arts status showed that male music and theatre students faced the greatest risk of being subjected to physical bullying aggression while female music and theatre students faced the greatest risk of victimization through social/relational aggression. Though incidents of experiencing hate speech were rare, music and theatre students faced a significantly greater risk of hate speech victimization than non-arts students. The overall probability of a music student being victimized by any type of in-person bullying was .34 compared to .25 for non-arts students.