Investigation of Transitions in Bullying/Victimization Statuses of Gifted and General Education Students

Abstract

To examine the experiences of victimization and bullying among gifted students and their general education peers, we applied a latent transition analysis with longitudinal data from 299 gifted and 689 general education students (fifth to ninth graders). We identified 4 latent statuses for victimization (4.8%–5.2%, frequent victims; 7.4%–12.2%, frequent relational victims; 28.7%–35.8%, occasional victims; 46.8%–59.2%, infrequent victims) and 3 latent statuses for perpetration (3.9%–5.6%, frequent perpetrators; 22.2%–29.7%, occasional relational perpetrators; 66.4%–72.2%, infrequent perpetrators). There was no difference in victimization experiences between the gifted and general education students, but there were group differences in the prevalence rates and their changes in transition patterns in perpetration. Further, the effect of grade level was found to affect the transition patterns of perpetration; for gifted students (not their general education peers), the probabilities of being a frequent victim correlated with the probabilities of being a frequent perpetrator later.