Factors Contributing to Chinese Children Changing from Aggressive Victims into Reactive Aggressors

This study attempts to seek for the behavioral transition of bullying in early adolescence, especially exploring indicators which could be responsible for the transition from aggressive victims into reactive aggressors.This research focused on children’s behavior transition in mainland China. Nowadays, school bullying is absolutely not a new phenomenon and a majority of children engage in bullying at some point during their school years. To our knowledge, existing differences between victims and bullies are in degree rather than in kind. For example, some former victims may become bullies and commit acts of retribution because children who are victimized by peers, especially those who are repeatedly victimized, are at risk of becoming acceleratively aggressive as well as increasingly depressed and anxious over time. Since rare existing literature reported the victim-bully cycle at the school level, this study attempts to seek for the behavioral transition of bullying in early adolescence, especially exploring indicators which could be responsible for the transition from aggressive victims, rather than passive victims who would be normal youngsters in the absence of bullies, into reactive aggressors. This study is conducted in 2 secondary schools in mainland China, Feb., 2010. Totally, 572 students have been recruited into sampling and 223 students and their parents have been selected as targeted group into assessment. Due to time limitation, retrospective research method is adopted. All data is analyzed by SPSS 17.0 and AMOS7.0.