ArticlePLoS medicine2021
Grade repetition and bullying victimization in adolescents: A global cross-sectional study of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from 2018.
Article in PLoS medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Understanding peer bullying and broader school aggression from a school psychology perspective: a Social-Ecological Model based on extracurricular activities, instructional capacity, and learning contexts.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Global burden of diseases attributable to childhood sexual abuse and bullying: findings from 1990 to 2019 and predictions to 2035.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2026Article
- From victims to aggressors: the link between childhood family abuse and adolescent peer bullying.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- The effect of bullying victimization on internet addiction: mediated by cyberbullying perpetration and moderated by social support.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Breakfast skipping and its association with adolescent bullying victimization: a large-scale multicenter cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Infectious morbidity and white blood cell count associated with grade repetition and school absenteeism.Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2025Observational
- Parental emotional support, self-efficacy, and mental health problems among adolescents in Hong Kong: a moderated mediation approach.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- An Entangled Relationship between Bullying Perception and Psychosocial Dimensions in a Sample of Young Adolescents.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Associations of only-child status with health outcomes and risky behaviors in Korean middle- and high-school students: An outcome-wide analysis.Preventive medicine reports · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGrade repetition is practiced worldwide and varies considerably across the globe. Globally, around 32.2 million students repeated a grade at the primary education level in 2010. Although a large body of research has documented grade repetition's academic and non-academic effects, the limited evidence on associations between grade repetition and school bullying is inconsistent and ambiguous. This study aimed to investigate the global association of grade repetition with bullying victimization in a large-scale school-based cross-sectional study. METHODS AND
findingsWe used the latest global data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018. PISA 2018 was conducted between March and August 2018 in 80 countries and economies among students aged 15-16 years attending secondary education. The students reported their experiences of repeating a grade at any time point before the survey and of being bullied in the past 12 months. The outcome measures were 6 types of bullying victimization. We accounted for the complex survey design and used multivariate logistic regression models to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of grade repetition with bullying victimization after adjusting for potential confounders (sex; age group; migrant status; school type; economic, social, and cultural status; and parental emotional support). This study included 465,146 students (234,218 girls and 230,928 boys) with complete data on grade repetition and bullying victimization in 74 countries and economies. The lifetime prevalence of grade repetition was 12.26%, and 30.32% of students experienced bullying at least a few times a month during the past 12 months. Grade repetition was statistically significantly associated with each type of bullying victimization. The OR (95% CI) of overall bullying victimization for grade repeaters compared with their promoted peers was 1.42 (95% CI 1.32-1.52, p < 0.001). The sex-specific analysis produced similar results in both boys and girls. Furthermore, girls who repeated a grade had higher risks of being made fun of, being threatened, having possessions taken away, and being pushed around than boys. The major limitation is that this study only included students attending schools and therefore may be subject to possible selection bias. In addition, the cross-sectional design hinders us from establishing causality between grade repetition and bullying victimization.
conclusionsIn this study, we observed that, globally, both boys and girls who repeat a grade are at increased risk of being bullied compared with promoted peers, but girls may experience higher risks than boys of specific types of bullying associated with repeating a grade. These findings provide evidence for the association of grade repetition with bullying victimization. Sex differences in risk of experiencing some types of bullying suggest that tailored interventions for girls who repeat a grade may be warranted.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.