The Reasons for Non-Disclosure of Victimization Among Dutch Elementary School Students

Abstract

Abstract Bullying is a major public health problem and disclosure of victimization is rarely seen. Disclosure is fundamental to change the bullying situation but especially child's disclosure to the teacher is not common. Factors and reasons that underlie the high percentage of bullied children who do not disclose their victimization to their teachers are not well studied. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test if social phobia in children, classroom climate, and teachers' view of victimization can predict disclosing victimization to the teacher. By using anonymous online questionnaires, levels of social phobia, classroom climate and teachers' view of victimization were measured in a sample of Dutch children. Logistic regression analysis, controlling for ethnicity, age, gender and class size, was used to analyze the collected data. Results revealed no significant associations between the variables. This research provides no evidence that high levels of social phobia, high classroom climate or having teachers who do not think that bullying is normal facilitate the disclosure process of chronically victimized children to their teachers. Further research will hopefully bring insights to this inadequately studied domain to give the affected children the urgently required help. Keywords: social phobia, classroom climate, normative beliefs, bullying, disclosure, cross-national differences