Fear of Bullying Victimization in Middle School: Types of Victimization and Advocacy Considerations

This study examines the relation between fear of victimization, types of victimization, and advocacy, adjusted for grade and gender on 834 students from 16 Iranian public middle schools. Multilevel linear modeling was used to explore relations between types of victimization and fear of victimization. The results showed that higher fear of victimization was associated with higher verbal, social, and cyber victimization, and higher peer advocacy. The cyber victimization experience had the most impact on fear of bullying victimization (β = 0.15, P < 0.001). Also, higher teacher and peer advocacy were related to higher fear of bullying victimization (β = 0.11, P < 0.001 for teacher advocacy and β = 0.06, P < 0.05 for peer advocacy). Implications of these findings for school anti-bullying programs as well as directions for future research are discussed.