Investigation of the relationships between peer bullying and friendshıp in primary school children

Research on peer bullying and friendship quality has shown that positive friendship relations provide high prosocial behaviors, social cohesion and self-esteem to the individual and bring low conflict, a reduction in aggressive behaviors and preclude the peer bullying, a global treat. To understand the relationship between friendship and bullying of individuals in the face of increasing bullying behaviors will contribute to creating positive educational environments. In this context, it was aimed to reveal the relationship between bullying and victimization and companionship characteristics of 3rd and 4th grade students in primary school. The research was carried out with a total of 590 students (298 female and 292 male) in the primary schools of Şanlıurfa province Siverek in the first semester of 2018-2019 academic year. The cases of bullying and victimization of the study sample were determined by "Peer Bullying Determination Scale-Child Form" and the friendship qualifications the students have been determined by "Friendship Quality Scale". In this study, Simple Linear Regression Analysis, Independent Sample t Test and One-way ANOVA test were used to determine the relationship between bullying and bullying exposure on the data obtained from scales. Significance value was taken as p <0.05 in all analyzes performed. As a result of the research, it was seen that 1.9% of the students were bullies, 27.8% were victims, 45.9% were bully-victims and 24.4% were bystanders. It was found that the most common type of bullying which students faced is physical bullying, and the least common type bullying is inflicting damage to property. While there were significant differences in variances of gender, grade level and father's education level in the case of bullying and victimization, no differences were found between socio-economic level and maternal education level. It was found that individuals' friendship qualifications differed only according to the father education level variance. Finally, it has shown that friendship quality has a significant relationship with bullying and being exposed to bullying variances. The quality of friendship shows that it negatively predicts bullying and victimization. In summary, it was seen that friendship quality and peer bullying are the cases affecting each other and the contribution of the findings to the relevant literature was discussed within the framework of the results.