Bullies and delinquents: Personal characteristics and parental styles

This research aimed to analyse the personal characteristics and parental st yles of bullies and delinquents, and to establish which factors were relate d to the bully/delinquent group and which were related to only bullies or o nly delinquents. A self-report questionnaire on bullying and delinquency wa s completed by 113 girls and 125 boys aged 11-14 in a middle school in Rome . Bullying and delinquency were more common among boys than among girls. Bu llying did not vary significantly with age, but delinquency increased with age. Bullying and delinquency were especially related for boys and for olde r students. Only bullies were younger, while only delinquents were older, s uggesting that bullying might be an early stage on a developmental sequence leading to delinquency. Only bullies and only delinquents had different pa renting correlates; only bullies had authoritarian parents and disagreed wi th their parents, whereas only delinquents had conflictual and low supporti ve parents. This suggested that bullying and delinquency are not merely dif ferent behavioural manifestations of the same underlying construct. Parent training interventions might prevent both bullying and delinquency. Copyrig ht (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.