SCHOOL PROBLEMS WITH SLEEP HABITS AND BULLYING OPPORTUNITY: A STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELLING ANALYSIS

Abstract

In a setting where the school has become a larger stage with regard to bullying practices (traditional and online) and victimization, it is important to understand the predictive and mediating factors of these disruptive behaviours within the school and considering the different schedules of teenage students. Extracurricular activities (outside school), enrichment activities (in school) and chronotype (sleep habits) should be analysed considering these behavioural problems inside and outside the classroom, maintaining the terminological line of the school aggression phenomenon. Thus, firstly, 117 Portuguese adolescents were aleatory recruited from the 5^th to 9th grade and examined regarding chronotype and bullying/cyberbullying behaviours (in two dimensions of victimization and perpetration). The data collection was supported by the schools’ board directors and teachers where the study took place. Afterwards, different models of structural equations were developed in order to examine how the responses determined the structural relationship between factors and, above all, to identify predictors and mediators of bullying, in its two opposite dimensions. The results of the multilevel structures revealed that adolescents with more aggressive behaviour had the following characteristics: they are more the evening type attend more curricular enrichment activities, spend more hours in the same school space, conduct fewer out-of-school activities, and have the average period of sleep altered during school days. Contrary to expectations, no expressive and significant relationships were found between gender and perpetration or victimization. Attending those results, schools should start with the review of schedules, school activities and family and student monitoring regarding perceived bullying behaviours.