The current investigation examines longitudinal differences between bullies, victims, and bully victims in terms of the quality of their relationship with their parents and school performance. We also investigate the transactional association between the quality of the parent-child relationship and bullying behavior, after taking into account the longitudinal association among bullying, victimization, and school performance. The sample consisted of 895 mothers and their children who participated in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care. According to the findings, children in the cooccurring bully victim group were at higher risk to experience continuous conflict with their mothers and to perform worse academically. The findings also offer support for the hypothesized transactional association between bullying and parent-child conflict and closeness. Further, a positive longitudinal transactional association between victimization and parent-child closeness was identified. Finally, school performance was positively related to victimization but was unrelated to bullying behavior. 1. Introduction Bullying at school is a disturbing phenomenon with serious short-term and long-term consequences for both the victim and the perpetrator (e.g., [1–3]). As such, it deserves to be empirically examined so that its parameters can be identified. According to Olweus [4], bullying is defined as a physical, verbal, or psychological attack or intimidation that is intended to cause fear, distress, or harm to the victim. To be considered as bullying, an aggressive act must meet three criteria: (1) it must be intentional, (2) it must be systematic, and (3) it must be characterized by an imbalance of power [5, 6]. Victims of this painful experience are usually students who are perceived as vulnerable, submissive, or different [7, 8] by peers who are in a dominant role, either by virtue of their own strength or by virtue of being associated with a powerful group [9]. In addition to the bully and passive victim groups, a group of children exhibiting bullying behavior but who are also the victims of bullying has been identified. This group, named the bully victim or the aggressive victim group, has been linked to greater individual and contextual problems [10–13]. Based on these findings, the initial purpose of the current investigation is to identify groups of children exhibiting only bullying behavior, experiencing only victimization, and exhibiting cooccurring bullying and victimization across childhood and to examine differences between the identified groups in terms of the
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