What social and environmental contexts contribute to bullying and mental health?

Our goal is to understand how individual factors, social factors, and broader environmental factors simultaneously and interactively contribute to youth bullying and mental health. Specifically, we aim to understand:

• What contexts in society are contributing to the high rates of youth bullying in Canada?
• For whom do these societal contexts contribute to bullying experiences?

In a sample of 12,721 students from the Ontario Health and Peer Relations Study (HPRS), we will link self-reported data using school postal codes to regional Statistics Canada data on income inequality, percentage immigrants, rates of violence and urbanicity to understand what factors contribute to youth bullying and mental health.

This study is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant with co-investigators Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt (University of Ottawa) and Dr. Tony Volk (Brock University).

Stay tuned for results of this study!