BULLYING IN HAZING PRACTICES: A STUDY ON HIGHER EDUCATION

Studies about bullying, mostly diffused from Olweus’ studies since the 1970s, have been, in the most part, focused on non-higher education. However, problems between higher education students have started to arise in Portugal, some of which seem to be associated to hazing practices. Due to this new challenge within higher education, some studies that aim to develop instruments to assess situations of aggression and intimidation on this level of education have started to be performed (e.g. Sabino, Jesus, Simões & Nave; 2009; Silva, 2013), while others try to disclose the role of hazing practices (Vieira, 2013) in students’ lives.

This research aims to contribute to the demand placed by this new challenge in higher education. More specifically, it focuses on how students from a Portuguese higher education institution perceive hazing practices and bullying situations in hazing practices, while putting in perspective implications on academic performance.

Data was collected through the scale in “Avaliação das Situações de Bullying nas Praxes do Ensino Superior” (Evaluation of Situations of Bullying in Hazing Practices in Higher Education), a 15-item scale divided in three dimensions:
1) Positive relation with the hazing practices;
2) Negative relation with the hazing practices and
3) Social dimension (Jesus, Matos, Nave & Simões, 2010).

247 students of both sexes, aged 18 to 43 and from different grade levels, courses and departments have taken part in this study.

The results, using non-parametric techniques, confirm significant differences in “Positive relation with the hazing practices” between males and females (p=.001< α=.05) and among age groups (“20 years old or less” and “more than 20 years old”; p=.024< α=.05). Furthermore, they allow us to observe significant differences between the students’ grade levels (1st, 2nd or 3rd year) taking into account the “Positive relation with the hazing practices” (p=.04< α=.05) and the “Social dimension” (p=.017< α=.05). Besides, significant differences have been noted between the departments where students belong regarding “Positive relation with the hazing practices” (p=.02< α=.05) and “Negative relation with the hazing practices” (p=.02< α=.05).

The correlations between the utilized subscales (“Positive relation with the hazing practices”, “Negative relation with the hazing practices” and “Social dimension”) are statistically significant, taking in consideration the significance levels of 1% (respectively p=.02; p=.00 and p=.00).