Bullying at secondary school: Analyzing the profile of the aggressor

School violence causes physical and mental harm on students; moreover, professors point out to the violence like one of the actions that more interfere in the teaching, not alone because the class is interrupted, but for the anguish and the desire of abandoning the school on the part of victims. This paper seeks to identify the prevalence of victims and aggressors and the predominant type of violence among teenagers enrolled in public secondary schools in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, Mexico and particularly, to analyze the factors associated to psychological and familiar profile of the adolescent aggressor. This is a cross-sectional, analytical study. The information was gathered by questionnaire applied in school to 1706 students between January 2009 and December 2010. The sample design was random and multistage. Logistic regression model was used to identify factors associated to be considered an adolescent aggressor. Furthermore, sociopathies were assessed through the Eysenck test. Results reveal that around 24% of students can be considered victims, while about 10% can be considered aggressors;the most common type of aggression was verbal, followed by physical violence. The conjunction of factors such as familiar violence, friends with criminal record and sociopathies has a synergic effect to encourage a teenager to become an aggressor. CONCLUSIONS: The presence of family violence conditions, sociopathic characteristics and the social path of the teenager are factors associated with the aggressor’s status. Thus, psychological and familiar profiles are key elements to identify timely the adolescent aggressor in secondary school and search for appropriate strategies to change this behavior.