In order to unveil the prevalence of violence among students, this part examines both the victimisation rate and the violence involvement rate.
1.1. Victimisation rate
Broadly speaking, the rate of surveyed participants reporting that they were victims of school violence in the school year prior to this survey appeared quite high. Nearly half of the respondents (46.8%) reported to be the victim of at least one violent attack in the last school year. For a rough comparison, TIMSS – a cross-national survey conducted in 37 countries in 1994 (Akiba et.al. 2000) – shows that the mean of national percentages of student victimisation for all of the participating countries is 27.8%. It is critical to note that the TIMSS measured the possibility of being victimised rather than actual violent victimisation (participants were asked, „How often did you think another student might hurt you last month in school?‟), which is clearly higher than the rate of actual violent victimisation. In the meantime, my study measured actual victimisation (i.e. if respondents were violently attacked by another student). Accordingly, even though this study measures the rate of violence victimisation in urban schools, which is probably higher than the national rate of victimisation as measured in TIMSS, 46.8% of respondents reported actual victimisation in comparison with 27.6% reporting potential victimisation, still suggesting that the victimisation rate among high school students in the investigated schools in Hanoi is far above the normal range.
The following figure shows in detail the percentages of school violence victims among students participated in my survey in the year prior to the survey by type of violent attacks.
Figure 3: Percentage of survey respondents reported being victim of school violence by type of violence
38.9%
19.1%
13.1%
2%
10.4%
1.3%
0 10 20 30 40 50
Being sworn at, humiliated Belongings destroyed Verbally threatened Being threatened by a weapon Being beaten Being hurt by a weapon
As shown in Figure 3, verbal attacks like swearing and humiliating and verbal threats are the most common type of school violence (38.9% and 13.1%
respectively). Only 10.4% of the respondents reported that they were beaten, and only 1.3% hurt by a weapon. These latter rates seem low compared to other rates of violent victimisation. However, compared to statistics on school violence in the United States, for example, these rates turn out to be quite high. According to a nationwide official investigation in the US in 2005, only 1% of students reported physically violent victimisation,12 which includes both trivial offences (as hitting or kicking) and serious violent crimes (aggravated assault). Among those students, less
12 Violent crime was defined in Dinkes et.al. 2006 as simple assault along with serious violent crimes including rape, sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault. This definition of violence is broader than the definition of violence applied in this study which does not include robbery. Besides, Dinkes and his colleagues studied student victimisation both at school and away from school, which includes both student violence and violent attacks against students by anyone in society. Hence, the range of violent incidents in their study is also much broader than in this study.
than half of them (i.e. less than 0.5% of all respondents) reported that they were victims of serious violent crime (Dinkes et.al. 2006).
Besides verbal attacks and physical attacks, 19.1% of the survey participants reported that their belongings were destroyed by other students with intent to harm.
Different from other types of student violence, destroying other‟s belongings as a form of violence (i.e. with intent to harm) hardly happens alone. Instead, it usually comes along with other types of violence such as name-calling or fighting.
Intentionally tearing other‟s clothes mainly happens in girl fights. In most girl fights put on video clips in Vietnam, the victim‟s clothes were torn. This humiliation aspect is one of the most notable differences between girl and boy fights, which will be discussed later.
Yet, students sometimes destroy other‟s belongings at play or by accident, which is not violent conduct according to the definition of violence applied in this study. To differentiate violent conduct from conduct accidentally resulting in violent consequences (i.e. unintentionally destroying other‟s belongings while playing), the respondents were reminded before they answered the questionnaire that this was a study of violent behaviour and therefore they were not to report acts without intent to harm even though such might have led to serious consequences.
1.2. Violence involvement rate
Survey data shows that 175 out of 560 respondents, or 31.3%, reported that they had violent clashes with other students in the year prior to the survey.
Table 2: Rate of students involved in school violence in the year prior to the survey
Frequency Percent Valid Percent
Valid No 385 68.8 68.8
Yes 175 31.3 31.3
Total 560 100.0 100.0
On average, close to one third of the students participating in this survey reported their involvement in a violent confrontation with peers, but the rate of students engaging in a violent confrontation with peers in each school varied greatly from one school to the other.
Figure 4: Percentage of students reporting their involvement in school violence by school
17.1% 21.7%
61.1%
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
S1 S2 S3
As shown in Figure 4, only 17.1% of students at the „S1‟ school took part in at least one violent clash in the last school year, whereas this rate for S3 reached 61.1%. The data suggests that schools have certain roles in determining the violence involvement rate among their students. However, to my knowledge, this role is mainly due to the enrolment criteria: The S1 admits good students; S3 accepts students with low profile. Yet, S1 sampled in this survey provides a better school life for its students (e.g. better facilities, various interesting extracurricular activities;
qualified, friendly teaching staff) than do the other two schools. It is unlikely that these factors have an influence on the rate of students involved in violence because
both the student‟s attachment to school and the student‟s involvement in school activities are found unrelated to the student‟s involvement in violence as discussed later in Chapter 5.
In summary, data shows that violence is quite rampant among high school students in the sampled schools in Hanoi, represented by the high rates of students who were victims of a violent attack and students involved in violent clashes. The next question is, how do students resort to this tool and in what circumstances, and resorting to this tool leads to what end?