An Exploratory Study of Secondary School Student Victimization in Kosovo and Its Correlates

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Most of the existing literature and evidence on school violence and victimization comes from high-income countries, and there is a lack of evidence on developing countries. This study examines the prevalence of student victimization and its association with individual, family, and school-related correlates, focusing on the representative sample from 13 municipalities of Kosovo among 12,040 students. Overall, 77% of the students reported being victimized by at least one type of harmful act of violence in the last month; the most prevalent acts were cursing or verbal victimization (61%), followed by pushing and grabbing (45%) while being threatened with a weapon was relatively rare (2.2%). Of all factors, students' perception of risky peers had the most significant impact on school victimization. The authors recommend a multidisciplinary approach is required to respond to the complexity of school victimization in Kosovo.