Methods: a total of 479 teenagers (271 girls, 208 boys) who attended a public high school in the province of Quebec composed the sample. The mean age of the participants was 13.00 (SD = 0.81) years old. Bullying was measured by the Olweus (1989) questionnaire of school bullying. Aggressive and delinquent behaviours were estimated by the Achenbach’s behaviour inventory (1991). The risk of school dropout was evaluated by using the questionnaire developed by Potvin et al. (2003).  This questionnaire included five subscales a) parental involvement (level of implication in school activities of their adolescent), b) parental supervision (level of information that parents had concerning their adolescent), c) the adolescent’s attitude toward school (importance that they put on school achievement), d) the adolescent’s perception of their level of school success, e) the adolescent’s academic aspirations. School performance was measured by a question where we asked at the adolescent to identify their school’s performance between a) 49% and less, b) 50% to 59%, c) 60% to 69%, d) 70 to 79%, e) 80 to 89%, f) 90% and more. Participants completed questionnaires during a regular class.

Findings: results indicated that 10.6% of the adolescents reported to have participated in a bullying episode (23 girls, 28 boys), while 11% said have been victim of bullying (26 girls, 27 boys) since the beginning of the school year.  There were 4.2 % of the adolescents who reported to have participated and said to have also been victim of bullying (10 girls, 10 boys). On the order hand, there were 30.9% of the adolescents who said to have never participated and never been victims of bullying (96 girls, 52 boys). Analyses of variance were also performed to compare roles in bullying episodes and gender differences on aggressive, delinquent behaviours and on risk of school dropout. No significant effects had been found on gender and role by gender. As expected, bully adolescents reported significantly more aggressive and delinquent behaviours than the victim, bully/victim and adolescents without bullying experiences. The three groups of adolescents who experimented bullying episodes (bully, victim, bully/victim) reported a significantly higher risk of school dropout than adolescents without experiences of bullying. The bully adolescents and bully/victim adolescents reported significantly less parental involvement in their daily school activities than the victim and the adolescents who reported no bullying experiences. The victim adolescents presented more positive attitudes toward school than bully adolescents, while bully and bully/victim adolescents reported less positive attitude than adolescents who reported to have never experimented bullying episodes. Pearson’s correlations were performed between the five subscales of school dropout, aggressive and delinquent behaviours.  Analyses were conducted separately for each role in bullying experiences and gender. In the group of adolescents without bullying experiences, aggressive behaviours were significantly correlated with negative attitudes towards school and a low level of parental supervision. In this same group, delinquent behaviours were correlated with a low level of parental implication, negative attitudes towards school and a low level of parental supervision. In the victim and bully adolescents however, aggressive behaviours were negatively correlated with attitudes towards school, delinquent behaviours were correlated with negative attitudes towards school and a low level of parental supervision. In the bully/victim adolescents, a low level of parental supervision was associated with aggressive and delinquent behaviours particularly in the case of girls. Finally, a chi-square analysis was performed for both girls and boys in order to verify the link between bullying and school performance. No significant differences were found.  

Conclusion: these results show the links between the negative social experience (bullying), the adoption of negative behaviours (aggressive and delinquent components) and the risk of the adolescent to compromise their academic formation. They also present the association between those negative interactions and some personal and parental characteristics in link with school variables.