How Classroom Composition and Size Shape Adolescent School Victimization: Insights from a Doubly Latent Multilevel Analysis of Population Data

Adolescent school victimization is a socially regulated experience, making it important to consider classroom-level compositional effects beyond individual characteristics. This study investigated the role of classroom characteristics, specifically, classroom socioeconomic status, average academic achievement, sex composition, immigrant density, and class size, in shaping students’ experiences of school victimization. Victimization was analyzed using a doubly latent multilevel modeling approach, which accounts for measurement error at both individual and classroom levels. The analyses drew on the entire Italian 10th grade student population (N = 254,177; M age = 15.58 years; SD age = 0.74) and a considerable number of classrooms (N classrooms = 14,278), a sample size rarely available in the social sciences. Results indicated that classroom characteristics played a significant role in victimization, beyond individual-level variables. The most important factors were sex and prior academic achievement: classrooms with a higher proportion of male students experienced greater victimization, whereas higher average achievement was associated with lower victimization. A greater proportion of second-generation immigrant students, but not first-generation students, was also associated with increased victimization. By contrast, classroom socioeconomic status and class size were not significant predictors of victimization. In conclusion, these findings highlight the importance of considering the additional influence of the classroom context for school-based interventions, particularly the composition of classrooms in terms of sex and academic achievement, when addressing student victimization.