Investigation of the effect of school cohesion on bullying with the mediation of parenting styles in secondary high school male students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of school cohesion on bullying with the mediation of parenting styles. The research method is descriptive and of correlational type. All secondary high school male students in Sanandaj at the number of 7618, who studied in the first semester of the 2018-2019 academic years formed a statistical population of the study, among which 366 students accidentally entered the sample in several stages. The research tools included Espelage & Holt's bullying scale (2001), school cohesion scale of Springer et al. (2009) and Bumrind’s parenting styles questionnaire (1972). The statistical method used was multiple regression analysis and path analysis. According to the findings, the direct effect of school cohesion on victimization, bullying, powerful parenting style and authoritarian parenting style (P <0.01) was significant. The indirect effect of school cohesion on victimization mediated by authoritarian parenting style was significant (P <0.05). The indirect effect of school cohesion on bullying mediated by powerful and authoritarian parenting styles was significant (P <0.05). The results show the importance of school and parenting styles in controlling passive and active behaviors in bullying. Therefore, bullying can be reduced by teaching parents how to use the right parenting style and teaching teachers how to increase their interest and attract students to school.