Since 2011, TIMSS has asked students about how often they experienced various bullying behaviors by their school peers, such as being teased, excluded from activities, or physically hurt. The TIMSS 2019 fourth grade Student Bullying scale is described in Exhibit 8.11 (see About the Scale). Students were assigned to one of three categories of the scale (“never or almost never,” “about monthly,” “about weekly”) according to their reports of how often they experienced 11 bullying behaviors.

Exhibits 8.12 and 8.13 present the scale results in relation to mathematics achievement and science achievement, respectively. Internationally, the majority of fourth grade students (63%, on average) reported to be “never or almost never” bullied by school peers, 29 percent reported being bullied “about monthly,” and only 8 percent were bullied “about weekly.” Reports from fourth grade students’ about being bullied were related to their average achievement in mathematics and science. Across countries, there was a negative association between fourth grade students’ reports about the frequency of being bullied and average achievement, with students bullied “about weekly” having substantially lower average mathematics achievement (451) and lower average science achievement (437) than students bullied “about monthly” (495 and 486 in mathematics and science, respectively). Students in the “never or almost never” category had the highest achievement on average—512 in mathematics and 503 in science.

The eighth grade Student Bullying scale used in previous TIMSS assessments was revised in TIMSS 2019 to better reflect current trends related to social media and cyberbullying. As described in Exhibit 8.14, the scale in 2019 included 14 items with an emphasis on bullying experienced through digital devices (see About the Scale). Students were assigned to one of three scale categories (“never or almost never,” “about monthly,” “about weekly”) according to their reports of how often they experienced these 14 behaviors.

Exhibits 8.15 and 8.16 provide the results for the TIMSS 2019 eighth grade Student Bullying scale in relation to mathematics achievement and science achievement, respectively. On average, more than two-thirds of eighth grade students (71%) reported being bullied “never or almost never,” and these students had the highest average achievement—496 in mathematics and 499 in science. With each reported increase in the frequency they experienced bullying, eighth grade students had progressively lower average achievement to the extent that there was a 68-point difference in mathematics achievement and a 78-point difference in science achievement between students in the “never or almost never” category and students in the “about weekly” category. Students bullied “about monthly” also had much higher achievement than students bullied “about weekly” (482 vs. 428 in mathematics and 482 vs. 421 in science).