Patterns of involvement in bullying and cyberbullying among adolescents: A latent class analysis.

Bullying is a critical problem due to its high prevalence and health outcomes. Cyberbullying, a more recent form, tends to show worse outcomes, especially when it co-occurs with face-to-face contexts. This study aimed to identify latent classes of adolescent involvement in bullying and cyberbullying, looking for overlap between these indicators, and their associations with psychological symptoms, substance use, screen time and sociodemographic factors in a census-based sample of 4.280 Brazilian students from 13 schools, ranging from the seventh grade of middle school to the twelfth grade of high school. The best fitting model was composed of three classes: the "Uninvolved," the "Predominantly Traditional Victimized" and the "Multicontext Victim-Perpetrators", with no pure aggressor nor purely cyber-involved class. Multicontext involvement showed greater associations with the male sex, non-white ethnicity, lower age, psychological symptoms and substance use, while no associations with screen time were found. The distinct profiles found reflect an overlap of roles and contexts as well as associations between deeper involvement and key vulnerabilities including substance use and psychological symptoms. Thus, early integrative prevention strategies that address shared points of bullying and cyberbullying, particularly among youth facing multiple vulnerabilities, are required.