Peer physical aggression and its association with aggressive beliefs, empathy, self-control, and cooperation skills among students in a rural town of China.

This study explored the prevalence of peer physical aggression (PPA) and its association with aggressive beliefs, empathy, self-control, and cooperation skills among 1,719 7th-to-9th-grade students in a rural town in the central China province of Henan. The data were collected by the self-administered questionnaire anonymously. Results showed that 17.9% of the students reported that they had one or more times of physical aggressive behaviors toward their peers in the past 12 months. The reported rate of PPA was significantly higher in boys (24.7%) than in girls (10.7%). After adjusting the factors of gender and grade, result of logistic regression analysis showed that having a higher level of aggressive beliefs was PPA risk factor; a higher level of self-control was protective factor, but there were no significant association between PPA and the factors of empathy and cooperation skills. These results indicated that helping students to decrease their aggressive beliefs and to improve their self-control skill would aid in the prevention of youth violence.