If all victims of school bullying tend to get lower grades, the effects are even worse on high achieving black and Hispanic students, a new study by Lisa Williams, doctoral student, sociology has found.

"Although academic achievement is largely influenced by family background and school characteristics, our study suggests that the experience of being bullied also influences students' grades," Williams said.

Williams and co-author Anthony Peguero, an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Tech, conclude that "bullying has implications for achievement regardless of racial and ethnic background, but seems to be especially detrimental for subsets of certain racial and ethnic groups."

Their analysis was made using representative national data from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, which asked students if they suffered school bullying during the 2001-2002 school year when they were in 10th grade.Williams and Peguero compared the grade-point averages of the participants in the study in 9th grade, before suffering bullying, with the results obtained by the same group of students in the 2003-2004 school year, when they were in 12th grade.

"Stereotypes about black and Latino youth suggest that they perform poorly in school. High achieving blacks and Latinos who do not conform to these stereotypes may be especially vulnerable to the effect bullying has on grades," Williams said.

Williams added that policy-makers and educators should think about the effect intimidation has on student performance and urged them to invest resources in protecting students, which, according to the study, would have positive effects on their grades, and in particular on the achievements of racial and ethnic minorities.

The study was presented August 23 at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Read the article in U. S. News & World Report.