Minh T.H. Le, Sara Holton, Huong Thanh Nguyen, Rory Wolfe, Jane Fisher (2015) Prevalence of Poly-Victimisation among Vietnamese High School Students

Although there are more than 30 million children and adolescents in Vietnam, and they account for more than a third of the nation’s population [32], there is limited evidence about poly-victimisation among them. Most previous studies in Vietnam only investigated specific forms of victimisation. The UNICEF Multi Indicator Cluster Survey 3, investigated mothers aged 15–49 years about their care of their under-five year old children and the children's health and development. Conducted in fifty low and middle income countries, it found that Vietnam was among the countries in which corporal punishment and psychological and physical abuse of children were the most prevalent [33]. Nguyen et al [18] investigated 2,581 grade 6–12 students in Vietnam and found that 67% reported at least one form and 6% all four forms of neglect, physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

This is the first study in Vietnam to investigate poly-victimisation among adolescents systematically and comprehensively.

Victimisation was widespread in this sample of high school students with nearly a third having experienced more than ten forms of victimisation.

There were much higher rates of lifetime victimisation among these Vietnamese adolescents than among secondary school students from China [29] and South Africa [31], which are upper-middle income countries. Compared to China—a country which shares many social and cultural similarities with Vietnam, the prevalence was double that reported by Chan [29]. The same conclusion can be made when the results are compared with those reported from high income countries. The prevalence of poly-victimisation in this sample (31%) is much higher than that reported among Australian 23-24-year-old young adults (14%) [3] and triple that reported by Turner et al (10%) among a national sample of American children and adolescents [22, 45]

Exposure to more adverse life events, the presence of a chronic disease or disability, living with a step-parent, perception of family as unhappy, punishment at school and rural residence increased the risk of poly-victimisation when controlling for other variables in this [study's] sample.

Minh T.H. Le, Sara Holton, Huong Thanh Nguyen, Rory Wolfe, Jane Fisher (2015) Poly-Victimisation among Vietnamese High School Students: Prevalence and Demographic Correlates, PLoS ONE 10 (5)