Washington, June 7 : Men who have bullied their peers in childhood have a high chance of perpetrating violence against an intimate partner in adulthood, according to a new study.

The authors point out, that roughly one-quarter of women will experience violence from intimate partners, and that prior research suggests up to 40 percent of men have been perpetrators of such violence.

The authors sought to determine whether a history of school bullying has any relationship to intimate-partner violence (IPV).

“Recent evidence strongly indicates that bullying peers in school may share common prior causes with intimate-partner violence (IPV) perpetration,” they explained.

Kathryn L. Falb, M. H. S., from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues, surveyed 1,491 men aged 18 to 35.

They found that more than 40 percent admitted they had bullied fellow pupils. Approximately 16 percent of men reported perpetrating physical or sexual IPV in the last year.

Of those men, 38.2 percent reported that they had frequently bullied other students in childhood and 26.1 percent reported that they had rarely bullied other students.

When other risk factors were taken into account, infrequent bullies had 1.53 times the odds as non-bullies to perpetrate IPV, whereas frequent bullies had 3.82 times the odds of perpetrating past-year IPV.

“Critically, this analysis demonstrates that those reporting school bullying are significantly more likely to perpetrate physical or sexual IPV,” the authors concluded.

The study has been published online by the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. (ANI)