Poster #74 - The Protective Role of Social Support in the Classroom

• In Event: Poster Session 07

Abstract

An individual’s lifelong emotional-behavioural functioning is determined by a wide range of interpersonal (Cohen & Mckay, 2020; King & Merchant, 2008; Rudolph et al., 2009) and environmental factors (Halpern & Figueiras, 2004; Rutter, 2005; Swanson & Wadhwa, 2008) during childhood. The current study examined whether peer victimization (physical and relational) at the beginning of the school year and social support throughout the school year accounted for a significant amount of variance in predicting a child’s externalizing and internalizing symptoms at the end of the school year. The moderating effect of social support on the association between peer victimization and emotional-behavioural difficulties was also examined. Utilizing a longitudinal archival data set comprised of grade 4 and 5 elementary school students (N = 399), measures of emotional-behavioural difficulties, peer and teacher support, and experiences of physical and relational victimization were obtained. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that physical and relational victimization accounted for a significant amount of variance in predicting externalizing but not internalizing behaviours. Most importantly, peer support emerged as a significant moderator, whereby the relationship between both types of victimization at the beginning of the school year and behavioural outcomes at the end of the school year was weakened when high levels of peer support were available. In the same manner, teacher support significantly mitigated only the association between relational victimization and later behavioural outcomes. One reason for the nonsignificant findings when predicting internalizing issues could be attributed to teachers attending more to overt than covert symptoms (Boudreault & Lessard, 2020; Huber et al., 2012; Stormont et al., 2015). These findings support previous research that found that even one quality peer relationship could ameliorate or reduce the harmful consequences of classroom victimization (Hodges et al., 1999; Salmivalli, 1999; Sainio et al., 2010). Overall, this study illustrates the vital predictive and protective roles of social support in the classroom and highlights the value of building supportive classroom relationships as part of anti-bullying interventions.

Authors

• Anna Patricia Campbell, Carleton University
  Presenting Author

• Tina Daniels

• Rachel Sharp

• Lisa Sarraf, Carleton University