Elementary School Children’s Association of Relational Victimization and Risk-Taking in the Context of the Classroom Norm

• In Event: 2-213 - Understanding Childhood and Early Adolescent Victimization: Impact of Classroom Norms

Integrative Statement

Background: Youth’s risk-taking behavior has been associated with concurrent and future antisocial behavior (McGue et al., 2006; Humphreys et al., 2011; Tieskens et al., 2018). Previous research indicated that negative peer-experiences, such as social exclusion, can affect the development of risk-taking behavior in adolescence and adults (Peake et al., 2013). However, knowledge on the possible impact of negative peer-experiences on the development of childhood risk-taking behavior is lacking. Moreover, cumulating research is indicating that the impact of personal social-experiences, such as relational-victimization, on children’s behavioral development, need to be understood in the context of broader classroom-level factors (Henry et al., 2000; Dijkstra et al., 2008; Brendgen et al., 2015). Therefore, the aim of the present study was to understand how relational-victimization influences the development of risk-taking behavior in the context of classroom-specific injunctive norms towards risk-taking.

Methods: Participants are 784 (49% boys) mainstream elementary schoolchildren, from 54 classrooms from 13 Dutch schools, followed in three cohorts over ages 7 to 11 years (3 waves; age at T1 M = 8.10, SD = .95). Risk-taking propensity was measured using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART; Lejuez, 2002). Teacher-reported relational-victimization was measured with items based on the Social Experience Questionnaire (SEQ-T; Cullerton-Sen & Crick 2005). To assess the injunctive norms per classroom, following the procedure of Henry et al. (2000), we first computed a social preference score for every child in the sample via peer nominations (Coie ,1982). Next, to obtain the social injunctive norm per classroom, the correlation coefficient between social preference and risk-taking was calculated for each classroom. A multilevel random effect cross-lagged autoregressive model was used to investigate the association between relational-victimization and the development of risk-taking (level 1) and the moderating effect of classroom risk-taking norms (level 2; see Figure 1).

Results: Results showed a significant effect of classroom norms on the random slope of the association of relational-victimization with risk-taking behavior (B = -1.66, SE = 0.28, p < .001). A breakdown of this effect showed a region of significance of the classroom norm (r) ranging from -.42 > r > .15. So, at the level of a classroom norm of -.42 (or lower), increased levels of relational-victimization at Tx predicted increases in risk-taking from Tx to Tx+1 (B = 0.41, SE = 0.21, p < .05; see Figure 2). When the classroom norm was .15 (or higher) the association between relational-victimization and risk-taking became negative (B = -0.52, SE = 0.27, p < .05).

Conclusions: Our study showed that adverse social experiences like relational bullying-victimization in school influence risk-taking behavior already in childhood. More importantly, elementary classrooms differ in the appreciation of risk-taking. This difference in classroom norm towards risk-taking influences the effect of individual experiences of victimization on children’s risk-taking development. This implies that interventions targeting bullying should also focus on the social norms that are held by the classroom and especially on the children who show behaviour that is against the norm.

Authors

• Jacintha Tieskens, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Presenting Author

• Joanne Marieke Buil, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susanne Koot, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lydia Krabbendam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pol van Lier, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  Non-Presenting Author