Poster #229 - School and Cyber Victimization as a Precursor or Consequence? Longitudinal Links with Adolescent Psychosocial Adjustment

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Social Relationships

Integrative Statement

School-based victimization research has consistently shown that victimization experiences predict psychosocial problems such as feelings of depression and loneliness (Bond et al., 2001). However, results have been mixed when testing if psychosocial problems serve as a precursor to school victimization (Tran, Cole and Weiss, 2012). The extent to which this pattern is similar with online victimization has remained relatively unexamined (Van den Eijnden et al., 2014), despite the fact that cyberbullying experiences are recognized as an important social and health concern. Two central aims guide the current study; first, to characterize the trajectories of school and cyber victimization across the first three years of high school, and second, to test bidirectional pathways between school and cyber victimization as well as psychosocial adjustment (i.e., loneliness, depressive symptoms) over time.

Participants included 4,339 students (54% girls) from 223 high schools. The sample is ethnically diverse with the largest groups including Latino/a (29%), White (20%), Multiethnic/Biracial (13%), East/Southeast Asian (12%) and Black/African-American (9%) students. Participants completed surveys in ninth, tenth and eleventh grade. School victimization was assessed with four items from the Peer Victimization Scale (Neary & Joseph, 1994) and cyber victimization with four similar items. Five items measured student’s loneliness (Asher and Wheeler, 1985) and seven items measured depressive symptoms (Kovacs, 1992). All measures showed good reliability across the three waves (’s >.75).

Unconditional growth curve models were run to estimate the developmental changes in traditional and cyber victimization from ninth to eleventh grade. Results revealed that school victimization significantly declined over the high school years, whereas cyber victimization increased over time (Table 1). To test the bidirectional associations between each type of victimization and psychosocial adjustment, cross-lagged models were tested. Bidirectional links were found across all three years between school and cyber victimization. In addition, there were consistent bidirectional associations between school victimization and loneliness. That is, youth who were victimized at school one year reported feeling lonelier the next year, and youth who felt lonelier one year were more likely to be victimized the following year. No associations were found between cyber victimization and loneliness. The depressive symptoms results revealed a more complex pattern (Figure 1). Bidirectional links between both types of victimization and depressive symptoms emerged from tenth to eleventh grade (but not 9th to 10th grade), suggesting that associations between peer mistreatment and emotional problems may strengthen over time.

The current findings suggest that across the high schools years, school victimization experiences become less prominent, while cyber victimization incidents increase. Moreover, the (bi)directional patterns between victimization differed for loneliness and depressive symptoms indicating that victimization experiences that occur at school versus online have differential effects on adolescent’s psychosocial adjustment (Van den Eijnden et al., 2014). The implications for interventions targeting school versus online victimization will be discussed.

Authors

• Guadalupe Espinoza, California State University, Fullerton
  Presenting Author

• Hannah L Schacter, University of Southern California
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jaana Juvonen, University of California - Los Angeles
  Non-Presenting Author