Peer Victimization, School Connectedness, and Mental Well-Being among Adolescents

Abstract

The objective of study was to explore relationship between peer victimization (PV), school connectedness (SC) and mental well-being (MWB) among adolescents. It also aimed to explore the differences based on gender and status of school across study variables. Multidimensional Peer Victimization Scale (Mynard & Joseph, 2000), School Connectedness Scale (SCS) (Lohmeire & Lee, 2011), and Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (Stewart-Brown & Janmohamed, 2008) were used to assess study variables. In first phase, initial review of instruments was carried out. Experts from field of psychology were approached and instruments were adapted as per Pakistani culture. In the second phase, data was collected from 400 school and college going adolescents with age ranging from 14 to 19 years (M = 16.16, SD = 1.86) through convenience sampling. It was found that PV and its subscales (i.e., Physical Victimization, Verbal Victimization, Social Manipulation, and Attack on Property) were negatively related with SC and MWB. Mediational analysis indicated that SC mediates the relationship between PV and MWB and accounts for an additional 8% variance. Nonsignificant differences were observed with reference to gender and status of school on PV and its subscales except for Social Manipulation where girls had higher scores than boys. Nonsignificant differences were also apparent on SC and MWB across gender and status of school. Across status of school, students from government schools had higher scores on social manipulation as compared to students from private schools. It can be inferred that peer victimization negatively affects mental well-being by lowering school connectedness.