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Abstract
There is extensive scientific evidence of the serious psychological and social effects that peer victimization may have on students, among them internalizing problems such as anxiety or negative self-esteem, difficulties related to low self-efficacy and lower levels of social adjustment. Although a direct relationship has been observed between victimization and these effects, it has not yet been analyzed whether there is a relationship of interdependence between all these measures of psychosocial adjustment. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between victimization and difficulties related to social adjustment among high school students. To do so, various explanatory models were tested to determine whether psychological adjustment (negative self-esteem, social anxiety and social self-efficacy) could play a mediating role in this relationship, as suggested by other studies on academic adjustment. The sample comprised 2060 Spanish high school students (47.9% girls; mean age = 14.34). The instruments used were the scale of victimization from European Bullying Intervention Project Questionnaire, the negative scale from Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents and a general item about social self-efficacy, all of them self-reports. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results confirmed the partial mediating role of negative self-esteem, social anxiety and social self-efficacy between peer victimization and social adjustment and highlight the importance of empowering victimized students to improve their self-esteem and self-efficacy and prevent social anxiety. Such problems lead to the avoidance of social interactions and social reinforcement, thus making it difficult for these students to achieve adequate social adjustment.
Highlights
Peer victimization, which has been recognized as the most serious form of bullying, is a problem that has generated rising public concern given the negative effects such behavior has on the victims
Our study has shown that the negative self-esteem scale has an acceptable internal consistency ( = 0.83) and a good fit of the model (χ2S−B = 2653.89; p < 0.01; non-normed fit index (NNFI) = 0.90; comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.93; root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.07)
The direct effect of victimization on psychological adjustment was shown with a second model whose fit was good (χ2S−B = 6812.87; p < 0.001; NNFI = 0.92; CFI = 0.93; RMSEA = 0.07; SRMR = 0.08; Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) = 6012.87)
Summary
Peer victimization, which has been recognized as the most serious form of bullying, is a problem that has generated rising public concern given the negative effects such behavior has on the victims. Peer Victimization and Psychosocial Adjustment suicide (Díaz-Atienza et al, 2004). Such negative consequences are basically related to the personality characteristics of the victim, given the subjectivity of the victimization process, they could be related to the features characterizing the interpersonal dynamics surrounding the bullying phenomenon. Some studies find that victimization has different outcomes for boys and girls, a significant number of studies report patterns of adjustment that are the same across gender (McDougall and Vaillancourt, 2015). In early and middle adolescence, the experience of victimization predicted without differences social and psychological problems (Kumpulainen et al, 1999; Smith et al, 2004)
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