Concurrent and Longitudinal Associations Between Psychosocial Risk Factors and Peer Victimization Among Elementary School Children

Purpose:  Peer victimization affects a considerable number of youth worldwide; with estimates indicating that approximately 20% experience chronic victimization and up to 60% of youth may be affected at some point during childhood and/or adolescence. Several decades of research point to a number of consequences for those involved. Evidence on traditional forms of victimization (verbal, relational, and physical) has identified individual and ecological risk factors, including internalizing disorders, low self-esteem, relationships with peers, and connection to school. However, less in known about the ways in which risk factors may differ by the form of peer victimization, especially with the emergence of cyber forms of victimization in recent years. Although research examining cyber aggression has increased rapidly in the past decade, surprisingly few longitudinal studies to date have investigated this form of victimization, particularly for children under 10 years of age. Yet recent evidence suggests that cyber victimization is a salient problem for elementary school aged children that cannot be ignored. To that end, the present study examines concurrent and longitudinal associations between psychosocial risk factors and verbal, relational, physical, and cyber forms of victimization among a sample of 3^rd – 5^th grade students.

Methods: A total of 455 students participated in the study from three elementary schools in one local school district in the Midwest (50.7% female; M age = 9.8, SD = .89). Participants completed measures of depressive and anxiety symptoms, self-esteem, perception of peers, social acceptance, school connection, aggressive behavior, and frequency of peer victimization exposure in fall 2014 (T1) and spring 2015 (T2). Separate path models were run in Mplus 7.3 where psychosocial risk factors, gender, and age from T1 were regressed onto verbal, relational, physical, and cyber victimization at T1 and T2 to examine concurrent and longitudinal associations, using the CLUSTER command to control for clustering at the school level. 

Results: Results reveal different patterns of risk by the form of victimization. Patterns also differed slightly for concurrent as compared to longitudinal associations. For verbal, students’ perceptions of peers and their self-reported aggression predicted T1 victimization but anxiety and social acceptance predicted victimization at T2. For relational, again perceptions of peers and aggression predicted T1 victimization but school connection and social acceptance predicted T2 victimization. For physical, concurrent and longitudinal associations were similar with social acceptance, perception of peers, and age predicting victimization at T1 and T2. Self-esteem was also a predictor of physical victimization at T2. For cyber, self-esteem and perception of peers predicted T1 victimization but only anxiety predicted T2 victimization. Several gender and age differences were also found.

Conclusions and Implications: Importantly, these findings extend the research on risk factors for peer victimization, notably by including cyber, which has seldom been the focus of longitudinal research among elementary school children. Results suggest different targets for prevention and intervention may exist by form. Recommendations for developing and testing such strategies will be discussed along with further implications for social work practice on implementing effective preventative interventions in school and community settings.