An ethnically diverse sample of 6th-grade students completed peer nomination procedures that were used to create subgroups of students with reputations as victims, aggressors, aggressive victims, and socially adjusted (neither aggressive nor victimized). Self-report data on psychological adjustment, attributions for peer harassment, and perceived school climate were gathered. In addition, homeroom teachers rated participating students on academic engagement and students’ grades were collected from school records. Victims reported the most negative self-views, aggressors enjoyed the most positive self-views, and aggressive victims fell between these two groups, although their psychological profile more closely resembled that of victims. However, all three subgroups encountered more school adjustment problems when compared to their socially adjusted classmates. Different pathways to school adjustment problems for aggressors and victims were examined. For victims, characterological self-blame for victimization and psychological maladjustment were the key mediators, whereas for aggressors, the significant pathway was mainly through perceived unfairness of school rules. Analyses by ethnicity revealed that African American boys were most likely to be perceived as aggressive and as aggressive victims and they were doing most poorly in school. Implications for intervention with subgroups of problem behavior youth and the particular vulnerabilities of African American adolescents were discussed.
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Notes
Four variables examined in the present research (loneliness, social anxiety, depression, and teacher-rated engagement) also were included in the Juvonen et al. (2003) study of behavioral subgroups. However, different cutoff scores were used in Juvonen et al. (.50 as opposed to .75 sd above or below the standardized mean on peer-nominated aggression and victimizations), five groups (including borderline youth) rather than four groups were created, and there were no tests of relationships between variables. Juvonen et al. also examined peer status variables (i.e., perceived coolness and peer rejection) that were not a part of the present analyses. Thus, there was little conceptual and empirical overlap between the present research and the previous study.
Preliminary analyses using only the Multiethnic sample showed no differences between Asian, Caucasian, and multiracial participants on nominations for aggression and victimization, nor any ethnic group differences within the four behavioral subgroups.
With this large sample, only 3 of 24 cells in the 4 (group) × 2 (gender) × 3 (ethnicity) design had less than 10 subjects. All three small cells involved girls in the three ethnic groups who were classified as aggressive victims: African American n=9, Latina n=7, and Multiethnic n=4. We acknowledge that those cell sizes restricted our ability to detect interactions involving behavioral subgroups.
Although perceived school unsafety was associated with behavioral subgroup differences (i.e., youth with reputations as victims perceived the school as more unsafe), we had no specific predictions about that variable in tests of relations among variables. In preliminary model testing, perceived unsafety was not reliably associated with school adjustment either directly or indirectly through psychological maladjustment and including that variable in SEM produced poor model fit.
Using full information likelihood (FIML) estimation, we also tested the model using data from all 1985 participants. The results based on FIML estimates yielded by AMOS were similar to those reported above. The fit of the model was χ2 (43, N=1985) = 322.104, p < .05, CFI = .98, RMSEA = .06 (90% CI=.05–.06) and the pattern of significant paths was identical.
The association between victimization and psychological maladjustment was stronger for Caucasians (B=.26) than any other students (B=.10) and the association between aggression and school adjustment was stronger for Asians (B=−.37) than for other students (B=−.18). The final two differences occurred between Multiethnic students and students of all other ethnic groups. Specifically, the covariance between victimization and aggression was not significant for bi/multiracial youth, although it was for all other ethnic groups (covariance = .25), and the association between perceptions of school unfairness and school adjustment was stronger for bi/multiracial students (B=−.31) than for other students (B=−.09). All other path coefficients and loadings were equal across ethnic groups.
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Graham, S., Bellmore, A.D. & Mize, J. Peer Victimization, Aggression, and Their Co-Occurrence in Middle School: Pathways to Adjustment Problems. J Abnorm Child Psychol 34, 349–364 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-006-9030-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-006-9030-2