| Longitudinal approaches to the study of peer victimization in youth have begun to highlight both personal factors that place children at risk for increased victimization over time, as well as poor psychosocial outcomes associated with being bullied. There is recent evidence that, in agreement with social information processing theories, these longitudinal associations may be moderated by peer group factors, including general levels of acceptance or rejection, as well as the protective or exacerbating characteristics of each child's closest friends. Criticisms of the traditional peer victimization literature have included the short-term nature of most longitudinal studies (one year or less), the questionable validity of change estimates, the focus on younger children, and the few studies involving minority youth. In the present investigation, a Linear Mixed Modeling (LMM) approach was incorporated into the analysis, allowing for more accurate and generalizeable estimates of change trajectories. Participants were 597 boys and girls drawn from three grades (6th-8 th) in two predominantly Latino middle schools that were assessed yearly into high school (9th-11th grades). At each of the four time points, participants completed a Peer Nomination Inventory, which provided measures of victimization, internalizing behavior, aggression, and physical strength; a self-report measure of victimization, aggression, global self-worth (GSW), and perception of social competence (PSC); and a sociometric measure, from which were derived indices of peer rejection and acceptance, as well as reciprocated friendships. Results were that initial victimization predicted steeper trajectories of maladjustment (increased internalizing behavior, decreased GSW and PSC), and that initial personal risk factors (internalizing and aggression) predicted steeper increases in self-reported victimization over time. Strong support was found for the social contextual hypotheses in that the negative outcomes of victimization, particularly internalizing behavior, were much more salient under high levels of peer-level risk, including peer rejection, low social competence, and having poorly adjusted friends. However, no moderating effects of the social contextual factors were found when predicting trajectories of victimization. Discussion focuses on several aspects of these results, including significant effects that were found for girls only involving friends' aggression. Directions for future research are suggested, and clinical implications for bullying interventions are discussed. |
