The Characteristics Of Peer Victimization From Age 3 To 5 And Its Relationships With Children's Internalizing Problems

Bullying is a pattern of repeated aggressive behaviors, with negative intent, directed from one child to another where there is a power imbalance. And, peer victimization is the experience that a child is the target of peer's aggressive behavior, including physical, verbal, property hurt or destroying relationships. Studies have shown that bullying has severe effect on children's mental and physical health. However, much attention has been paid to bullying among primary school children and adolescents in China and other countries. At the same time, researchers often explore the causes of bullying. Since 1980s, researchers have paid attention to peer victimization, and begin to study the relationship between peer victimization and psychosocial adaptation, while little is studied among preschool children. In China no systematic studies have been done on peer victimization in preschool years to date. As peer victimization often occurs in preschool years, research on it can not only reveal its major characteristics in early years, which can provide theoretical basis for intervention programs, but also help us further understand the characteristics of peer victimization in primary school children and adolescents. At the same time, it is useful for us to explore the relationship between peer victimization and internalizing problems, which can help us further understand the possible negative influence of peer victimization on children, and also can provide theoretical basis for intervention programs.The purpose of the study is: (1) To develop a children's peer victimization scale, and to examine the basic characteristics of peer victimization among 3-5 years old Chinese children, including the types of peer victimization, age and gender differences. (2) To investigate the relationship between children's peer victimization and their internalizing problems. Therefore, two studies had been done to explore those questions above. 879 children of 3-5 years old from three public kindergartens in Jinan city participated in these studies.Main findings are as follows: (1) Preschool Peer Victimization Questionnaire (Teacher Rated), which has high reliability and validity, is a reliable and effective instrument to measure peer victimization in preschool. (2) Two types of peer victimization existed among Chinese preschool children, that is, verbal-relational victimization and physical victimization. (3) Physical victimization existed most frequently among 3 to 5- year- old children as a whole. But the relative frequency of physical victimization or verbal-relational victimization varied with ages. (4) In terms of physical victimization, we found that physical victimization occurred more frequently in the group of 3-year olds than in the group of 4 and 5-year year olds, but no significant difference was found between 4 and 5-year year olds. While as for as verbal-relational victimization concerned, we found that verbal-relational victimization occurred more frequently in the group of 5-year olds than in the group of 3 and 4-year year olds, but no significant difference was found between 3 and 4-year year olds. (5) Significant gender differences were found in physical victimization, boys experienced more physical victimization than girls among 3 to 5- year- old children. But no significant gender differences were found in verbal-relational victimization. (6) Victims have more internalizing problems than normal children.