Social Behaviors And Academic Achievement As Correlates Of Peer Victimization Among Chinese Adolescents: Peer Relationships As Mediators And Moderators

Peer victimization refers to children's experience of being a target of physical, verbal or relational aggressive behavior from peers (Mynard & Joseph, 2000). Research indicates that peer victimization is a phenomenon of high prevalence during childhood and adolescence (Craig, Pepler, & Atlas, 2000; Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996; Zhang, Chen, Ji, Zhang, Chen, Wang, 2009), and can lead to both concurrent and prospective maladjustment on the part of victim (Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Rigby, 1998; Zhang, Chen, Ji, Zhang, Chen, Wang, 2009). Considering the stability of peer victimization and the wide range of negative outcomes associated with it, we believe that it is important to understand the processes and conditions that are likely to put adolescents at risk for peer victimization as well as factors that can help to protect against it. However, research on peer victimization has been conducted predominately in North American and European setting, relatively little is known regarding aggress/victim problems in other cultural contexts. Our goal in the current paper was to contribute to the existing research on victimization in Western and Chinese children's peer groups by addressing a number of unempasized or unresolved issues in the available findings the correlates and protections of peer victimization.The participants of this study were 575 (319 boys, 256 girls) adolescents from Fifth-, seventh-, and tenth-grade in three schools (mean age = 13.83±2.36 years). They completed peer nomination measures of peer victimization, social behaviors (shyness-sensitivity and aggression-disruption), peer rejection, and reciprocal friends, and self-reported measures of friendship quality. We also obtained adolescents'Chinese, math, and English exam scores for the fall and spring semesters from the schools.The main findings of the study were as follows:1. Adolescents who showed shy-sensitive and aggressive-disruptive behaviors, and who did not doing well in school were more likely to be victims of aggression. And adolescents who displayed aversive behaviors (i.e., shyness-sensitivity and aggression-disruption) would be more likely to experience relational sanctions than physical aggression.2. It was primarily peer's reactions to and interpretations of inhibition, aggression, and poor academic performance as undesirable, rather than adolescents'social behaviors and school performance, that led to victimization. Rejection mediated the relations between social behaviors, academic achievement, and physical and relational victimization.3. In general, number of reciprocal friends couldn't moderate the relations between social behaviors , academic achievement and physical and relational victimization.4. having at least one friend can protect shy-sensitive adolescents against from physical victimization, and it can also protect poor academic performed adolescents against from physical and relational victimization.5. Several aspects of positive friendship quality served as effective buffers against peer victimization, and these moderating effects could vary according to gender and different forms of victimization.6. Generally speaking, positive friends'characteristics could help against peer victimization, and these protecting effects would vary according to gender and different forms of victimization.In sum, the findings of the study highlight physical and relational victimization are two different forms of victimization. There are different pathways to physical and relational victimization and different aspects of positive friendship served as effective buffers against physical and relational victimization. From an applied developmental perspective, the research could help in the development of prevention and intervention programs.