Bullying Victimization And Covitality Among Secondary School Students:the Moderating Role Of Neuroticism

Objective: The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between bullying victimization,neuroticism and covitality among secondary school students,and to examine the moderating effect of neuroticism in it based on the latent moderated structural equations.Methods: Five surveys were conducted among 2042 secondary school students from 12 schools in Hunan Province by Delaware Bullying Victimization Scale-Student(DBVS-S),NEO Five Factor Inventory-Neuroticism Subscale(NEO-FFI-N),Social and Emotional Health Survey-Secondary(SEHS-S),Patient Health Questionnaire-9(PHQ-9)and 7-Item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale(GAD-7).Results:(1)The results show that 38.74% of secondary school students have been bullied.Furthermore,46.28% of male students and 32.47% of female students,55.46% of junior high school students and 27.63% of senior high school students have been bullied;(2)The scores of neuroticism is significantly negatively correlated with covitality,belief in self,belief in others,emotional competence,and engaged living in secondary school students,and their correlation coefficients are between-0.359 and-0.189(P<0.001);(3)The scores of Bullying victimization has significant negative predictive effects on covitality,belief in self,belief in others,emotional competence,and engaged living,and their regression coefficients are separatly-0.135,-0.065,-0.165,-0.222 and-0.058.(4)Neuroticism has significant moderating effects between bullying victimization and covitality,belief in self,belief in others,emotional competence,and engaged living.Conclusions:(1)Bullying victimization has significantly negative predictive effects on covitality,belief in self,belief in others,emotional competence and engaged living;(2)Neuroticism is negatively correlated with covitality,belief in self,belief in others,emotional competence,and engaged living;(3)Neuroticism plays a moderating role between bulling victimization and covitality,belief in self,belief in others,emotional competence,and engaged living among secondary school students;(4)Compared with students who have higher level of neuroticism,bullying victimization does more obvious harm to the level of covitality,belief in self,belief in others,emotional competence,and engaged living among students who have lower level of neuroticism.