The Relationship Between Late Childhood Bullying And Problem Behavior: The Mediating Role Of Peer Preference

Peer bullying is common in children circulations.Compared to other children,children who have been bullied are more likely to have insecurity,and show a negative attitude toward school,and even want to escape from the school which related to threatened.More importantly,being bullied can lead children to have difficulty in school learning,interpersonal communication,etc.However,there are less effective related intervention mechanisms.From existed studies,we found that most of the bullies are boys,and no significant gender differences existed in the victim amounts,which means that much girls were bullied by boys.And compared with single-sex bullying research,transgender bullying was often ignored by researchers.Therefore,for school education and children's social development,it is necessary to continue to explore the relationships between being bullied and school problem behaviors.A sample of 594 fifth-grade students was recruited in the longitudinal study for 8months.Students were asked to complete the Bullied Child Named Scale,Self-report Scale,Class Play Scale,and Internalizing Problems Scale.The first survey was at the time when children entered in fifth grade in the fall(Time1,T1)and re-test was at the end of fifth grade school year(Time2,T2).The results indicated that:(1)There was positively significant correlations among T1 being bullied,T1 problem behaviors,T2 being bullied,T2 problem behaviors.T1 being bullied could predict T2 loneliness,and vice versa.In the meantime,depression and attack damage behavior could positively predict the degree of being bullied.Gender differences existed in the relations between being bullied and the problem behaviors.And aforementioned result were only applicable to bullied by boys.There was no significant correlation between internal or external problems and bullied by girls.Boys who were bullied by boys more loneliness than girls who were bullied by boys.The influence path of problem behavior on bullied were mainly through the cumulative effect of being bullied.(2)T1 being bullied could predict T2 peer preference,and vice versa.But the latter had greater effects on the former.There was positively significant correlations among boys' bullying and peer preference.And there were significant differences between peer preference and being bullied by boys.That is peer preference could negatively predict bullying by boys,while girls bullied by boys could predict peer preference.(3)Peer preference moderated the mediation effect of being bullied and problem behaviors.Problem behaviors affected the degree of being bullied through peer preference.Peer preference played total mediating effect between loneliness and bullied.Peer preference had the partial mediating effect on depression and being bullied,as well as attack damage behavior and being bullied.All in all,these findings highlighted the moderated effect of peer preference on the relationship between being bullied and children's problem behaviors.It is important to pay more attention to the children who suffered bullying,especially to low peer preference.Much help about interpersonal practices should be given to them.All these help will be beneficial to children's mental development.In one word,these results has important theoretical and reference value to bullying interventions.