What Explains Correlates of Peer Victimization? A Systematic Review of Mediating Factors

Adolescent Research Review, Jul 2016

Being accepted by peers is central to health and wellbeing among adolescents whereas being the subject of peer/bullying-victimization can be perceived as significant interpersonal stress, resulting in compromised adjustment concurrently and long-term. Unfortunately, little is known about mechanisms that explain why peer victimization goes “under the skin”. This systematic review aims to summarize the research on mediating pathways. A total of 65 articles were selected that explicitly examined mediation of associations between peer victimization in adolescence and concurrent and later outcomes. Most studies were based on North American and European samples and focused on internalizing or school-related outcomes. Mediation appears to be more stable by emotional states and symptoms than self-perceptions and attributions but results vary by outcome. Limitations concern the cross-sectional design of most studies, geographic restriction, and widespread use of self-reports for assessments of exposure, mediator, and outcome.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs40894-016-0035-y.pdf

What Explains Correlates of Peer Victimization? A Systematic Review of Mediating Factors

Adolescent Res Rev What Explains Correlates of Peer Victimization? A Systematic Review of Mediating Factors Tina Kretschmer 0 1 0 Department of Pedagogy and Educational Science, University of Groningen , Grote Rozenstraat 38, 9712 TJ Groningen , The Netherlands 1 & Tina Kretschmer Being accepted by peers is central to health and wellbeing among adolescents whereas being the subject of peer/bullying-victimization can be perceived as significant interpersonal stress, resulting in compromised adjustment concurrently and long-term. Unfortunately, little is known about mechanisms that explain why peer victimization goes ''under the skin''. This systematic review aims to summarize the research on mediating pathways. A total of 65 articles were selected that explicitly examined mediation of associations between peer victimization in adolescence and concurrent and later outcomes. Most studies were based on North American and European samples and focused on internalizing or school-related outcomes. Mediation appears to be more stable by emotional states and symptoms than self-perceptions and attributions but results vary by outcome. Limitations concern the crosssectional design of most studies, geographic restriction, and widespread use of self-reports for assessments of exposure, mediator, and outcome. Peer victimization; Mediation; Internalizing; Externalizing; Academic; Systematic review Introduction Researchers interested in adolescent development have paid sustained attention to the role of peers and the quality of adolescents’ peer relationships. This is natural given that adolescents spend more time with age-mates than parents, both in school and in leisure activities (Larson and Richards 1991; Zeijl et al. 2000) , peers are highly salient models for desirable (Fitzgerald et al. 2012) and undesirable behaviors (Fortuin et al. 2015) , and peer groups provide contexts where more intimate friendships and first romantic experiences are established. Moreover, adolescence is a sensitive period for processing and handling social interactions (Blakemore and Mills 2014) and peers play a particularly influential role for emotional, social, academic, and behavioral development (Brown and Larson 2009; Steinberg and Monahan 2007; Steinberg and Morris 2001) . Not surprisingly, problems in peer relationships are often linked to maladjustment and compromised well-being, both concurrently and over time. While there is little doubt that adolescents’ peer relationships are important for later development, little systematic information is available concerning the mechanisms that explain why peer experiences go ‘‘under the skin’’ and ‘‘into the mind’’. This is unfortunate because this information is needed in order to be able to prevent potentially negative consequences of peer problems. Like other forms of interpersonal difficulties such as divorce, workplace mobbing, or family conflict, peer problems can be a significant source of stress, broadly defined as ‘‘environmental demands [that] tax or exceed the adaptive capacity of an organism, resulting in psychological and biological changes that may place persons at risk for disease’’ (Cohen et al. 1995, p. 3) . Peer problems originate in interactions between individuals and the peer group and are distinct from friendship problems, which occur in the dyadic relationship between two individuals. Talking to the friend and trying to come to a mutually satisfying solution are common strategies to handle friendship problems in adolescence whereas peer problems tend to be associated with anger, avoidance, and withdrawal (Seiffge-Krenke 2011) . Thus, distinguishing between friendship and peer stress is necessary. The present review focuses on peer victimization, which constitutes not only a common problem among adolescents but also a central topic in research on peer-related precursor of development. Peer victimization is defined as intentional and repeated infliction of harm on a person by one or more peers that are usually more powerful in some regard, with studies reporting prevalence rates of up to 45 % of adolescents having experienced peer victimization (e.g., Craig et al. 2009) . Several reviews support the notion that victims of bullying fare worse in terms of emotional (Ttofi et al. 2011; Wu et al. 2015) and psychosocial adjustment (Hawker and Boulton 2000) , are more likely to develop psychotic (van Dam et al. 2012) , psychosomatic (Gini and Pozzoli 2009) , and externalizing problems (Reijntjes et al. 2011) , are at greater risk for suicidal ideation and behaviors (Holt et al. 2015; van Geel et al. 2014) , and perform less well academically (Nakamoto and Schwartz 2010). Why is this the case? Which processes are at play? The Current Study The central aim of this review is to contribute to a more systematic understanding of why peer victimization is linked to problems in emotional, social, academic, and behavioral development by synthesizing st (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs40894-016-0035-y.pdf

Tina Kretschmer. What Explains Correlates of Peer Victimization? A Systematic Review of Mediating Factors, Adolescent Research Review, 2016, pp. 341-356, Volume 1, Issue 4, DOI: 10.1007/s40894-016-0035-y