The Effect Of Peer Abuse On Depression In High School Students: A Moderated Mediation Model

In recent years,peer victimization among students have occurred throughout the country and have become the focus of attention of all sectors of society,which have been widely disseminated through online media.The problem of peer victimization is not only a personal problem of students,but also a social problem that is complicatedly related to factors such as school and community environment.Research on peer victimization shows that the behavior of peer victimization significantly affects the physical and mental health of the aggrieved person,and to some extent leads to the depression of the aggrieved one.As the main place for students to study,school have an impact on students’ emotions.The differences between students’ individual characteristics will also affect their emotional changes.Based on the existing relevant research,this study adopts the research method of combining questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview to explore the relationship between high school students’ peer victimization and depressed mood,and test the mediating effect of school sense of community and the moderating effect of future time perspective.The research consists of two parts,as follows:Study 1.The study was conducted on 1,865 students from 8 high schools in Shantou City,Guangdong Province.The questionnaire survey was used to study the relationship between peer victimization,depressed mood,school sense of community and future time perspective.The results are as follows:(1)In the demographic variables,there is significant differences in gender,grades,and arts & sciences in peer victimization.The differences of depressed mood in gender is significant and the differences of school sense of community in grades is significant.(2)Peer victimization of high school students have a significant positive predictive effect on depressed mood,and have a significant negative predictive effect on school sense of community.School sense of community has a significant negative predictive effect on depressed mood.School sense of community plays a part in mediating the relationship between peer victimization and depressed mood in high school students.(3)Future time perspective plays a moderating role in the relationship between school sense of community and depressed mood.Study 2.Six high school students who participated in the questionnaire survey were selected as the interviewees of semi-structured interview and the relationship between the variables in the study 1 was further verified and supported by the Nvivo11 analysis.In addition,qualitative studies have revealed the limitations of future time perspective in moderating the relationship between school sense of community and depressed mood.The implications for school management are discussed.