Peer Victimization During Early Adolescence: Person Centered Analysis

Peer victimization refers to the experience of being a target of peers’ aggressive and bullying behaviors,in the forms of physical,verbal,and relational abuse,and property infringement.Peer victimization has a high incidence among adolescents.It is already recorded in the literature that peer victimization is affiliated with a lot of adjustment problems during adolescence,ranging from psychological maladjustment and peer rejection to academic problems.Nevertheless,there is a critical gaps in our understanding of adolescents’ peer victimization experiences.For example,youth involved in peer victimization represent a heterogeneous group who may have difference not only in their forms of victimization,but also in the severity of their experience.However,most of traditional research ignored the heterogeneity of youth involved in peer victimization.In addition,One major question that researchers are concerned about involves whether subtypes of peer victimization in western cultural context is also applicable to Chinese culture.Moreover,as an important interpersonal relationships of adolescents,peer victimization have been demonstrated some extent of changes as well as stabilities across time.However,most perious research have limited this thinking in a variable orientation method,and few studies have examined the stability and transitions of peer victimization.Accordingly,The purpose of this study is to use latent profile analysis(LPA)to identify subgroups of victimized youth,and to examine individual behavior factors that could distinguish these subgroups.In addition,we used latent transition analysis(LTA)to examine the stability and developmental changes of peer victimization status during the two time points.Participants were 2,015 seventh graders(T1: mean age 13.20±0.36 years old)from 12 middle schools in Jinan,who were evaluated again one year later.The following is the main conclusion of this study:(1)LPA identified four classes of adolescents representing non-victimized class,low victimized class,middle victimized class,and high victimized class at both T1 and T2.Findings indicated there were multiple heterogeneous subgroups based on the severity rather than forms of peer victimization.(2)Class differences were found on measures of aggressive behavior,social withdrawn,and prosocial behavior,validating the LPA classes.High victims and moderate victims reported higher levels of aggressive behavior and lower levels of prosocial behavior than the groups of low victims and non-victims.In terms of social withdrawn,all four classes differed from each other.Students in highly-victimized class reported more social withdrawn behaviors than the other three classes.(3)Latent transition analyses(LTA)revealed moderate to high level of stabilities of victimization status over time.In addition,there have also been some transitions across different subtypes.The highly victimized class was more likely to transit to the moderately victimized class,while the moderate victims were more likely to transit to the low victims.In addition,social behaviors can promote the transformation between the low and middle victimized classes.This study enhanced our understanding of the complex patterns of peer victimization and lent theoretical supports to prevention and intervention programs on adolescent peer victimization.