Feeling Red about Bullying! An Application of the Stress Process Model to the Relationship among Bullying, Emotional Agitation, Peer Social Support, and Self-Esteem
Date
2018-03-22
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Abstract
Bullying is a pervasive problem worldwide. Children and adolescents who are victimized, perpetrate bullying, or both experience more negative consequences to their mental health than those who are not involved. It is important to understand the students involved in bullying, as well as the process through which bullying exerts its effect. The stress process model is a general orienting framework for understanding the influence that bullying can have on mental health (i.e., emotional agitation or anxiety/anger). This model suggests that the personal resources of peer social support and self-esteem may influence the stress process by acting as either mediators, moderators, or both (i.e., structural amplification). The dual purpose of this study was to examine student involvement in bullying as well as apply the stress process model to the experiences of a nationally representative random sample of 1001 Canadian youth aged 10 to 17. First, Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was used to identify groupings of students involved in bullying. Four classes emerged across four forms of bullying (physical, verbal, social, cyber) including students who 1) primarily bullied others, 2) were primarily victimized, 3) both bullied others and were victimized, as well as those who 4) did not engage in bullying (i.e., uninvolved). Second, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), the stress process model was applied to the relationship between bullying and emotional agitation. The personal resources of peer social support and self-esteem were examined as both mediators and moderators. The results support a partial mediation model: peer social support and self-esteem were pathways through which bullying involvement exerted an effect on anxiety and anger. Although moderation was not supported, a main effect of peer social support and self-esteem was found. Effectively, these personal resources were found to have a positive influence on students' experiences of anxiety and anger, regardless of their involvement in bullying. The process of structural amplification was not supported. Taken together, these results provide some support for the application of the stress process model to the relationship between bullying involvement and emotional agitation. Implications for counselling psychologists as well as the field of bullying prevention, intervention, and research are discussed.
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Keywords
bullying, victimization, peer social support, self-esteem, anxiety, anger, Mental Health, Childhood, adolescence
Citation
Dittrick, C. J. (2018). Feeling red about bullying! An application of the stress process model to the relationship among bullying, emotional agitation, peer social support, and self-esteem (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/31754