Speaker
Description
Bullying victimization among college students is an underexplored area of research. Few estimates of bullying can be found in the literature although a few studies in different nations have estimated that about 8% of undergraduates experience it at school. Perhaps due its lower prevalence, there is also a paucity of studies on college students regarding the impact of victimization on the physical and mental health of victims or the potential for feelings of belonging and resilience to serve as mediators of those effects. Both belonging and resilience have been found to mitigate harmful effects of other forms of victimization such as sexual assault and microaggressions in prior research. In this study of 3,507 college students, we found that 7.5% had been victimized at school in the last six months. We then used structural equation modeling to measure the direct and indirect effects of bullying and cyberbullying on health through resilience and sense of belonging. Significant direct effects on physical and mental health were found for victimization, although they varied by bullying type and personal health indicator. Resilience was a mediator between bullying and physical and mental health, with more victimization associated with lower resilience, which in turn was associated with poorer health. Belonging also acted as a mediator for mental and physical health. Higher bullying was associated with lower belongingness, which in turn was associated with poorer health. The findings suggest that resilience training and belonging enhancement may be worthy strategies for reducing the harms of bullying victimization in college.
Keywords
Bullying, College, Resilience, Belonging, Health
| Please also indicate what kind of contribution it is: | Scientific |
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| Please indicate what type of scientific contribution it is | Quantitative method study |
