On shaky grounds: Peer victimization predicts friendship instability across the ninth grade school year

Abstract

Introduction: Although prior research has considered how friendship quality or quantity influence peer victimization risk and vice versa, considerably less is known about how friendship instability (i.e., high levels of friend turnover) and peer victimization may be related to each other across time. Methods: Survey data were collected from 9th grade students (N = 388; M age = 14.05; 60.60% female; 35.8% male; 1.8% non-binary; 1.9% trans/unsure/something else) across 3-month intervals spanning one school year. Using cross-lagged panel modeling, this study investigated cross-lagged longitudinal associations between friendship instability and peer victimization utilizing three waves of data collected across one academic year. Results: Adolescents experiencing greater peer victimization at the beginning of the school year were more likely to experience friendship instability by the end of the school year. However, friendship instability at the beginning of the school year was unrelated to subsequent peer victimization. Conclusion: Peer victimized adolescents are less likely than their nonvictimized peers to maintain stable friendships over time. Findings suggest that adolescents who are victimized by peers after transitioning to high school may have difficulty maintaining friendships.

Exploring the longitudinal relationship between anger rumination and peer victimization when controlling for sadness rumination

“…Peer victimization may also foster anger rumination by increasing hostile attribution bias, a cognitive processing style that prolongs allocation of attention on current angerinducing experiences as well as negative schemas stored in the long term memory (Perren et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2019). Finally, peer victimized youth are less likely than their nonvictimized counterparts to maintain stable friendships over time (Ehrhardt et al, 2022). Higher involvement in friendships has been prospectively related with more reappraising of the anger-eliciting experience (von Salisch & Zeman, 2018), and therefore, less anger rumination.…”

Reciprocal Links Between Friendship Quality and Peer Victimization Among Middle Adolescents

“…Furthermore, victimization can also carry a social stigma in adolescence (Graham, 2016), and victims are more likely to be avoided and rejected as friends to dodge this stigma (Turanovic & Young, 2016), which potentially leaves them to experience perceived losses in support. This reverse pathway has been examined in recent empirical studies, which consistently observed the prediction from peer victimization to friendship quality (Ehrhardt et al, 2022). For example, in a longitudinal study focusing on grades 6 to 12, results on within-person victimization-support association across adolescents found that a one-unit increase in peer victimization was associated with a 0.08 decrease in perceived friend support (Turanovic et al, 2023), irrespective of adolescents’ gender.…”

“…For example, in a longitudinal study focusing on grades 6 to 12, results on within-person victimization-support association across adolescents found that a one-unit increase in peer victimization was associated with a 0.08 decrease in perceived friend support (Turanovic et al, 2023), irrespective of adolescents’ gender. In addition, greater peer victimization at the beginning of the school year w predicted less friendship instability by the end of the school year in grade 9 (Ehrhardt et al, 2022). Furthermore, focusing on different dimensions of best friendship quality, You and Bellmore (2012) showed that peer victimization increases a 10th-grade student’s risk for greater conflict and weaker feelings of help within friendships.…”

“…More specifically, most studies on the relationship between friendship quality and peer victimization have been cross-sectional, obscuring directionality (Crawford & Manassis, 2011). Although few studies used longitudinal designs, they did not investigate the direction of effects, relied on a global or unidimensional approach without differentiating different forms of peer victimization (Ehrhardt et al, 2022), focused on early adolescence, and used traditional regression analysis instead of cross-lagged regression analysis (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2011; Ehrhardt et al, 2022). The complex reciprocal association between friendship quality and distinct forms of peer victimization, however, has not been examined with middle adolescent samples.…”

Grading Between the Locales: Socioeconomic Status and Ninth-Grade Course Failures

“…This pivotal year also encapsulates a myriad of emotional, social, and psychological transitions (Eccles et al, 1993;Meter & Card, 2016;Poulin & Chan, 2010). These changes, like shifting friendships, emerging stressors, differing academic achievements, and evolving peer dynamics, can influence academic performance and future successes (Chen, 2021;Ehrhardt et al, 2022;Seeskin et al, 2018). These factors converge in the ninth-grade year, increasing students' academic challenges.…”