Relationship between particular areas of victimization and mental health in the context of multiple victimizations in Spanish adolescents

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to study the relationship between different areas of victimization (e.g., sexual victimization) and psychological symptoms taking into account the full range of victimizations adolescents suffer. The final aim is to contribute further evidence regarding the bias that those studies which focus on just one area of victimization may be introducing into our psychological knowledge. A total of 923 adolescents (62.4% girls) between 14 and 18 years old were recruited from seven secondary schools in Catalonia, Spain. The Youth Self-report and the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire were employed to assess psychological problems (internalizing and externalizing symptoms) and victimization, respectively. The large majority of adolescents reported having experienced more than one area of victimization. However, Conventional Crime area was the one that was more reported in isolation. Overall, the explicative power of a particular area of victimization was greatly reduced or even lost its significance when the other areas were taken into account. However, some areas remained significant and were different by gender. Clinicians and researchers should take into account the whole range of victimizations adolescents suffer when intending to understand the psychological aftermaths of victimization. Some areas of victimization appear to be more important at explaining particular psychological symptoms, those being Peer and Sibling Victimization in the case of boys, and both Conventional Crime and Internet Victimization in the case of girls.

Relations among Poly-Bullying Victimization, Subjective Well-Being and Resilience in a Sample of Late Adolescents

“…A substantial proportion of the participants (16.9%) reported being victims of poly-bullying. The prevalence rates in this study were higher than those previously found, when the incidence of poly-victimization did not exceed 11% [9,30,62]. One explanation for these results could be the lack of consensus about how to measure poly-victimization, and how to establish who can be classified as a poly-victim [59].…”

“…Exposure to multiple types of violence and victimization has immediate and lifelong effects on physical and mental health [28][29][30]. Previous research showed that poly-victimization represents a substantial source of higher mental health risk than exposure to any individual victimization type, even when it repeatedly occurs [27][28][29][30][31].…”

Victimization, polyvictimization , and health in Swedish adolescents

“…The mean number of experienced events was four ( $\overline{\mathrm{normalx}}=4.12$, SD =4.043). This is in line with the earlier studies,14,38,52 higher than the UK studies,53 and lower than the findings of Soler et al54…”

A meta‐analysis of the differential relations of traditional and cyber‐victimization with internalizing problems

“…However, the unique correlates of cyber‐victimization might be difficult to detect without extremely large samples. To demonstrate this difficulty, although a few researchers (Fredstrom, Adams, & Gilman, ; Soler, Forns, Kirchner, & Segura, ) found results consistent those of Vieno et al (), other studies have found quite the opposite results (e.g., van den Eijnden, Vermulst, van Rooij, Scholte, & van de Mheen, ); overall, the results are fairly inconsistent. Unfortunately, although research on the negative correlates of cyber‐victimization has accelerated rapidly in recent years, many researchers still do not control for traditional victimization in their studies, thus risking overestimation of the magnitude of the reported effects.…”