Longitudinal Relations Among Perceived Economic Stress, Deviant Peer Affiliation, and Bullying Victimization: A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model.

Abstract

Perceived economic stress and deviant peer affiliation are risk factors for adolescents' bullying victimization. However, the longitudinal relations among perceived economic stress, deviant peer affiliation, and bullying victimization remain unclear. To fill this gap, the current study used the random intercept cross-lagged model to clarify the relations among them. A total of 2407 Chinese adolescents (M _age = 12.75, SD = 0.58, age range 11-16, 50.23% girls at baseline) from 7 schools participated in the study. Perceived economic stress, deviant peer affiliation, and bullying victimization were measured annually over 3 years. Results showed that significant positive between-person correlations were found among perceived economic stress, deviant peer affiliation, and bullying victimization. At the within-person level, significant positive bidirectional associations were found between perceived economic stress and bullying victimization. Bullying victimization positively predicted later deviant peer affiliation at the within-person level. The differences of sex were observed in the relations between deviant peer affiliation and bullying victimization. Specifically, girls who experienced more bullying victimization than usual were more likely to affiliate with deviant peers than boys. And, girls affiliating with more deviant peers than usual tended to experience more bullying victimization, whereas this effect was not seen among boys. The present study contributes to our understanding of the associations among perceived economic stress, deviant peer affiliation, and bullying victimization by disaggregating within- from between-person effects. Moreover, the result, which differs between within- and between- person levels, highlights the necessity to differentiate the between- and within-person effects in complex constructs.