Individual and Contextual Factors Associated with Patterns of Aggression and Peer Victimization During Middle School

Introduction: Peer victimization is a common problem among adolescents that has been linked to a variety of adjustment problems. The manner in which youth respond during conflicts with peers has been linked with social-cognitive processes (e.g., beliefs, behavioral intentions). The sociocultural context, including explicit and implicit messages from parents and peers about aggression, also influences adolescents’ involvement in aggression and peer victimization. A major limitation of previous studies of social-cognitive and environmental influences on responses to peer conflict has been their tendency to focus exclusively on comparing aggressive and nonaggressive youths. This approach overlooks the heterogeneity among aggressive and non-aggressive youth, and ignores the social-cognitive and environmental influences specifically connected with being a victim of aggression. Another limitation of most previous research examining differences among groups of youth displaying different levels of aggression and victimization has been reliance on cut scores to define groups. The current study addresses both of these limitations by using latent class analysis (LCA) to identify subgroups of aggressive and victimized youth, and to examine social-cognitive and environmental factors that differ across these subgroups.

 Method: Participants were a predominantly African-American (i.e., 68%) sample of 502 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders (45% male, Mean age = 12.6 years) attending three urban public middle schools, who completed self-report measures of aggression, victimization, and associated  individual and contextual factors.

 Results: LCA identified the following classes: non-victimized aggressors, aggressive-victims, predominantly victimized, and well-adjusted youth. Class differences were found on measures of beliefs supporting fighting, beliefs against fighting, perceived effectiveness of inept nonviolent responses to conflict, behavioral intentions to engage in aggressive and nonviolent behavior, self-efficacy for nonviolent behavior, and peer and parental support for aggression and nonviolence. For example, within the two classes of victimized youth, aggressive-victims reported greater intentions to engage in physical aggression and inept nonviolent behavior, and were more likely to agree with beliefs supporting the use of instrumental and reactive aggression, and beliefs that fighting is sometimes necessary compared to predominantly victimized youth. We also found that a key difference between aggressive-victims and their non-victimized aggressive peers was their stronger perception of parental support for nonviolence, and their weaker perceptions of the effectiveness of inept nonviolent responses to conflict.

Discussion: These findings emphasize the importance of developing preventive interventions that target the specific needs of distinct subgroups of adolescents.