Longitudinal antecedents and consequences of ethnic, cyber and offline victimization

ABSTRACTTaking a socio-ecological theoretical perspective, the present study (1) examined the concurrent and longitudinal associations between offline, cyber, and ethnic victimization, and (2) investigated whether the same or different intra- and interpersonal variables are longitudinal risk or protective factors. A three-wave longitudinal study including 630 adolescents (50% boys, 12.52 years at wave 1, 7% first and 14% second generation immigrant) was utilized. Cross lagged panel models showed that neither offline victimization nor cyber victimization predicted ethnic victimization longitudinally. Positive peer relations, good class climate, high levels of school bonding, high levels of school motivation and high levels of self-efficacy at the beginning of grade 7 were protective factors for low levels of ethnic, cyber, and offline victimization at the end of grade 7. However, only high levels of ethnic victimization at the beginning of grade 7 were also risk factors for low levels of positive peer relations, school bonding and school motivation at the end of grade 7. Ethnic victimization at the end of grade 8 could not be predicted prospectively. Considering its unique negative consequences within grade 7, it is important to give ethnic victimization a special attention in anti-bullying programs.KEYWORDS: Ethnic victimizationoffline victimizationcyber victimizationcross-lagged panel modeladolescence AcknowledgmentsWe would like to thank Dr. Rainer Schmidbauer and the students of the master programme “Addiction and violence prevention in educational settings” (University of Education Upper Austria, Linz) for their invaluable support in realizing this study. We are very grateful to the schools and teachers who participated in this study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementThe data is available from the first author upon request.Ethics approval statementWe declare that the study was conducted according to the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments.Additional informationFundingThe writing of the present study has been supported by the Oesterrreichische Nationalbank Anniversary Fund, project number 18734.