The Role of School Connectedness in Mitigating the Impact of Victimization on Life Satisfaction

Victimization and Life Satisfaction

Bullying refers to “any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be repeated” (Gladden et al., 2014, p. 7). Considerable evidence shows that students who are bullied experience increased social and emotional problems (Phillips & Cornell, 2012). For example, in their longitudinal study with 433 children, Rudolph et al. (2011) concluded that early exposure to peer victimization (second grade) was a unique contributor for depressive symptoms and aggressive behavior by the end of elementary school (fifth grade). Ttofi et al. (2011) conducted a systematic review of longitudinal studies and found that peer victimization was a major risk factor that uniquely predicted children’s depression later in life, even after controlling for other major childhood risk factors. These findings underscore the need for school counselors’ timely interventions to mitigate the long-term impact of peer victimization on children’s mental health concerns (Carney et al., 2019). Previous studies primarily focused on the negative outcomes of victimization, and limited research investigated the link between victimization and positive well-being, such as life satisfaction (Vera et al., 2015).

Several studies have provided empirical support for the influence of peer victimization on life satisfaction (Gini et al., 2018). For example, Kerr et al. (2011) examined the relationship between peer victimization and overall life satisfaction in a sample of 1325 students in Grades 9–12 and found that those who were targeted were less likely to report being satisfied with their lives. Prati et al. (2018) also found that peer victimization predicted lower levels of life satisfaction in their study of 1076 adolescents. Although these findings support the negative influence of peer victimization on life satisfaction among adolescents, investigating children’s bullying experience has received far less attention (Carney et al., 2019). Given the long-term effects of the early exposure to peer victimization (Rudolph et al., 2011), it is vital to better understand children’s victimization experiences in order to better mitigate harmful effects of victimization on students’ wellbeing.

The Present Study

The developmental assets approach elaborates the process by which students can achieve student developmental success through environmental assets, such as school connectedness. Scales (2000) suggested that developmental assets “help children and youth not only survive but thrive, and move closer to achieving their full human potential” (p. 84). The more developmental assets children and adolescents possess, the greater their likelihood of promoting a successful development (Benson et al., 2011).

In line with strengths-based school counseling, the developmental assets approach has been promoted as a framework that complements the social/emotional and academic domains of the ASCA National Model (Stevens & Wilkerson, 2010). School counselors are uniquely positioned in creating opportunities for building developmental assets (Dobmeier, 2011). School counselors are encouraged to facilitate students’ holistic development through their comprehensive school counseling programs that influence the multiple contexts of children’s lives (Scales, 2005). In particular, school counselors should support every student to feel a sense of belonging to their school environment (ASCA, 2019).

Guided by the ASCA National Model and developmental assets approach, we hypothesized that children who are bullied would feel less connected to peers and adults at school, which in turn leads to lower life satisfaction. Specifically, we tested the following hypotheses: (a) Victimization would negatively predict life satisfaction and (b) school connectedness would mediate the relationship between victimization and life satisfaction. In line with evidence-based school counseling practices (Dimmitt & Zyromski, 2020), a better understanding of the process by which victimization negatively impacts children’s life satisfaction could provide insight for school counselors to better support children who are bullied.

Method

Results

Preliminary Analyses

Prior to testing the research questions, we did a data screen and found 0.58% overall missing values with a missing pattern that was not completely at random (Little’s MCAR test: χ² = 1309.911, df = 772, p-value < 0.001). Due to the MAR missing pattern, traditional pairwise deletion or listwise deletion was not appropriate. We therefore used the full information maximum likelihood (FIML) algorithm to impute the missing values (Schafer & Graham, 2002) to obtain unbiased estimates of the parameters of interest. Means, standard deviations, and zero-order correlations for all study variables are shown in Table 1. Results showed a significant positive correlation between school connectedness and life satisfaction. Both school connectedness and life satisfaction were significantly negatively correlated with victimizations.

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Table 1.

Correlations and Descriptive Statistics.

	Victimization	School connectedness	Life satisfaction
Victimization	—
School connectedness	− 0.218**	—
Life satisfaction	− 0.361**	0.332**
Mean	1.742	3.918	4.662
Standard deviation	1.087	0.808	1.050

Note: **p < 0.01 at two tails.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of school connectedness as a mediator in the relationship between peer victimization and life satisfaction among elementary school students. We attempted to extend our understanding of the protective role of school connectedness and the influence of peer victimization on student positive development. Our findings support the role of school connectedness as a protective factor that could mitigate the negative effect of victimization experiences on children’s life satisfaction.

The results of our study demonstrate that peer victimization was related to lower levels of life satisfaction, which is consistent with previous studies that peer victimization is a risk factor for students’ well-being (Gini et al., 2018; Kerr et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2008). These combined results suggest that students’ experience in victimization at an early age may be a stressor that is particularly detrimental to students’ perceptions of their life satisfaction. Our findings suggest that children’s victimization experiences are also associated with low connectedness with school, which is consistent with prior cross-sectional and longitudinal research (Cunningham, 2007; Loukas et al., 2012). Cunningham (2007) argued that students who are bullied may perceive the school environment as lonely, socially isolated, and unsupported by teachers and school staff, potentially resulting in students feeling less connected to school. Our results also supported the previous study finding that victimization experiences may interfere with school affiliation, closeness with peers, positive relationship with teachers at school that impede students’ feeling of connectedness to school (Gini et al., 2018). Taken together, we conclude that victimization is one risk factor for school connectedness and life satisfaction among elementary school students.

The results also supported the role of school connectedness in children’s overall life satisfaction. The current finding confirmed Watson’s (2017) study in which the more students felt connected to school, the more likely they were to have high levels of wellness. Given the extent of time children spend in schools, teachers and peers in the school environment influence student life experiences, including life satisfaction (Jose et al., 2012). Our study also provides evidence for the developmental assets model that suggests school connectedness serves as an environmental asset that contributes to increasing positive student outcomes (Benson et al., 2011; You et al., 2008).

Our findings from SEM and bootstrapping procedures supported the role of school connectedness as a mediator between peer victimization and life satisfaction. Children who are bullied may feel isolated and uncomfortable in their school environment, which in turn may lead to decreased life satisfaction. Our findings are in line with previous studies that highlighted the protective role of school connectedness against the consequences of peer victimization (Loukas & Pasch, 2013; Mulla et al., 2020). These findings may help explain why not all young children who experience victimization subsequently experience low life satisfaction. One might conclude that students’ perceptions of caring and supportive relationships with peers and teachers are very important factors when considering how to promote students’ overall satisfaction with their lives.

School is an important microsystem where school connectedness can help promote children’s life satisfaction, even when they experience peer victimization. Still, we emphasize that the structural model explained 23% of the life satisfaction variance (R² = .23). Future studies could benefit from examining a more comprehensive model by including other variables, such as family support (Miranda et al., 2019) or psychological capital (Cassidy et al., 2014) that might explain additional variance of children’s life satisfaction.

Limitations and Future Research

Several limitations should be considered when interpreting the results. First, although our sample size was large enough to test (N = 1284), the use of convenience sampling for this study may limit generalization of our findings to other populations. Future studies could benefit from investigating the associations with more representative samples of students. Future studies could also benefit from collecting data from multiple schools to consider the influences of school contexts on peer victimization (e.g., Espelage et al., 2014).

The use of the cross-sectional design requires caution in interpreting of the findings. Although previous empirical studies supported the directions we hypothesized (e.g., Gini et al., 2018), it is possible that students’ life satisfaction preceded their experience of peer victimization. Longitudinal research is required to clarify the causal direction of the variables, including the possibility of reciprocal relationships.

Another limitation is the use of self-report measures, which could cause social desirability bias. Students’ responses might have been influenced by the presence of peers in the classroom. Thus, students may have reported lower levels of peer victimization while reporting higher levels of life satisfaction and school connectedness. Future studies could consider collecting data using multiple methods, such as teacher/parent observations or peer nominations.

Implications

The results of this study made important contributions to the literature on peer victimization of upper elementary school students. Our finding that school connectedness mediated the relation between peer victimization and life satisfaction suggests that facilitating school connectedness could be important in successful bullying interventions. School counselors are in a key position to help students improve the social skills needed for these quality interactions among peers and student-adult relationships at school (Carney et al., 2018), which could mitigate the harmful influence of being bullied on their life satisfaction. Lapan et al. (2014) provided empirical evidence that students who received counseling services and believed their counselors are very responsive to meet their needs reported that they are more likely to feel connected to schools. Enhanced social skills through individual counseling or classroom lessons can help students develop prosocial behaviors and gain the friends and social support at school that could reduce further victimization incidents and buffer its adverse impacts (Smith & Low, 2013).

School counselors best support students’ positive development when they work at both the individual and school-wide levels (Lemberger & Hutchison, 2014). ASCA (2019) emphasized that school counselors should provide leadership to create a safe, respectful, and caring school environment. Given the critical role of teachers’ responses to bullying in students’ bullying behaviors and their willingness to intervene (Hektner & Swenson, 2012), school counselors should consider providing teacher and staff training on how to respond to bullying incidents. School counselors could also consider facilitating parent involvement to help students feel more connected to school (Shochet et al., 2008) and improve the success of their programs. Farrington and Ttofi (2009), in their review of identifying factors that are related to effectiveness of bullying programs, concluded that comparatively simple activities that include parent engagement, such as providing educational material about bullying, can increase the success of antibullying programs.

School counselors could also consider integrating evidence-based bullying prevention interventions into their comprehensive school counseling program to create a supportive school environment (ASCA, 2016). One example is utilizing positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) to maximize the success of the school counseling program (Goodman-Scott et al., 2015). Positive behavioral interventions and supports is a multitiered prevention framework for promoting academic and social/emotional outcomes for all students, and includes teaching school-wide behavioral expectations (Horner & Sugai, 2015). Goodman-Scott et al. (2013) conducted an action research project to show how school counselors integrate PIBS in their bullying prevention work. Their project highlighted the benefits of having a consistent, school-wide message in preventing bullying and strengthening relationships between students and adults at school.

Our study’s results provide support for the school counselor’s role in school-based bullying interventions in line with the ASCA National Model’s emphasis on a comprehensive and evidence-based school counseling program (ASCA, 2019). Surprisingly, despite the school counselor’s unique role of serving the whole school population to increase the school success of all students, school counselors have received relatively limited attention from the literature in relation to bullying interventions, compared to teachers and administrators (Jacobsen & Bauman, 2007). School counselors should be aware that antibullying literature has begun to emphasize students’ relationships at school in bullying interventions, revising the traditional school-based bullying interventions that demonstrated limited success in reducing bullying incidents (Richard et al., 2012). Considering that bullying is a systematic, interpersonal group process that happens over time (Carney & Hazler, 2016), school counselors could advocate that their professional identity and training as agents of systemic change is specifically appropriate for leading efforts to disrupt bullying dynamics. This understanding and leadership of disrupting bullying dynamics is critical, because developing policy and increasing school safety alone may not lead to desired outcomes in bullying interventions.