Association of child maltreatment and school bullying among Chinese adolescents: the mediating role of peer relationships

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Abstract

Background

School bullying, a serious problem for the physical and mental health of adolescents, is presently a significant issue in China. It is essential to recognize and comprehend potential risk factors and establish efficient preventive strategies. The purpose of this study was to examine the association between childhood maltreatment and school bullying in adolescents and to assess the mediating role of peer relationships.

Methods

Between March and April 2024, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among 2119 adolescents aged between 12 and 18 years in Guangdong Province, China. Self-report questionnaires were employed to collect data on childhood maltreatment, school bullying, and peer relationships. Subgroup analyses and mediating effects modeling were employed to analyze the data.

Results

The results indicated that adolescents who had experienced maltreatment were more at risk of bullying victimization ( OR: 2.92, 95% CI: 2.34–3.64, P < 0.001), bullying perpetration ( OR: 2.84, 95% CI: 1.99–4.05, P < 0.001), and bully-victimization ( OR: 2.93, 95% CI: 1.95–4.41, P < 0.001), compared to adolescents who have not. Sexual abuse showed the most significant connection with all forms of bullying. The mediating effect of peer relationships was found to mediate the association between child maltreatment and bullying behaviour. The results indicated that worse peer relationships may exacerbate the adverse effects of maltreatment experiences and increase the risk of adolescents becoming bullies, either perpetrators or victims of bullying.

Conclusions

Child maltreatment has been identified as one of the most significant influences on bullying behaviour in adolescents. The quality of peer relationships has been demonstrated to play an important role in preventing and reducing the occurrence of bullying. The results underscore the crucial role of early intervention in cases of child maltreatment and the fostering of positive peer relationships in schools.

Related collections

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Child maltreatment remains a major public-health and social-welfare problem in high-income countries. Every year, about 4-16% of children are physically abused and one in ten is neglected or psychologically abused. During childhood, between 5% and 10% of girls and up to 5% of boys are exposed to penetrative sexual abuse, and up to three times this number are exposed to any type of sexual abuse. However, official rates for substantiated child maltreatment indicate less than a tenth of this burden. Exposure to multiple types and repeated episodes of maltreatment is associated with increased risks of severe maltreatment and psychological consequences. Child maltreatment substantially contributes to child mortality and morbidity and has longlasting effects on mental health, drug and alcohol misuse (especially in girls), risky sexual behaviour, obesity, and criminal behaviour, which persist into adulthood. Neglect is at least as damaging as physical or sexual abuse in the long term but has received the least scientific and public attention. The high burden and serious and long-term consequences of child maltreatment warrant increased investment in preventive and therapeutic strategies from early childhood.

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This report presents initial findings on the reliability and validity of a new retrospective measure of child abuse and neglect, the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Two hundred eighty-six drug- or alcohol-dependent patients were given the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire as part of a larger test battery, and 40 of these patients were given the questionnaire again after an interval of 2 to 6 months. Sixty-eight of the patients were also given a structured interview for child abuse and neglect, the Childhood Trauma Interview, that was developed by the authors. Principal-components analysis of responses on the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire yielded four rotated orthogonal factors: physical and emotional abuse, emotional neglect, sexual abuse, and physical neglect. Cronbach's alpha for the factors ranged from 0.79 to 0.94, indicating high internal consistency. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire also demonstrated good test-retest reliability over a 2- to 6-month interval (intraclass correlation = 0.88), as well as convergence with the Childhood Trauma Interview, indicating that patients' reports of child abuse and neglect based on the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire were highly stable, both over time and across type of instruments. These findings provide strong initial support for the reliability and validity of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Liping Li: lpli@stu.edu.cn

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Public Health

Title: BMC Public Health

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2458

Publication date (Electronic): 19 September 2024

Publication date PMC-release: 19 September 2024

Publication date Collection: 2024

Volume: 24

Electronic Location Identifier: 2550

Affiliations

[1 ]School of Public Health, Shantou University, ( https://ror.org/01a099706) Shantou, 515041 China

[2 ]Injury Prevention Research Center, Shantou University Medical College, ( https://ror.org/02gxych78) Shantou, 515041 China

Article

Publisher ID: 20082

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-024-20082-y

PMC ID: 11411747

PubMed ID: 39300418

SO-VID: fdd7ded6-64ed-4bd7-a027-173ca6ebbb26

License:

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

History

Date received : 17 May 2024

Date accepted : 13 September 2024

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: child maltreatment,bullying behaviour,peer relationships,mediating effect,adolescents development

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: child maltreatment, bullying behaviour, peer relationships, mediating effect, adolescents development

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