Title:
Relational victimization, cyber victimization, rumination, and social anxiety in early adolescence
Author:
Tymesha A. Pendleton
Thesis Advisor:
Beth A. Kotchick
Committee Member:
Matthew W. Kirkhart
Committee Member:
Rachel L. Gover
Committee Member:
Amanda M. Thomas
Committee Member:
Alison A. Papadakis
Degree Granting Institution:
Loyola University Maryland--College of Arts and Sciences
Place:
Baltimore (Md.)
Publisher:
Loyola University Maryland
Date Created:
2016
Type of Resource:
text
Genre:
thesis
Language:
eng
Format:
application/pdf
Physical Form:
electronic
Digital Source:
born digital
Abstract:
Forms of peer victimization that target social relationships, which include relational and cyber victimization, peak during early adolescence, which also is a key period for the emergence of social anxiety. Peer victimization is associated with significant psychosocial distress, including higher levels of social anxiety. Peer victimization may contribute to the development and maintenance of social anxiety because youth are particularly concerned about how they are viewed by others during this developmental period. Thus, it is important to identify factors that may increase the risk of social anxiety among victimized youth. Rumination may serve as a moderator between the association of peer victimization (a social event) and social anxiety such that adolescents who tend to ruminate are more likely to experience social anxiety symptoms in response to victimization. Although rumination has been found to moderate the association between interpersonal stress and depressive symptoms, little attention has been devoted to rumination as a moderator in the relation between peer victimization and social anxiety among early adolescents. If rumination is viewed as a trait-like tendency to engage in ruminative thought processes, it should be considered as a potential moderator of the effect of stressors on outcomes such as social anxiety. The current study 1) examined the associations between both relational and cyber victimization and social anxiety and 2) explored rumination as a moderator of those associations. Participants included 133 students enrolled in grades six through eight recruited from four parochial schools in the Baltimore metropolitan area. Participants completed the Children's Social Experience Questionnaire Self-Report (SEQ-S) to which an item assessing cyber-bullying victimization was added, the Social Anxiety Scale for Children-Revised (SASC-R), and the brooding subscale of the Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS). Both relational and cyber victimization were significantly and positively correlated with social anxiety, as was rumination. To test the moderation hypotheses, multiple regression analyses were performed for each form of victimization, with social anxiety as the criterion; however, the moderation hypotheses were not supported. The findings of the current study highlight that relational and cyber victimization have similar deleterious effects on early adolescents, suggesting that peer victimization is a risk factor for social anxiety regardless of whether the victimization is relational or cyber in nature. Although the findings fail to support the hypotheses that rumination moderates the association between both forms of peer victimization and social anxiety, they do indicate that rumination is associated with social anxiety, suggesting that intervention and prevention programs address rumination as a factor that may promote social anxiety among adolescents.
Subject:
Electronic dissertations
Degree:
Doctor of Clinical Psychology
Level:
Doctoral
Discipline:
Psychology
Restrictions on Access:
Author has given permission to make this work available online to Loyola Notre Dame Library basic constituency.
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Identifier:
PendletonTA-16
