The moderation of culturally normative coping strategies on Taiwanese adolescent peer victimization and psychological distress

Patterns of Adolescents’ Coping with Bullying and Peer Victimization: the Link to Psychosocial Maladjustment and the Role of School Bonding

“…The three-profile solution was chosen because the decreasing trend of AIC, CAIC, BIC, and SA-BIC slowed down when we specified four or more profiles. Every profile in the three-profile solution accounted for more than 3% of the students, and prior research on the heterogeneity of psychosocial maladjustment (e.g., depressive symptom) among adolescents in Taiwan also supported a three-profile solution (Ma et al 2018). The largest group Fig.…”

“…For the purpose of the current study, we sought to understand adolescents' coping patterns through Roth and Cohen's (1986) avoidant versus approach coping dimensions as measured and conceptualized in Causey and Dubow's (1992) coping scales. This theoretical framework has been applied to several adolescent researches examining the peer victimization and its effects on psychosocial maladjustment (e.g., Kochenderfer-Ladd 2004;Kochenderfer-Ladd and Skinner 2002;Ma and Bellmore 2016;Ma et al 2018). Two subscales were conceptualized under the dimension of approach coping (Causey and Dubow 1992).…”

“…Note that the prior research has been done primarily within the Western societies, and most of them investigated coping patterns outside of the field of school bullying. Studies of coping patterns outside the field of school bullying are grounded in a much different social and familial context than coping with peer victimization, the focus of the present study, in that peer victimization happens on a more regular basis whenever a victim is at school (Ma et al 2018). Besides, given that non-Western societies hold different social, familial, and peer norms and value systems (Ahmad et al 2014;Chao 1995;Singelis 1994), little is known about how this finding can be generalized to a culture outside of North America and Europe; therefore, considering culturally diverse adolescent populations is much warranted.…”

“…A common limitation found in prior research examining the effects of coping patterns is the use of psychosocial maladjustment outcomes as separate variables. Given studies have revealed that adolescents present different patterns of maladjustment patterns not only among US adolescents (Reinke et al 2012) but also among Taiwanese students (e.g., depressive symptoms; Ma et al 2018), we believed a person-centered approach for psychosocial maladjustment is much warranted than treating maladjustment indicators as separate outcomes. Specifically, to answer our second research question, the current study utilized a latent transition analysis approach to examine the transitional probabilities between patterns of coping and psychosocial maladjustment patterns.…”

“…This study is grounded in the social-ecological system theory framework (Bronfenbrenner and Morris 2007;Swearer and Hymel 2015), which posits that adolescents' social-emotional competencies and coping behaviors interact with positive school environment to enhance desirable youth developmental outcomes. This theory is especially relevant for adolescents residing in a collectivistic society (e.g., Taiwanese adolescents), in which adolescents tend to rely heavily on a sense of social connection to deal with bullying and peer victimization (Ma and Bellmore 2016;Ma et al 2018). Hence, we also examine how the school contextual factors (i.e., perception of school bonding) moderate these associations.…”