Predictive Relations Between Peer Victimization and Academic Achievement in Chinese Children

Liu, Junsheng
Bullock, Amanda
Coplan, Robert J.

¹Shanghai Normal University, Department of Psychology, Shanghai, China
²Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31300855), the grants from the “Shu Guang” program of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Shanghai Education Development Foundation (#12SG38) and the Shanghai Educational Science Program (#B11039).

We are grateful to the children and teachers for their participation.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Amanda Bullock, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S 5B6 Canada. E-mail: [email protected]

Received March 20, 2013

Revision received September 29, 2013

Accepted October 7, 2013

School Psychology Quarterly 29(1):p 89-98, March 2014. | DOI: 10.1037/spq0000044

The goal of this study was to explore longitudinal associations between peer victimization and academic achievement in Chinese children. Participants were N = 805 3rd-grade students (486 boys, 319 girls; M_age = 9.5 years, SD = 3 months) attending primary schools in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. At Time 1 and Time 2 (2 years later), peers nominated classmates who were victims of peer maltreatment using the Chinese version of the Revised Class Play (), and teachers rated students' academic achievement. Among the results, peer victimization was negatively related to academic achievement at both time points. Also, peer victimization and academic achievement displayed considerable stability across the 2 years. Results from cross-lagged hierarchical analyses demonstrated that peer victimization at Grade 3 predicted lower academic achievement at Grade 5. However, academic achievement at Grade 3 was not predictive of peer victimization at Grade 5. These results suggest that peer victimization appears to function more as a precursor rather than a consequence of lower academic achievement. Results are discussed in terms of the cross-cultural similarities in the links between peer maltreatment and academic achievement and their educational implications.