| dc.description.abstract | The current study examined whether prosocial and antisocial peer experiences and
cognitions are predictive of changes in children's coping behaviors in response to peer
victimization. Longitudinal data spanning two time points across two consecutive school
years were analyzed. Participants included 305 children who were in the 3rd and 4th grades
at the beginning of the study. Peer victimization, a significant form of peer stress for many
youth, and positive peer treatment were examined, as well as the beliefs children hold
about the characteristics and dispositions of their peers (e.g.,peer beliefs), including both
antisocial peer beliefs (i.e., perceptions of agemates as mean, bossy, and untrustworthy)
and prosocial peer beliefs (i.e., perceptions of agemates as prosocial, cooperative, and
helpful). Five coping strategies were examined - support seeking from friends, parents, and
teachers, behavioral avoidance, and retaliation. A series of regressions was performed in
which children's coping in the Spring of their 4th or 5th grade year served as the criterion
variable. Analyses controlled for children's use of these strategies during the Spring of
their 3rd and 4th grade year, respectively, allowing for a test of changes in responses to peer
victimization. Children's antisocial and prosocial peer treatment and peer beliefs in the
Spring of the 3rd or 4th grade were the primary predictors, and interactions between sex and
peer treatment and peer beliefs were included in each regression equation. Results
demonstrate that victimization is predictive of decreased retaliation for all children as well
as decreased friend support seeking for girls, but not for boys. Prosocial peer treatment was
associated with marginal decreases in parent support seeking for girls and was predictive of
iv
increases in friend support seeking for all children. Although no significant relations were
found between antisocial peer beliefs and children's coping with victimization, prosocial
peer beliefs were predictive of decreases in retaliation for boys; however this relation was
not significant for girls. Furthermore, that friendship moderated the link between
victimization and retaliation such that peer victimization predicted decreases in retaliation
over time for those children with no mutual friendships in their classroom. Findings from
this study help elucidate how children's social experiences and related cognitions
contribute to the strategies they utilize when coping with peer victimization. | en_US |
