IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v19y2022i12p7135-d835896.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bullying Victimization and Mental Health among Migrant Children in Urban China: A Moderated Mediation Model of School Belonging and Resilience

Author

Listed:
  • Wei Nie

    (Institute of Urban Governance, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China)

  • Liru Gao

    (Department of Social Work, School of Law, Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, Nanjing 210023, China)

  • Kunjie Cui

    (Research Institute of Social Development, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 611130, China)

Abstract

School bullying victimization among children is a significant public health issue that may negatively influence their mental health. However, few studies have been conducted on the bullying of migrant children in urban China. A positive psychological perspective has rarely been adopted in examining the mechanisms through which bullying victimization influences mental health, and the protective factors remain understudied. This research investigates the factors that may contribute to reducing the negative effects of bullying victimization on mental health, focusing on the protective roles of school belonging and resilience in the association between bullying victimization and mental health. Data were collected from 1087 school-aged migrant children in Shanghai and Nanjing, China. The PROCESS macro was used to conduct moderated mediation analyses to test the hypothesized models. The results of moderated mediation modeling revealed that bullying victimization (β = −0.386, p < 0.001) was negatively linked with mental health through decreased school belonging (β = 0.398, p < 0.001). Moreover, resilience buffered the indirect negative effects of bullying victimization on migrant children’s mental health via school belonging (β = −0.460, p < 0.01). Specifically, lower resilience was clearly associated with stronger indirect effects. Our findings suggest that school belonging and resilience must be incorporated into mental health prevention and intervention programs targeting migrant children with bullying victimization experiences.

Suggested Citation

  • Wei Nie & Liru Gao & Kunjie Cui, 2022. "Bullying Victimization and Mental Health among Migrant Children in Urban China: A Moderated Mediation Model of School Belonging and Resilience," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-16, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:12:p:7135-:d:835896
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/12/7135/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/12/7135/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chai, Lei & Xue, Jia & Han, Ziqiang, 2020. "School bullying victimization and self-rated health and life satisfaction: The gendered buffering effect of educational expectations," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    2. Gökmen Arslan & Kelly-Ann Allen & Tracii Ryan, 2020. "Exploring the Impacts of School Belonging on Youth Wellbeing and Mental Health among Turkish Adolescents," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 13(5), pages 1619-1635, October.
    3. Songli Mei & Yueyang Hu & Mengzi Sun & Junsong Fei & Chuanen Li & Leilei Liang & Yuanchao Hu, 2021. "Association between Bullying Victimization and Symptoms of Depression among Adolescents: A Moderated Mediation Analysis," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(6), pages 1-12, March.
    4. Gökmen Arslan & Kelly-Ann Allen, 2021. "School Victimization, School Belongingness, Psychological Well-Being, and Emotional Problems in Adolescents," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(4), pages 1501-1517, August.
    5. Song, Yang, 2014. "What should economists know about the current Chinese hukou system?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 200-212.
    6. Pengpid, Supa & Peltzer, Karl, 2019. "Bullying victimization and externalizing and internalizing symptoms among in-school adolescents from five ASEAN countries," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    7. Huang, Liang, 2021. "Bullying victimization, self-efficacy, fear of failure, and adolescents’ subjective well-being in China," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    8. Cao, Qilong & Xu, Xiao & Xiang, Hongjie & Yang, Yizhu & Peng, Peiyun & Xu, Shuying, 2020. "Bullying victimization and suicidal ideation among Chinese left-behind children: Mediating effect of loneliness and moderating effect of gender," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    9. Li, Chunkai & Jiang, Shan, 2018. "Social exclusion, sense of school belonging and mental health of migrant children in China: A structural equation modeling analysis," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 6-12.
    10. Gökmen Arslan & Kelly-Ann Allen & Ahmet Tanhan, 2021. "School Bullying, Mental Health, and Wellbeing in Adolescents: Mediating Impact of Positive Psychological Orientations," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(3), pages 1007-1026, June.
    11. Xiao-Wei Chu & Cui-Ying Fan & Qing-Qi Liu & Zong-Kui Zhou, 2019. "Rumination Mediates and Moderates the Relationship between Bullying Victimization and Depressive Symptoms in Chinese Early Adolescents," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 12(5), pages 1549-1566, October.
    12. Cui, Kunjie & To, Siu-ming, 2019. "Migrant status, social support, and bullying perpetration of children in mainland China," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 107(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bihua Zhao & Junqiao Guo & Qingqing He & Linlin Jiang & Wenxin Hu, 2023. "School Bullying Victimization Types of Primary School Students and Associations with School Adaptation: a Latent Profile Analysis," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(2), pages 755-775, April.
    2. Chai, Lei & Xue, Jia & Han, Ziqiang, 2020. "School bullying victimization and self-rated health and life satisfaction: The mediating effect of relationships with parents, teachers, and peers," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    3. Fang, Jie & Wang, Xingchao & Wen, Zhonglin & Huang, Jiayan, 2020. "Cybervictimization and loneliness among Chinese college students: A moderated mediation model of rumination and online social support," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    4. Kelly-Ann Allen & Beatriz Gallo Cordoba & Ashleigh Parks & Gökmen Arslan, 2022. "Does Socioeconomic Status Moderate the Relationship Between School Belonging and School-Related factors in Australia?," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(5), pages 1741-1759, October.
    5. Ma, Gaoming & Wu, Qiaobing, 2020. "Cultural capital in migration: Academic achievements of Chinese migrant children in urban public schools," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    6. Chai, Lei & Xue, Jia & Han, Ziqiang, 2020. "School bullying victimization and self-rated health and life satisfaction: The gendered buffering effect of educational expectations," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    7. Ihsana Sabriani Borualogo & Ferran Casas, 2023. "Bullying Victimisation and Children’s Subjective Well-being: A Comparative Study in Seven Asian Countries," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 16(1), pages 1-27, February.
    8. Asadullah, M. Niaz & Xiao, Saizi, 2020. "The changing pattern of wage returns to education in post-reform China," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 137-148.
    9. Dong, Xiaoqi & Liang, Yinhe & Zhang, Jiawei, 2023. "Fertility responses to the relaxation of migration restrictions: Evidence from the Hukou reform in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    10. Lin, Jiada & Wan, Haiyuan & Yu, Yangcheng, 2024. "What you breathe makes you poor: The effect of air pollution on income," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    11. Huang, Zibin & Jiang, Xu & Sun, Ang, 2024. "Fertility and delayed migration: How son preference protects young girls against mother–child separation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    12. Carlos Garriga & Aaron Hedlund & Yang Tang & Ping Wang, 2023. "Rural-Urban Migration, Structural Transformation, and Housing Markets in China," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 413-440, April.
    13. Zhipeng Gao & Zhenyu Wang & Mi Zhou, 2023. "Is China’s Urbanization Inclusive?—Comparative Research Based on Machine Learning Algorithms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-16, February.
    14. Yu Hu & Jingwen Hu & Yi Zhu, 2022. "The Impact of Perceived Discrimination on Mental Health Among Chinese Migrant and Left-Behind Children: A Meta-analysis," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 17(5), pages 2525-2541, October.
    15. Adeem Ahmad Massarwi & Daphna Gross-Manos, 2022. "The Association between Bullying Victimization and Subjective Well-Being among Children: Does the Role of Child Religiosity Matter?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-12, August.
    16. Junhua Chen & Shufan Ma & Na Liu, 2023. "Multi-dimensional Housing Inequality Index: The Provincial Evidence from China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 165(2), pages 633-654, January.
    17. Xi Zhang & Ziqiang Han & Zhanlong Ba, 2020. "Cyberbullying Involvement and Psychological Distress among Chinese Adolescents: The Moderating Effects of Family Cohesion and School Cohesion," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(23), pages 1-11, December.
    18. Zhen Wang & Mingzhi Hu & Yu Zhang & Zhuo Chen, 2022. "Housing Security and Settlement Intentions of Migrants in Urban China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(16), pages 1-16, August.
    19. Yang, Xiuna & Gustafsson, Björn & Sicular, Terry, 2021. "Inequality of opportunity in household income, China 2002–2018," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    20. Qi, Di & Wu, Yichao, 2016. "The extent and risk factors of child poverty in urban China — What can be done for realising the Chinese government goal of eradicating poverty before 2020," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 74-82.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:12:p:7135-:d:835896. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.