ABSTRACT
This study examined memories of peer victimization by eliciting narratives from university students (N = 210) about one previous experience of peer maltreatment during middle school, and investigating how these recollections related to current levels of adjustment. The majority of participants described an experience of social victimization (70.0%) or physical victimization (16.7%), and analyses examining form of victimization were limited to these participants (n = 182). Previous experiences of peer maltreatment during middle school were associated with negative indices of adjustment in early adulthood. The implications of our findings for school intervention programs are discussed.
ABSTRACT
This article presents an innovative method for capturing the content of adolescents' electronic communication on handheld devices: text messaging, e-mail, and instant messaging. In an ongoing longitudinal study, adolescents were provided with BlackBerry devices with service plans paid for by the investigators, and use of text messaging was examined when participants were 15 years old and in the 10th grade (N = 175; 81 girls). BlackBerries were configured so that the content of all text messages, e-mail messages, and instant messages was saved to a secure server and organized in a highly secure, searchable, online archive. This article describes the technology used to devise this method and ethical considerations. Evidence for validity is presented, including both information on use of text messaging to show that participants used these devices heavily and frequencies of profane and sexual language in a 2-day sample of text messaging to demonstrate that they were communicating openly.
Subject(s)
Adolescent Behavior/psychology , Psychology, Adolescent , Text Messaging , Adolescent , Electronic Mail , Female , Humans , Language , Longitudinal Studies , Male , Parent-Child Relations , Retrospective Studies , Sex Factors , Surveys and Questionnaires , Text Messaging/economics , Text Messaging/statistics & numerical dataABSTRACT
This study examined self-reports of social victimization and parent reports of adjustment for a sample followed from fourth through seventh grades. Different patterns of social victimization experiences were identified; of the 153 students (79 girls) with complete data, 24% reported chronic social victimization, 23% reported transient experiences of social victimization, and 53% reported being socially victimized at no more than one time point. We examined whether students who experienced persistent and periodic social victimization were at greater risk for internalizing problems than nonvictims. Persistently victimized children demonstrated continuously elevated levels of internalizing problems. Children who were not originally victimized by social aggression but became victimized with time did not demonstrate higher levels of internalizing problems than did nonvictims. Findings were mixed for those who escaped social victimization during this period.
