Cyber victimisation, social support, and psychological distress among junior high school students in Taiwan and Mainland China

ABSTRACT

This paper examines a theoretical model of how perceived parental, teacher, and peer support in adolescence mediate the pathway from cybervictimisation to psychological distress and further examines how the interrelationships of cybervictimisation, perceived support, and psychological distress differ between countries and genders. A cross-societal probability sample of 1,932 middle school students was collected from Taiwan and Chinese Mainland. The results of structural equation modelling analysis showed that cybervictimisation has a significant direct association with psychological distress and stronger indirect association through parental support. Similar results were found across countries and genders. The findings imply that the perceived support in adolescence plays an important mediating role in the pathway from cybervictimisation to psychological distress. This suggests that developing or incorporating social support into an intervention on cybervictimisation could effectively prevent further psychological distress in both genders and in both countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyberbullying
• social support
• psychological Distress
• Chinese
• cross-culture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the General Research Fund, The Research Grants Council, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong (Project Number: 14617415); and by the Departmental Initiative Schemes, Department of Social Work, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

Notes on contributors

Ji-Kang Chen

Ji-Kang Chen, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His major research interests include cross-cultural research on interpersonal violence and mental health. Particularly, his research agenda aims to contribute to the theoretical and practical knowledge of school violence and bullying in Chinese societies in order to help design effective intervention, policy and strategies that can alleviate interpersonal violence. He has been awarded internationally competitively research grants and has published primarily on the topics of school violence in prestigious journals in different disciplines.