Examining the Moderating Role of Social Bonds in the Relationship between School Victimization and Educational Attainment

ABSTRACT

School victimization affects a relatively small proportion of students each year, but this victimization may have long-term effects on a child’s life trajectory, including graduating high school and enrolling in college. Social bond theory posits that bonds – like commitment and involvement – may buffer the harmful effects of victimization. This research uses the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (n = 16,197) to examine the moderating role of social bonds between school victimization and these measures of educational attainment. The results of the study using moderation showed that student victimization does not affect graduating high school nor enrolling in college. The relationship between student victimization and these educational outcomes is partially moderated by involvement, but not commitment.

KEYWORDS:

• School violence
• victimization
• social bond theory
• high school graduation
• college enrollment

Data availability

Data are available at https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04275.v1

Notes

1. We also conducted two alternative analyses using the victimization index. See more information in the Results section.

2. RMSEA: 0.051; CFI: 0.997; TLI: 0.991; chi-square: 57.22 (p < 0.001); Cronbach’s alpha: 0.85.

3. For clarity, we have suppressed the statistics for the control variables in Tables 2 and 3, although the full set of controls was included. Full tables are available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD050959).