Bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents: parental phubbing and perceived school climate as moderators

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3309102/v1

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Bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents: parental phubbing and perceived school climate as moderators

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3309102/v1

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Background

There has been growing scholarly interest in understanding the adverse effects of bullying victimization on adolescents' development. However, it is less clear whether bullying victimization potentially increases adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury, to date, and the understanding of the factors, that may affect this relationship is also limited. The current study, therefore, examined the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents and sought to determine whether parental phubbing and perceived school climate simultaneously moderated this relationship.

Methods

The participants included 704 students (Mage = 15.15, SD = 0.98) from middle schools in China. They completed the questionnaires regarding their experience with bullying victimization, parental phubbing, perceived school climate and non-suicidal self-injury.

Results

The results indicated that adolescents with a high level of bullying victimization were likely to have a high level of non-suicidal self-injury, after controlling for age and gender. High parental phubbing adolescents who experienced higher levels of bullying victimization were more likely to be non-suicidal self-injury than low parental phubbing adolescents. Furthermore, higher levels of bullying victimization significantly predicted increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when they had high parental phubbing and low perceived school climate. In contrast, this effect became insignificant when parental phubbing was low and perceived school climate was high.

Conclusions

Our findings indicated bullying victimization affects non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents,This relationship is mediated by parental bowing and perceived school climate. Educators who are concerned about adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury should pay closer attention to parental phubbing, as well as their perceived school climate, to provide appropriate interventions.

Bullying victimization

Partental phubbing

Perceived school climate

Non-suicidal self-injury

Adolescents

Currently, the mental health problems of adolescents are becoming increasingly prominent. A study has found that 10–20% of adolescents worldwide have mental health problems, an age when most mental illnesses and problematic behaviors first appear[12]. It has been found that adolescence is a high-risk period for self-injurious behavior[17, 67]. In general, self-injurious behavior first appears in early adolescence, and its incidence increases significantly in mid-adolescence and reaches a peak, while it declines rapidly in early adulthood[47]. Self-injury generally refers to non-suicidal self-injury, that is to say, the behavior of directly or indirectly injuring different parts of one's body repeatedly without suicide attempts, and not causing one's own death[22], common forms include cuts, burns, scratches, and head impacts[2, 8]. Extreme self-injurious behavior may lead to death, physical disability and other serious consequences, which is an important risk factor for attempted suicide and suicide death[3, 30, 34, 59]. According to statistics, approximately 14–15% of adolescents worldwide have performed non-suicidal self-injury at least once[35, 59]. In China, the incidence rate of non-suicidal self-injury among adolescents ranges from 10–33% [9], and the incidence rate is gradually increasing. Therefore, there is a clear and urgent need to explore those factors that may contribute to an increase in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. In fact, a large number of empirical studies have confirmed that adolescent bullying victimization contributes to the occurrence and maintenance of non-suicidal self-injury[4, 23].

There has been growing scholarly interest in understanding the adverse effects of bullying victimization on adolescents' development. Bullying refers to the process in which students suffer physical, verbal, financial or interpersonal attacks from peers or teachers[43]. Adolescents in our country generally suffer from different forms and degrees of bullying, and become a high-risk group for bullying[34, 66]. Being bullied can easily lead to a series of mental health problems, such as depression, suicide and other serious consequences[4, 45, 33]. Therefore, being bullied is likely to be one of the important factors leading to the occurrence and maintenance of self-injury. We actively explored the mechanism of the relationship between victimization bullying and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents, and explored whether this relationship would be different according to parental phubbing and perceived school climate, which is of great significance for the prevention of adolescents' mental health problems.

Bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury

The general strain theory is an important theory to explain the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. Bullying victimization is one of the sources of stress for adolescents[56], When an individual is bullied and is unable to cope with it through existing experience or ability, there will be a sense of oppression. To cope with this disturbing feeling, the individual may adopt some pathological or non-adaptive methods[6]. Bullying incidents easily become a source of stress in school life, which has a lasting negative impact on adolescent victims. When adolescents face the stress of bullying for a long time and cannot solve it, they are likely to take extreme actions such as self-injury or suicide to solve the problem[54]. This result also validates the viewpoint of generalized tension theory[5], When adolescents are bullied, they will experience tension and stress, which will lead to individual depression, and then lead to self-directed harmful behavior. Cross-sectional studies and longitudinal studies have confirmed that adolescents who have been bullied have more self-injurious behaviors than those who have not been bullied, and the more frequently bullied, the higher the risk of self-injurious behaviors[26]. The interpersonal confusion of the victims of bullying is not conducive to the normal peer interaction of adolescents, and they are more likely to be rejected by their peers, resulting in negative emotions such as loneliness, anxiety and depression, which is one of the important factors affecting adolescents' self-injurious behavior[53, 64]. According to the functional model of self-injury, it can be well explained that self-injury can distract the individual's attention from this high-arousal negative emotion and stop or alleviate the individual's painful feelings[36]. If an individual has been bullied and lacks appropriate coping strategies, he may use self-injury to solve the problem simply and roughly. Relevant studies have found that there is a positive correlation between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury[4, 33], but the psychological mechanism between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents is uncertain. Exploring the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury is of great significance for the early detection of self-injurious behavior, timely intervention and reducing the incidence of suicide.

Considering the high incidence of bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in early adolescence. It is particularly important to pay attention to the psychological mechanism of the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. it is important to note that not all adolescents homogeneously experience higher levels of non-suicidal self-injury when in the face of bullying victimization. That is, there may be key moderators influencing the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. Therefore, an important next step for research in this area is to investigate those factors that can diminish (i.e., moderate) the strength of this relationship. The identification of such moderators will help determine which adolescents are at greater risk for non-suicidal self-injury in the face of bullying victimization and in turn reduce the adverse effect of bullying victimization. Specifically, the present study was interested in identifying whether parental phubbing and perceived school climate could simultaneously moderate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury.

The moderating role of parental phubbing

Parental phubbing refers to the phenomenon that parents will focus on phubbing

their heads, play with their smartphones and neglect or have no time to care for their children when interacting with them[15, 60]. In the current study, there is more literature demonstrating the negative impact of parental phubbing in adolescents[55, 38]. Parental phubbing can easily induce a series of internalizing and externalizing problems[25, 61], affect adolescents' anxiety and depression levels [37, 48], show angry reactions, and even use excessive behavior as a response to parental phubbing [25]. Based on the integration of the family systems theory and the attachment theory, the current study assumed that parental phubbing might moderate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. parental phubbing is proposed as a moderator for two reasons.

First, high parental phubbing as a vulnerable factor is involved in the onset and maintenance of non-suicidal self-injury. According to the family systems theory[10]. As a microscopic system directly faced by adolescents, the family plays a crucial role in the development of individuals. High parental phubbing can affect adolescents' feelings, because it can send a "very clear message" to adolescents that parents think smartphones are more important than their children. Adolescence is a critical period when adolescents are undergoing many changes and challenges [51], and they are more sensitive to parental neglect and even exclusion[48, 24]. Adolescents' perception of parental rejection may lead to negative feelings about themselves, resulting in depression[41], which is believed to be the cause of self-injury. In contrast, adolescents who experience low parental phubbing receive more love and care and usually show better psychological adjustment, and they will not do to hurt themselves.

Second, adolescents with low or high parental phubbing may interpret bullying victimization as having different meanings. The more serious the parental phubbing is, the more vulnerable adolescents are to be bullied in the environment. Attachment theory holds that family is an important environment for children to establish attachment. High parental phubbing often gives children a negative impression of being excluded and rejected, which leads to children's physical and mental needs not being met [57], and makes children have a negative internal model of not being valued and not worthy of love, which leads to their future interpersonal communication. They either tend to receive attention from others in special ways (such as flattery and pandering), or they are passive in interpersonal interaction and become the target of bullying. In addition, high parental phubbing is a negative example[15], which interrupts and reduces the opportunities for parent-child interaction[25], and reduces the opportunities for learning conflict resolution skills. When disagreements and conflicts occur, such children will lack positive coping styles and often become the target of bullying. However, adolescents who experience low parental phubbing may not be easily affected by bullying victimization. Since they obtain positive interpersonal communication from their parents, they do not easily experience interpersonal conflicts with them. To our knowledge, no previous research to our knowledge has examined whether parental phubbing moderates the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury.

The moderating role of perceived school climate

Perceived school climate is a subjective perception of school formed by adolescents through the judgment of some events and situations, combined with individual experience, at the psychological level[14]. Some studies have divided it into three aspects: teachers' support, classmates' support and opportunities for autonomy[27]. School climate is a protective factor that can reduce adolescents' self-injury and reduce emotional problems such as depression and anxiety[ 48, 52, 62]. Specifically, adolescents who perceive a high school climate are less likely to suffer from non-suicidal self-injury[7, 18, 42].

The motivation-volitional stage model considers environmental factors (such as the campus environment) as the background or potential factors for the occurrence of self-injury behavior[42]. A study of school climate and adolescent problem behavior shows that a positive school climate reduces adolescent problem behaviors[63]. Specifically, a positive school climate gives adolescents a greater sense of belonging and reduces emotional problems such as depression and anxiety [49, 50, 62], which can effectively reduce the occurrence of self-injurious behavior among adolescents[7, 18]. In contrast, if adolescents fail to integrate into the campus environment and lack the corresponding social connection, they will have a series of negative emotions such as loneliness and helplessness, and then they will easily have the idea of hurting themselves [16].

Studies have shown that school climate affects the academic, intellectual, emotional and behavioral development of children and adolescents [11, 39], and to some extent, bullying is closely related to school climate. A high-quality school climate may have a protective effect, protecting at-risk individuals from emotional and behavioral problems [20, 21, 27], and reducing the incidence of bullying, aggression, and risk behaviors [40, 58]. School is an important microsystem in the ecosystem of children's development. Most of the bullying incidents among students occur in the peer interaction process in the school background, and the school constitutes the social ecological background of these bullying incidents, which must have an impact on the occurrence of bullying. A large number of studies have pointed out that school climate is negatively related to bullying victimization, and students' perception of school climate is an important factor affecting adolescents' bullying victimization[31]. Specifically, adolescents who experienced higher levels of bullying victimization but had high levels of school climate were less likely to engage in self-injury than those who experienced higher levels of bullying victimization and had low levels of school climate.

Although both low parental phubbing and high school climate are considered as the protective factors that can attenuate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury, it is likely that merely having low parental phubbing or only perceiving high school climate might be insufficient to make the bullying victimization adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury relationship become insignificant. Put differently, it can be argued that bullying victimization does not contribute to the increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury only when they have experience low parental phubbing and high levels of school climate.

The present study

The current study sought to examine whether parental phubbing and perceived school climate would simultaneously moderate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury (Fig. 1). Clarifying these moderating mechanisms underlying this relationship has meaningful implications for the prevention and intervention of adolescents’ non-suicidal self-injury that are related to

bullying victimization from the perspective of parental phubbing and perceived school climate. First, it is hypothesized that there would be a positive relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. This is because adolescents may be feeling depressed when they face bullying victimization, which would lead to high levels of non-suicidal self-injury. Second, it is hypothesized that parental phubbing would moderate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. That is adolescents with high parental phubbing who experience higher levels of bullying victimization will be more likely to be self-injury than adolescents with low parental phubbing. Third, it is likely that merely having low parental phubbing or only perceiving high school climate might be insufficient to make the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury relationship become insignificant. Thus, it is possible that adolescents who experience higher levels of bullying victimization will be less likely to be non-suicidal self-injury only when they have experience low parental phubbing and higher levels of school climate. That is, the current study hypothesized that parental phubbing and perceived school climate would simultaneously moderate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. Two demographic characteristics (i.e., age and gender)were considered as controlling variables while testing the study hypotheses. It is expected that the relationship between these two target variables (i. e., bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury) will remain significant.

Participants

The current study used data from 704 Chinese adolescents. We recruited participants from two middle schools in Hubei Province, China, by simple random cluster sampling. Due to the different arrangements of classroom activities, the participants were mainly from the first grade (8.5%), the second grade (9.2%) and the first grade (82.2%). They included 291 boys (49.7%) and 354 girls (50.3%). Their average age was 15.15 years (SD = 0.98).

Procedures

The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the College of Education and Sports Sciences, Yangtze University. A group test was conducted in the classroom, with graduate students trained in professional psychology acting as the conductor. With the informed consent of the students and their parents or legal guardians involved, an anonymous questionnaire survey was conducted. The questionnaire of the students who participated voluntarily was collected after they finished, while the remainder were not required to. All participants were told that their answers will be kept confidential and they could quit at any time if they felt uncomfortable and were required to complete all items independently throughout the process.

Measures

Bullying victimization

The Olweus Bullying/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ) revised by Zhang [65] was used for junior high school students of grade one and above. Two subscales (6 items each) measuring the type of bullying and the victimization of bullying were selected to examine the status of bullying and victimization of students. 5 and scores were used, and the sum of the scores of the relevant items in each subscale was the level of bullying/victimization represented by the subscale. The higher the score, the more frequently the subjects bullied or were bullied. The questionnaire was adapted to Chinese adolescents and showed good reliability in use [32]. For the current study, Cronbach’s α was 0.80.

Non-suicidal self-injury

The Adolescents Self-Harm Scale, revised by Feng [19], consists of 18 items and one open-ended question, including self-harm behaviors such as stabbing, scratching, biting and burning. It was divided into two subscales: the number of self-injury and the degree of physical injury. The number of self-injurious events was assessed at four levels: 0, 1, 2–4, and more than 5. The severity of self-injurious events was assessed at five levels: none, mild, moderate, severe, and extremely severe. The degree of self-injury was assessed by multiplying the frequency and severity of self-injury. If the final cumulative result is greater than 0, it is considered that the individual has self-injury behavior; the higher the score is, the higher the degree of self-injury. For the current study, Cronbach's α was 0.94.

Parental phubbing

The nine-item Parental Phubbing Scale, which was adapted from the Partner Phubbing Scale[46], was used to examine adolescents' perceived parental phubbing. A representative item was “My parents glance at his/her cell phone when talking to me.” Adolescents rated each item on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = Never to 5 = Always. Responses to all items were averaged with higher scores indicating higher levels of parental phubbing. For the current study, Cronbach' s α was 0.85

Perceived school climate

The school climate perception scale developed by Jia [28]was used. The scale includes 26 items, including teacher-student support, student support and autonomy opportunities, with 4 comments, 1 means "never", 2 means "sometimes", 3 means"often" and 4 means "always". The higher the score, the more positive the school climate perceived by adolescents. This scale is widely used in the adolescent population and has good reliability and validity [57]. For the current study, Cronbach's α was 0.91.

Analytic strategy

All data were entered and analyzed in SPSS 25.0. Missing data were estimated using the expectation-maximization(EM) estimation method. Before testing the hypotheses, the current study examined whether data followed normal distribution. The results showed that the skewness and kurtosis of all variables of interest fell within the acceptable range (see Table 1) [13]. All variables were standardized prior to analyses.

Common method bias

As the data in this study were derived from self-report questionnaires, there may be a common methodological bias. First, it is important to control for common methodological biases in measurement procedures (e.g., explaining to participants that the data are for scientific research only). Second, we applied Harman's one-factor test to analyze the extent to which common method bias affected the measurement. The results showed that there were 19 factors whose eigenvalues were greater than 1, and the first common factor had an explanation rate of 21.46%, which was much less than the critical value of 40% [44]. Therefore, this suggests that the present study was not significantly affected by the common method bias.

Descriptive and correlations

Table 1 shows the means, SDs, and Pearson correlations for all variables. As the results showed, adolescents with a high level of bullying victimization were likely to have a high level of non-suicidal self-injury, a high level of parental phubbing, and a low level of perceived school climate. Adolescents with a high level of parental phubbing were likely to have a high level of non-suicidal self-injury. Adolescents with a low level of perceived school climate were also likely to have a high level of non-suicidal self-injury. Parental phubbing was negatively associated with perceived school climate.

Table 1

Descriptive statistics and correlations among variables of interest
Variables	M	SD	1	2	3	4	5
1. Bullying victimization	0.26	0.50	1
2. Non-suicidal self-injury	2.35	8.53	0.40^***	1
3. Partner phubbing	2.90	0.76	0.20^***	0.18^***	1
4. Perceived school climate	2.99	0.45	−0.31^***	−0.18^***	−0.15^***	1
5. Age	15.15	0.99	−0.10^*	−0.09^*	0.09^*	0.09^*	1
6. Gender	-	-	0.11^*	−0.02	−0.06	−0.05	0.09^*
Skewness	-	-	3.10	7.58	0.31	−0.20	-
Kurtosis	-	-	12.15	20.8	−0.04	−0.13	-

Gender was dummy coded such that 1 = Boy and 0 = Girl

^* p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.1; ^***p < 0.001

Moderating effects of parental phubbing and perceived school climate

The current study hypothesized that parental phubbing and perceived school climate would moderate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. To examine these hypotheses, hierarchical linear regression analyses were used[1]. Age and gender were not significantly related to non-suicidal self-injury. As predicted, bullying victimization was significantly predictive of non-suicidal self-injury. This finding indicated that adolescents with higher levels of bullying victimization would be more likely to be self-injury than those with lower levels of bullying victimization.

Table 2 shows all significant moderating effects. The results indicated that parental phubbing moderated the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. Figure 2 shows the simple slopes at high and low parental phubbing. For adolescents with a high level of parental phubbing, high level of bullying victimization was significantly associated with high level of non-suicidal self-injury(b_simple = 7.4, p < 0.001). For adolescents with a low level of parental phubbing, this relationship was not significant (b_simple = 1.8, p = 0.05). In addition, perceived school climate negatively predicted adolescents’ non-suicidal self-injury. However, there was not a significant interaction between parental phubbing and perceived school climate.

As Table 2 indicates, parental phubbing and perceived school climate simultaneously moderated the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury. The summarized results are presented in Fig. 3. Simple slope tests indicated that higher levels of bullying victimization significantly predicted increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when their parental phubbing was high and perceived school climate was low(b_simple = 7.6, p < 0.001). In contrast, higher levels of bullying victimization did not significantly predict increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when their parental phubbing was low and perceived school climate was high(b_simple = 2.7, p = 0.14). The combination of parental phubbing and perceived school climate were both low(b_simple = 2.3, p=0.03) and parental phubbing and perceived school climate were both high(b_simple = 1.2, p ༝ 0.28) both yielded not significant effects of bullying victimization.

Table 2

Testing the moderating effects of partner phubbing and perceived school climate on the relation between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury
Variable	Non-suicidal self-injury
Variable	Step 1β	Step 2β	Step 3β
Control variables
Age	-0.090^*	-0.054	-0.044
Gender	-0.009	-0.049	-0.041
Independent variables
Bullying victimization		0.367^***	-2.044^*
Partner phubbing		0.097^*	-0.160
Perceived school climate		-0.051	-0.095
Interactions variables
Bullying victimization × Partner phubbing			3.491^***
Bullying victimization × Perceived school climate			1.794^*
Partner phubbing × Perceived school climate			0.185
Bullying victimization × Partner phubbing × Perceived school climate			-2.812^***
R²	0.006	0.174^***	0.271^***
F	2.957	48.696	24.267

Gender was dummy coded such that 1 = Boy and 0 = Girl

^* p < 0.05; ^**p < 0.1; ^***p < 0.001

Adolescents' bullying victimization has become a major public health problem and growing research has focused on understanding the adverse effects of bullying victimization on adolescents' development. However, it is less clear whether and when bullying victimization can significantly increase adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. The current study adds to the knowledge about this issue by examining the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents and simultaneously exploring the moderating effects of parental phubbing and perceived school climate to confirm those factors that can diminish the strength of this relationship. The Finding indicated that adolescents with a high level of bullying victimization were likely to have a high level of non-suicidal self-injury, even after controlling for the relevant variables such as gender and age. High parental phubbing adolescents who experienced higher levels of bullying victimization were more likely to engage in self-injury than low parental phubbing adolescents. Furthermore, higher levels of bullying victimization significantly predicted increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when their parental phubbing was high and perceived school climate was low. In contrast, this effect became insignificant when parental phubbing was low and perceived school climate was high.

The current study first explored the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. As expected, bullying victimization significantly and positively predicted adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. This finding indicates that bullying victimization as a risk factor can significantly increase adolescents’ non-suicidal self-injury. It also highlights the importance of bullying victimization in shaping adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. This is consistent with the general pressure theory theory. A possible explanation is that when individuals are bullied, they feel oppressed and become a stressor, which has a lasting negative impact on adolescent victims, leading to difficulties in school or social adjustment, thus increasing the risk of self-harm.

Bullying victimization significantly and positively predicted adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. This finding was also roughly consistent with previous research that indicates that campus bullying victimization significantly and positively predicts adolescent externalizing and internalizing behaviors including self-injury [29, 67]. However, it is important to note that these two studies neglect the fact that not all adolescents homogeneously experience higher levels of non-suicidal self-injury when in the face of bullying victimization and there may be key moderators that can diminish the strength of the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. Unlike these two studies, the current study extends existing research by simultaneously examining the moderating effects of parental phubbing and perceived school climate.

The current study then examined whether parental phubbing moderated the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. Although previous research has shown that parental phubbing significantly predicts adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury [15, 22, 37, 48], this study to our knowledge is the first to confirm that parental phubbing as a moderator diminishes the adverse effect of bullying victimization and adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. This finding goes beyond previous studies by uncovering when the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents is weak. Specifically, for adolescents with high level of parental phubbing, high level of bullying victimization was significantly associated with high level of non-suicidal self-injury. However, this relationship became much weaker for adolescents with a low level of parental phubbing. One possible explanation is that adolescents who experience a high parental phubbing are more likely to have a negative impression of being ignored and excluded, making them passive in interpersonal interactions and the target of bullying, which may lead to an increase in their self-injury. However, adolescents who experience a low parental phubbing are less likely to be bullied by others because their physical and mental needs are met and they learn to adopt positive coping styles in interpersonal interactions. Thus, for low parental phubbing adolescents, the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury became much weaker. The identification of the moderating effect of parental phubbing will help determine which adolescent is most at risk for self-injury when facing bullying victimization. Although the current study extends previous research by examining the moderating effect of parental phubbing, this is clearly an area that needs further exploration.

Low parental phubbing as a protective factor does attenuate the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. However, merely having low parental phubbing for adolescents is insufficient to make this relationship become insignificant. Thus, the current study further explored whether perceived school climate moderated the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents and the moderating effect of parental phubbing. As we expected, perceived school climate moderated the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. Specifically, perceived school climate is a beneficial protective factor, that can effectively mitigate the adverse effects of bullying victimization.

Thus, the current study also explored whether there was a three-way interaction between bullying victimization, parental phubbing and perceived school climate to predict adolescents’ non-suicidal self-injury. The results further indicated that parental phubbing and perceived school climate simultaneously moderated the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. Specifically, the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents became not significant when parental phubbing was low and perceived school climate was high. However, higher levels of bullying victimization still significantly predicted increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when parental phubbing was high and perceived school climate was low. There is another important finding in this study. bullying victimization not significantly predicted increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when their parental phubbing and perceived school climate were both low or high. That is, For high parental phubbing adolescents, the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents varies across the levels of perceived school climate. One possible explanation is that high parental phubbing as a vulnerability factor is a powerful predictor for adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury[55]. Adolescents who experience high parental phubbing are negatively influenced by their parents, unable to properly handle interpersonal relationships, and are prone to conflict with others in communication, thus becoming the bullying victimization. We have demonstrated earlier that bullying victimization is related to non-suicidal self-injury, thus, high parental phubbing adolescents are more likely to self-injury if they face bullying victimization, regardless of whether they perceived low or high school climate. The findings thus far indicate that the moderating effect of perceived school climate on the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury, to some extent, based on the level of parental phubbing.

Limitations and Future Directions

The present study contributes to the understanding of whether bullying victimization can significantly increase adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury and when this relationship varies across parental phubbing and perceived school climate. However, several limitations should be considered when interpreting these findings. First, the current study is derived from a sample of Chinese adolescents and is not representative. Future research should include cross-cultural samples to test the generalizability of our findings. Second, we used the self-reporting method to collect data, which may be affected by social desirability. Future research should use multiple methods and multiple informants to increase the validity of the findings. Third, this study uses cross-sectional design to explore the casual relationship between variables, and the causal relationships cannot be delineated. A longitudinal design is expected to be used in the future to better explore the causal relationship between variables. Finally, the current study only examined parental phubbing and perceived school climate as moderators, diminishing the adverse effect of bullying victimization in the conceptual model. It will be helpful for future research to expand the scope of factors that may serve as mediators and explore other underlying mechanisms in the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents.

Implications

Despite the above limitations, this study's findings make several theoretical and practical contributions to non-suicidal self-injury prevention and future research. From a theoretical perspective, first, the current study extends previous research on adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury by confirming that adolescents who face high bullying victimization are more likely to be self-injury than others using a large sample, after controlling for relevant two variables. The unique effect of bullying victimization on adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury deserves greater attention in further research. Second, the present study further extends previous studies by confirming that parental phubbing and perceived school climate simultaneously interact with bullying victimization in predicting adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. Higher levels of bullying victimization do not significantly predict increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when their parental phubbing is high and perceived school climate is low. This finding will advance researchers' understanding of those factors influencing the relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents and diminishing the strength of this relationship. However, little research has examined when the adverse effect of bullying victimization on adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury is likely to be maximized or minimized.

From a practical perspective, the findings of this study will help to design effective psychological interventions to prevent and reduce adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. First, school is an important microsystem in the ecosystem of children's development, and it is the main situation in which adolescents are bullied. A good school climate is an important protective factor for adolescents to avoid bullying. Therefore, educators can create a good school climate, give a sense of belonging to the campus, and make them actively integrate into the learning environment. Second, considering that parental phubbing may impair positive parent-child relationships, it is important for parents to realize that parental phubbing is a new and important risk factor for adolescent self-injury according to family system theory. Efforts to establish a positive parent-child relationship may prevent the emergence of self-injurious behavior in adolescence. Therefore, it will be better to prevent adolescents’ non-suicidal self-injury by designing effective interventions targeted at parental phubbing such as interpersonal psychotherapy[41]. Interpersonal interventions may play a key role in alleviating adolescent self-injury [41].

There has been growing scholarly interest on bullying victimization as a result of the negative consequences this behavior has for adolescents' development. However, few studies have examined the question of how bullying victimization affects adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury. The current study contributes to this growing literature by examining a more complex model focused on the base relationship between bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents. Adolescents with a high level of bullying victimization are likely to have a high level of non-suicidal self-injury, even after controlling for age and gender. High parental phubbing adolescents who experienced higher levels of bullying victimization are more likely to be self-injury than low parental phubbing adolescents. Furthermore, higher levels of bullying victimization significantly predict increases in adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury when their parental phubbing is high and perceived school climate is low. In contrast, this effect becomes insignificant when parental phubbing is low and perceived school climate is high. This study provides a strong foundation to guide further efforts in exploring the powerful role of bullying victimization in predicting those who are more likely to suffer from non-suicidal self-injury. Educators who are concerned about adolescents' non-suicidal self-injury should pay closer attention to parental phubbing, as well as their perceived school climate, to provide appropriate interventions.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all the leaders and teachers of the schools who helped and coordinated this testing process, as well as the adolescent students who volunteered to participate in this study.

Author contributions

XG designed the study. R-RY collected and analyzed data and drafted the manuscript. P-YW analyzed the data and reviewed and revised the manuscript. XX participated in data collection. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funding

This research was supported by the key projects of education science plan of Hubei Province in 2022: Study on the influencing factors and intervention mechanism of non suicidal self injurious behaviors in adolescents (2022GA030)

Data Availability

The data-sets analyzed during this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Psychology, College of Education and Sports Sciences, Yangtze University. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Author details

¹Department of Psychology, College of Education and Sports Sciences, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, China

²Department of Psychology, College of Education and Sports Sciences, Yangtze University College of Technology and Engineering, Jingzhou, China

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No competing interests reported.

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Bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury in adolescents: parental phubbing and perceived school climate as moderators

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Abstract

Background

Methods

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Background

Bullying victimization and non-suicidal self-injury

The moderating role of parental phubbing

The moderating role of perceived school climate

The present study

Methods

Participants

Procedures

Measures

Bullying victimization

Non-suicidal self-injury

Parental phubbing

Perceived school climate

Analytic strategy

Results

Common method bias

Descriptive and correlations

Moderating effects of parental phubbing and perceived school climate

Discussion

Limitations and Future Directions

Implications

Conclusion

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References

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