DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/H36S-J221

Defense Date

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Wendy Kliewer

Second Advisor

Albert Farrell

Third Advisor

Terri Sullivan

Fourth Advisor

Roxann Roberson-Nay

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the bidirectional relations between anxious and depressive symptoms and two forms of peer victimization (i.e., overt and relational) within a sample of 358 predominantly African-American adolescents living in low-income urban areas across four years. Longitudinal path analyses tested progressively complex models for each type of victimization. For both overt and relational victimization the autoregressive model where only previous levels of each construct predicted future levels of the construct was the most parsimonious explanation. The best fitting model for both types of peer victimization suggested that internalizing symptoms helped to further explain future victimization, but victimization did not help to further explain future internalizing symptoms. Additionally, anxious symptoms were more uniquely important in predicting future peer victimization than depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that the patterns between peer victimization and internalizing symptoms may be missing an important predictor when anxiety is not considered.

Rights

© The Author

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

April 2014

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