The mediating role of depression symptoms in childhood abuse and cyberbullying among college students / 中华疾病控制杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective Analyze the correlation of depression between the childhood abuse behavior and adulthood cyberbullying behavior, so as to discuss and provide evidences for preventing the cyberbullying behavior of college students. Methods A total of 4 040 college students were surveyed after multistage stratified cluster random sampling from 6 universities in Shanxi Province of China by using childhood trauma questionnaire, self-rating depression scale and cyberbullying scale. Results In the three dimensions of cyberbullying, cyber-verbal bullying behavior, identity concealing behavior and cyber-forgery fraud behavior, male students and only child students scored higher than that of female students and non-only child students (all P<0.001). There was a positive correlation between childhood abuse, adult depression and cyberbullying (all P<0.001). The mediation effect results showed that depression symptoms of college students were mediating between childhood abuse experience and cyberbullying behavior (the mediation effect result was 0.090, P<0.001), the mediation effect contributed 12.16% to the total effect, the mediation model fitting index were 2/df=39.96，RMSEA=0.101，CFI=0.948，TLI=0.924，SRMR=0.043. Conclusions Childhood abuse experience and adulthood depression are closely related to the implementation of cyberbullying behavior in college, and depression plays part of mediating role in predicting the implementation of cyberbullying behavior in college students who has childhood abuse experience.