BACKGROUND: Moving beyond overall-level analyses toward more fine-grained dimensional investigation may provide deeper insights into individual psychological health and educational practice. School bullying can exert enduring adverse effects on students' psychological well-being and developmental adjustment. The present study aimed to apply an integrated network-analytic framework to examine the dimension-level associations among school bullying, self-efficacy, psychological resilience, and coping strategies, and to identify potential targets for bullying prevention and intervention. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among university students in Aral, Xinjiang, China. A total of 2,560 healthy participants aged 16-26 years completed self-report measures assessing school bullying, self-efficacy, psychological resilience, and coping strategies. Sex-stratified regularized partial correlation networks were then estimated to examine the potential associations among these dimensions. Expected influence and bridge expected influence were calculated for each node, and the stability and accuracy of the networks were evaluated. RESULTS: The male network was more densely connected than the female network and exhibited higher global absolute connectivity, while both networks shared a highly similar backbone. BEI estimates demonstrated good stability in both groups (CS = 0.75). Across sexes, self-efficacy emerged as a shared risk-related bridge node (Male BEI = 0.96; Female BEI = 0.85), whereas interpersonal relationships showed a protective bridging pattern (Male BEI = - 0.13; Female BEI = - 0.22). CONCLUSION: These findings further clarify the stable yet sex-differentiated organization of bullying-related psychological networks among university students. Although the male and female networks shared a common structural backbone, the male network showed greater overall connectedness and selective strengthening of specific edges. Interventions should prioritize enhancing self-efficacy and adaptive coping while strengthening interpersonal resilience, with careful attention to sex-specific network features to inform more precise prevention and support strategies. The identified nodes may serve as potential targets for school bullying prevention and intervention.
Feng et al. (Tue,) studied this question.