Bullying victimization and school engagement: the role of subjective well-being

Efforts have been made to understand the underlying mechanism between bullying victimization and school engagement but primarily focused on the mediating effects of depression and anxiety, despite that low subjective well-being (SWB) is more commonly experienced among victims of school bullying. This study compared the mediating effects of SWB, depression, and anxiety in the association between bullying victimization and overall school engagement and examined how SWB was related to each dimension of school engagement with a sample of 232 Chinese adolescents (44.4% boys, age M = 14.4, SD = 1.1). The results showed that SWB was a stronger mediator than depression and anxiety in the association between bullying victimization and overall school engagement. Furthermore, SWB fully mediated the associations between bullying victimization and each of the five dimensions of school engagement. These findings suggest that being bullied may not directly lower one’s school engagement, but it significantly compromises one’s SWB, which then predicts decreases in school engagement across various dimensions.