Peer bullying victimization and psychological well-being among Turkish and Syrian adolescents: The mediating roles of school adjustment and belonging

Using a cross-sectional quantitative design, this study examined academic adjustment, social adjustment, school acceptance, and school exclusion as statistical indirect associations linking peer bullying victimization with psychological well-being among Turkish and Syrian middle school students attending Turkish-medium public middle schools in Kilis, a setting shaped by the long-term presence of Syrian families. Grounded in Ecological Systems Theory, the Need to Belong Theory, and the Risk and Resilience Framework, data were collected from 290 students (165 Turkish, 125 Syrian) in Kilis, Türkiye, using researcher-supervised paper-based self-report questionnaires. Multi-group structural equation modeling showed that victimization was negatively associated with academic adjustment, social adjustment, and school acceptance and positively associated with school exclusion. Victimization remained directly associated with lower psychological well-being, and all four school-related variables showed significant indirect statistical associations, with school exclusion showing the largest specific indirect association. Ordinal multi-group CFA using WLSMV supported configural, metric, and scalar/threshold invariance across nationality groups, allowing latent mean comparisons. Structural invariance further indicated that the regression pattern was statistically comparable across groups. Syrian students showed higher latent means for victimization and school exclusion and lower latent means for academic adjustment, social adjustment, school acceptance, and psychological well-being than Turkish students. The findings indicate that differences in average school experiences can coexist with statistically comparable patterns of association among Turkish and Syrian students in Kilis. The cross-sectional design and absence of direct measures of language proficiency, acculturation, and discrimination limit causal interpretation and explanations of the group differences.