Direct and indirect aggression and victimization in adolescents - associations with the development of XXXX .

@entity1 @entity713 @entity458
BACKGROUND: Previous research has established that direct and indirect forms of aggression differ in their association with gender and type of @entity458 . One purpose of the present study was to test if the same applies to direct and indirect victimization. A second purpose was to study these associations not only cross-sectionally (as in most previous research) but also longitudinally. A third purpose was to test the hypotheses that there are prospective bidirectional associations not only between victimization and @entity458 (which has been shown in previous research), but also between aggression and @entity458 , and that direct and indirect forms of aggression and victimization show different associations with different types of @entity458 . METHODS: The @entity1 were a community sample of all students in two grades of regular school in a Swedish municipality who answered questionnaires as part of a two-wave longitudinal study with a one-year interval. The @entity1 were 13-15 years old, and there were longitudinal data on 893 students, which represented 85% of all students. The cross-sectional associations were primarily tested by semi-partial correlations, and the longitudinal associations by hierarchical multiple regression. RESULTS: The results corroborated the meaningfulness of differentiating not only between direct and indirect aggression but also between direct and indirect victimization. @entity1 reported being more victim to direct aggression, whereas @entity1 reported being more victim to indirect aggression. Direct aggression predicted @entity713 in @entity1 , whereas indirect aggression predicted @entity713 in @entity1 , and conduct problems reciprocally predicted increased direct and indirect aggression. Indirect victimization showed prospective bidirectional associations with emotional symptoms and conduct problems, suggesting the potential development of vicious cycles of escalating problems in these areas. CONCLUSIONS: The present results indicate that direct and indirect aggression, as well as direct and indirect victimization, may have different roles in the development of @entity458 in young adolescents. Further, the demonstration of prospective bidirectional associations points to a possible mechanism for the development of @entity458 , that may be described in terms of dynamical systems theory. This has potential relevance both for the prevention and the treatment of psychopathology.
