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Abstract
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PURPOSE: The current study was designed to extend the results of an earlier study in which parental support was found to moderate the prospective relationship between bullying perpetration and subsequent delinquency.
METHOD: A unique aspect of the current study was that instead of focusing on the two-way interactions beween bullying and parenting, as was done in a previous investigation, the three-way interaction between bullying, parental support, and parental knowledge was scrutinized. Using data provided by 3956 (2047 boys, 1909 girls) members of the nationally representative Longituidnal Study of Australian Children (mean age = 12.41 years) a multiple regression analysis was performed using a maximum likelihood with robust standard errors estimator.
RESULTS: The results revealed a significant three-way interaction between bullying perpetration, parental support, and parental knowledge as prior (age 12-13) predictors of subsequent (age 14-15) delinquency, controlling for age, sex, indigenousness, bullying victmization, peer delinquency, and prior participant delinquency.
CONCLUSIONS: The nature of the interactions observed in this study imply that high parental support, combined with low parental knowledge, may protect children who engage in bullying behavior from progressing into a delinquent lifestyle two years later.
Language: en |