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The Relationship Among School Safety, School Liking, and Students' Self-Esteem: Based on a Multilevel Mediation Model
Xinghui Zhang1, Xin Xuan2, Fumei Chen3
1National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100875, China. zhangxh19871206@163.com.
Background:
Perceptions of school safety have an important effect on students' development. Based on the model of "context-process-outcomes," we examined school safety as a context variable to explore how school safety at the school level affected students' self-esteem.
Methods:
We used hierarchical linear modeling to examine the link between school safety at the school level and students' self-esteem, including school liking as a mediator. The data were from the National Children's Study of China (NCSC), in which 6618 fourth- to fifth-grade students in 79 schools were recruited from 100 counties in 31 provinces in China.
Results:
Multilevel mediation analyses showed that the positive relationship between school safety at the school level and self-esteem was partially mediated by school liking, controlling for demographics at both student and school levels. Furthermore, a sex difference existed in the multilevel mediation model. For boys, school liking fully mediated the relationship between school safety at the school level and self-esteem. However, school liking partially mediated the relationship between school safety at the school level and self-esteem among girls.
Conclusion:
School safety should receive increasing attention from policymakers because of its impact on students' self-esteem.
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