Social anxiety and bullying victimization: A three-level meta-analysis of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies

Numerous studies have explored the association between social anxiety and bullying victimization. However, inconsistency are found regarding the strength and the direction of this relationship. Moreover, it remains unclear how different subtypes of bullying victimization associate with social anxiety.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a meta-analysis to systematically investigate the cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between social anxiety and bullying victimization.

Individuals experiencing social anxiety and bullying victimization.

The present study employed three-level random effects model to combine the correlation coefficients r to indicate the strength of the cross-sectional association between social anxiety and bullying victimization. Cross-lagged regressions were utilized to examine the prospective relationship between both variables.

A total of 133 cross-sectional studies reporting 220 effect sizes were included in the meta-analysis, and the results showed a significant moderate association between social anxiety and bullying victimization (r = 0.268, 95 % CI [0.244, 0.292]). Nineteen longitudinal studies were also identified, revealing that social anxiety at Time 1 significantly predicted bullying victimization at Time 2 (β = 0.067, 95 % CI [0.038, 0.096]). However, bullying victimization did not significantly predict subsequent social anxiety (β = 0.012, 95 % CI [-0.026, 0.049]). Subgroup analyses revealed that social anxiety had the strongest association with relational victimization (r = 0.382, 95 % CI [0.335, 0.430]), followed by reputational victimization (r = 0.254, 95 % CI [-0.171, 0.337]), physical victimization (r = 0.226, 95 % CI [0.144, 0.308]) and overt victimization (r = 0.202, 95 % CI [0.146, 0.257]). Social anxiety was significantly more associated with traditional bullying victimization (r = 0.281, 95 % CI [0.233, 0.328]) than cyberbullying victimization (r = 0.177, 95 % CI [0.137, 0.218]; p < 0.001).

Social anxiety was found to be moderately associated with and prospectively predict bullying victimization. Future research and interventions could focus on reducing social anxiety to prevent bullying victimization.