School Bullying, Self-Esteem, and Emotional Intelligence Among Primary Education Students: A Gender-Based Pretest...

Background: School bullying represents a major public health challenge associated with adverse emotional and psychosocial outcomes during childhood. Self-esteem and perceived emotional intelligence may be relevant factors associated with bullying involvement. This study aimed to examine the relationships among school bullying, self-esteem, and perceived emotional intelligence in Primary Education students and to explore the indirect statistical associations between emotional intelligence dimensions and bullying involvement through self-esteem. Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional pretest study was conducted among 507 students from five educational centers in Madrid, Spain. School bullying was assessed using the Peer Harassment Questionnaire (PHQ), self-esteem using the Self-Esteem Questionnaire for Primary Education (A-EP), and perceived emotional intelligence using the Trait Meta-Mood Scale-24 (TMMS-24). Descriptive analyses, group comparisons, Pearson correlations, multiple linear regression, and exploratory mediation analyses were performed. Regression and mediation analyses were based on complete matched records. Results: Moderate bullying involvement was the predominant profile (51.3%), while 12.8% of students were classified as having high bullying involvement. School bullying was negatively correlated with self-esteem (r = -0.42, p < 0.001), emotional attention (r = -0.18, p = 0.002), emotional clarity (r = -0.37, p < 0.001), and emotional repair (r = -0.41, p < 0.001). In the adjusted regression model, self-esteem was the strongest variable independently associated with bullying involvement (β = -0.407, p < 0.001). Significant indirect effects through self-esteem were identified for emotional attention (B = -0.080, 95% CI: -0.133 to -0.027), emotional clarity (B = -0.188, 95% CI: -0.259 to -0.125), and emotional repair (B = -0.193, 95% CI: -0.270 to -0.125). Conclusions: School bullying involvement was associated with lower self-esteem and poorer perceived emotional competencies. Self-esteem statistically accounted for part of the associations between the three emotional intelligence dimensions and bullying involvement within the proposed exploratory models. Given the cross-sectional design, these findings should not be interpreted as evidence of causal or temporal relationships.