Effects of Family CRISIS on Offline School Bullying in Elementary School Students in Korea: Mediating Effects of ADHD Symptoms, Cyber Bullying Victimization, and Anger

Purpose; The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of family crisis such as parental neglect on elementary school students offline school bullying and to analyze the mediating effects of ADHD symptoms, cyber bullying victimization, and anger on that influence. A total of 634 students in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade at four elementary schools in the capital area participated in this study. Their parental neglect, cyber bullying victimization, offline school bullying, ADHD symptoms and anger levels were examined by a survey. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and the mediating effects were verified by bootstrapping. The major findings were as follows. To begin with, the result showed that parental neglect could increase offline school bullying directly. Next, parental neglect could increase offline school bullying indirectly by mediating cyber bullying victimization, ADHD symptoms, and anger. In details, four paths were statistically significant at 95% confidence level. First, parental neglect increased cyber bullying victimization, and increased cyber bullying vic-timization augmented offline school bullying. Second, parental increased anger level, this increased anger aug-mented offline school bullying. Third, parental neglect increased cyber bullying victimization, and increased cyber bullying victimization raised anger level, this raised anger augmented offline school bullying. Fourth, parental neglect increased ADHD symptoms, and increased ADHD symptoms raised anger level, this raised anger finally augmented offline school bullying. The results of this study suggest that child maltreatment such as parental neglect and emotional problems such as ADHD symptoms and anger should be considered in developing school bullying prevention and intervention programs.