Identifying Protective Factors in the Association Between Peer Victimization and Internalizing Symptoms of African American Adolescents in Four Chicago’s Southside Neighborhoods

Guided by the Risk and Resilience Model, the present study aims to generate hypotheses by investigating a wide range of variables that might buffer the association between peer victimization and internalizing symptoms from a convenience sample of African American adolescents in four neighborhoods in Chicago’s Southside. Measures for the study included internalizing symptoms, peer victimization, four protective factors (parental closeness, teacher’s care, religiosity, and positive future orientation) and covariates (age, sex, and government assistance). Controlling for the covariates, a series of multivariate regression analyses were conducted to explore the direct effects of peer victimization and internalizing symptoms and the interaction between peer victimization and the four protective factors. The study found that peer victimization was directly associated with internalizing symptoms. In terms of the interactions, the study found that parental closeness moderated the association between peer victimization and internalizing symptoms. The findings show that parental closeness is an important protective factor that needs to be considered in the research hypotheses. The findings specifically demonstrated the importance of developing hypotheses to test whether parental closeness protects adolescents from internalizing symptoms linked to peer victimization.