The Double Burden of Victimization: Individual and Contextual Effects of School Bullying on Academic Performance

Abstract Although extensive studies have demonstrated the negative association between school bullying victimization and adolescents’ mental health, its impact on academic performance remains underexplored, especially in the Chinese context. Furthermore, the role of school-level victimization in shaping how individual-level victimization influences academic outcomes has received limited attention. This study utilized data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018, including 11,818 15-year-old Chinese students (52.05% boys), to examine the relationship between school bullying victimization and academic performance, as well as the moderating role of school-level victimization. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that both individual-level and school-level victimization were negatively associated with academic performance. Notably, the negative relationship between adolescents’ experiences of victimization and academic performance was significant only in schools with relatively high levels of victimization. These findings highlight the protective role of low school-level victimization in the association between school bullying victimization and academic performance, which supports the heuristic model of school violence but contradicts the healthy context paradox. The study further emphasizes the importance of fostering healthy school environments in school bullying prevention and intervention programs.