The Long-Term Impact of Bullying Victimization on Intraindividual Change of School Experience

Abstract Bullying victimization and school experience are closely linked constructs that significantly influence students’ well-being and school engagement. While research has established associations between peer victimization and negative school experience, little is known about how bullying victimization changes students’ perceptions over time. This study investigates whether bullying victimization predicts intraindividual changes in students’ perceptions of school experience across two time points during early adolescence. Using data from 273 students ( M age = 12.93, SD = 1.36), we examined different dimensions of school experience (e.g., positive affect, social integration, exclusion) and bullying victimization using validated self-report measures. We applied autoregressive models to assess the stability of school experiences and True Intraindividual Change (TIC) models to identify predictors of within-person change, an approach which allows to estimate baseline levels and latent change analysis over time. Autoregressive models indicated moderate to high temporal stability across all school experience dimensions. TIC models showed that bullying victimization significantly predicted lower baseline levels of school experience indicators, particularly negative affect at school and social exclusion. Moreover, bullying victimization predicted intraindividual change in negative affect and, contrary to our hypotheses also an increase in social integration, over time. The findings suggest that bullying victimization can act as a disruptive social experience that alters students’ perceptions of their school environment. By applying TIC models, the study highlights the importance of modeling intraindividual change to better understand how social harm translates into shifts in school experiences.