engleski

Is a resilience and positive youth development a protective factor for peer violence? - Perception of Croatian high school students

The Laboratory for Prevention Research, Department of Behavioral Disorders, ERF-UNIZG is the leader of the project “Positive Development of Adolescents in Croatia”, which aimed to study indicators of positive development, risk behavior and mental health of adolescents. Previous studies have shown that resilience is associated with positive youth development and less participation in different risk behaviors. The Resilience & Positive Youth Development approach is dedicated to assessing internal and external assets. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences in the experience of peer violence and internal and external assets in the family, school and peer environment. The study involved 10, 138 Croatian high school students (aged 14 to 19 years). For this paper, CTC Youth Survey (modified by Mihić, Novak and Bašić, 2011) and a modified version of the Resilience and Youth Development Module (California Department of Education, 1997) were applied. Kolmogorov- Smirnov test, Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann- Whitney test were used to test the hypothesis of this paper. The finding revealed that more likely to experience peer violence are students who perceive the lower level of internal assets. Concurrently, students who are more likely to engage in fight perceive a high level of self- efficacy, and those who are more likely to be victims of physical and emotional peer violence, including cyberbullying, perceive a high level of empathy. In addition, students who report a higher level of witnessing violence and being victims of physical and emotional peer violence, including cyberbullying, perceive a lower level of external assets in the peer and family environment. Moreover, students who report higher levels of physical and emotional victimization and experiencing theft and damaging their private property perceive a lower level of external assets in the community environment. The contribution and practical implications of the results will be discussed in details in the poster.

resilience ; positive youth development ; peer violence

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