Relational Aggression in Middle Childhood Predicting Adolescent Social-Psychological Adjustment: The Role of Friendship Quality

The present longitudinal study examined the indirect effect of 6th-grade negative friendship quality on the associations between 5th-grade relational aggression and age 15 social-psychological adjustment (i.e., depressive symptoms and risky behavior). The study consisted of a secondary analysis of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development using 776 children (M = 10.42 years in 5th grade; 50.4% boys) from the original sample. Using teacher and self-report ratings, relational and physical aggression, friendship quality, depressive symptoms, and risky behavior were measured. Bootstrapping mediation analyses were conducted. Negative friendship quality was found to mediate the association between relational aggression and depressive symptoms as well as between relational aggression and risky behavior, when controlling for physical aggression, gender and age. This longitudinal study identifies possible developmental pathways by which relational aggression and future social psychological adjustment may be linked.