Classmates' Discrimination Experiences and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: Evidence From Random Assignment of Students to Classrooms in South Korea

초록

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the association between classmates' discrimination experiences and an individual student's depressive symptoms. A set of social-psychological and behavioral variables were considered as potential mechanisms underlying this association. Methods: The data came from the Gyeonggi Education Panel Study of seventh graders in South Korea. This study leveraged quasi-experimental variation generated from random assignment of students to classes within schools to address the endogenous school selection problem and account for the unobserved school-level confounders. To formally test for mediation, Sobel tests were conducted and peer attachment, school satisfaction, smoking, and drinking were explored as mechanism variables. Results: An increase in classmates' discrimination experiences was positively associated with an individual student's depressive symptoms. This association remained statistically significant even after adjusting for personal discrimination experience, a myriad of individual- and class-level covariates, as well as school fixed effects (b = 0.325, p <.05). Classmates' discrimination experiences were also associated with a decline in peer attachment and school satisfaction (b = −0.386, p <.01 and b = −0.399, p <.05, respectively). These psychosocial factors explained about one-third of the association between classmates' discrimination experiences and individual students' depressive symptoms. Discussion: The findings of this study suggest that exposure to peer-level discrimination experience leads to friend detachment and school dissatisfaction, which in turn increases an individual student's depressive symptoms. This study reaffirms the importance of fostering a more cohesive and nondiscriminatory school environment to promote adolescents' psychological health and well-being. © 2023 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine

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