Is Peer Victimization Associated with Academic Achievement? A Meta-analytic Review

This paper presents a meta-analytic review of 33 studies, with a total of 29 552 participants, that examined the concurrent association between peer victimization and academic achievement. The results revealed a small but significant negative correlation between peer victimization and academic achievement under both the random-effects model (r = -.12, p < .001) and the fixed-effects model (r = -.10, p < .001). Factors that moderated the strength of this association across studies include the peer victimization informant, the indicator of academic achievement, whether there was shared method variance, and the national setting of the study. An exploratory analysis revealed that the strength of the correlations did not differ for boys and girls. The results help resolve the conflicting findings in the existing literature and suggest the need for further investigation into the association between peer victimization and academic achievement.