ArticleBMC psychology2026
Differential impacts of bullying and sexual violence on girls' self-esteem in Nigeria: the buffering role of social support.
Article in BMC psychology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
backgroundSchool-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) poses serious risks to adolescent girls' safety, learning, and mental health. This study assessed whether perceived social support - from family, friends, and significant others - buffers the negative effects of bullying and sexual violence on girls' self-esteem in Nigeria.
methodsUsing data from 5,936 secondary schoolgirls (aged 15-20 years) drawn from the Adolescent Girls' Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project, we employed multilevel linear models with random intercepts for schools to test the direct (main) effects and within-level moderation of social support and SRGBV on girls' self-esteem, adjusting for student- and school-level covariates.
resultsBoth bullying and sexual violence were significantly associated with lower self-esteem, with standardized coefficients indicating a stronger negative association for sexual violence (β ≈ -0.07, p < .001) than for bullying (β ≈ -0.04, p < .01). Perceived social support showed significant positive main effects on self-esteem across all sources (p < .001) and moderated the relationship with bullying, such that higher support from family (β ≈ 0.031, p < .01), friends (β ≈ 0.024, p < .05), and overall support (β ≈ 0.023, p < .05) attenuated its negative effect. No moderating effect was observed for sexual violence for any support source (all interaction p > .05), indicating that perceived social support did not offset the self-esteem harms associated with sexual victimization.
conclusionOur study demonstrates that everyday social ties, particularly support from family and peers, can protect girls' self-esteem from the harms of bullying but appear insufficient to mitigate the severe impact of sexual violence. This suggests that effective interventions require an integrated approach: strengthening relationship-based networks to prevent and buffer bullying, alongside establishing specialized, trauma-informed responses to address sexual violence.
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