The Relationship Between Violence Exposure and Academic Performance: the Mediating Role of Depression and the Moderating Role of Gender

Previous studies predominantly focused on the single-context violence exposure on depression or academic performance, which may inaccurately estimate the effects of certain violence for the co-occurrence of violence across contexts. The present study aimed to simultaneously examine the associations between domestic violence exposure, school violence exposure, depression and academic performance, as well as the gender differences in relationship above mentioned.

Participants (N = 1216, 55.3% boys, T1: M_age = 14.45) were adolescents recruited from a junior high school in Guangdong Province, China. Demographic variables, experience of violence exposure and depression were assessed based on self-reported questionnaires at Time 1. Students’ academic performance record at Time 2 (six months later) were provided by the school. The analysis was conducted in SPSS 26.0 and MPLUS 8.3.

Depression fully mediated the relationship between domestic violence exposure and academic performance, and partially mediated the association between school violence exposure and academic performance. Regarding gender differences, school violence exposure was associated with higher level of depression among girls, whereas depression was related with worse academic performance among boys.

Both domestic and school violence exposure are associated with academic performance through depression, and these relationships are moderated by gender.