Stability of Cybergrooming Victimization Among Adolescents: A One-Year Latent Transition Analysis
摘要
Given the high prevalence and potential harms of cybergrooming, understanding distinct patterns and the stability of victimization experiences among adolescents is imperative. Therefore, this one-year longitudinal study examined latent classes of cybergrooming and their stability. The sample consisted of 688 Spanish adolescents (56% girls, 88.5% heterosexual) with a mean age of 13.86 years (SD = 1.22). At both time points, latent class analysis with experienced grooming strategies as binary indicators supported a three-class solution: no-victimization, low-victimization, and high-victimization. The victimized classes were highly similar in their pattern of experienced strategies, except that, in contrast to the low-victimization class, sexualization was the most likely strategy to experience in the high-victimization class. Further, based on most likely class membership, experiencing multiple strategies was more prevalent in the high-victimization class than in the low-victimization class. Subsequent analyses accounting for classification uncertainty indicated that the three classes differed significantly on (1) selected socio-demographic variables, namely gender, age, and sexual orientation, and (2) psychosocial variables, namely depressive symptoms and emotional involvement, but not social support. Latent transition analysis revealed that, for example, higher age and higher depressive symptoms increased the risk of transitioning from the no- to the high-victimization class. Stability was particularly high in the no- and high-victimization classes. Limitations of the present study include the dichotomization of grooming items for the main analyses and a slight inconsistency in the classification of certain patterns of experienced strategies across time. Overall, these findings indicate that a subset of adolescents is particularly vulnerable to experiencing multiple strategies and chronic or recurring victimization.