Different Ways to Defend Victims of Bullying: Defending Profiles and Their Associations with Adolescents’ Victimization Experiences and Depressive Symptoms

Adolescents use various strategies to help their victimized peers during bullying episodes. However, prior research has primarily adopted a variable-centered approach that examines the effect of each defending strategies separately and does not address whether there were different types of defenders who exhibit specific combinations of defending strategies and how these profiles related to youth’s adjustment outcomes. Using latent profile analysis, this study identified defending profiles among a sample of Chinese adolescents (N = 1618, M_age = 13.81, SD_age = 0.94, 42% girls) and examined whether these profiles differ on victimization experiences and depressive symptoms. The results yielded four defending profiles: nonaggressive defenders (15%), aggressive defenders (7%), average defenders (54%), and infrequent defenders (24%). Aggressive defenders and infrequent defenders exhibited the highest levels of self-reported victimization and depressive symptoms, whereas nonaggressive defenders demonstrated the lowest. There were no statistical profile differences in peer-reported victimization. Findings suggest that investigating the heterogeneity of youth using defending strategies is important for understanding whether defending actually puts youth at increased risk for negative adjustment.