Wayne State research team tracks effects of bullying from high school to college

With funding from the Spencer Foundation, a private foundation focused on funding education studies, a Wayne State University research team is examining the long-term effects of bullying and mental health on social and academic progress in adolescents.

Hannah L. Schacter, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and an affiliate faculty at the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, received the grant alongside her co-principal investigator, Adam Hoffman, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at Cornell University's College of Arts and Sciences.

The one-year grant for nearly $50,000 is funded through the Foundation's Small Research Grants on Education program and will benefit their study, "Understanding the Effects of Peer Victimization and Mental Health in High School on College Persistence."

The grant focuses on how adolescents' peer experiences during high school affect their long-term outcomes, specifically their academic persistence during college. We have quite a bit of evidence that kids who are bullied by their peers not only do worse in terms of their mental health, but they also experience negative academic effects. In middle and high school, they show worse classroom engagement, get lower grades, and feel less motivated."

Hannah L. Schacter, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wayne State University

Schacter said that researchers know much less about how such effects linger beyond high school, particularly on young people's academic progress.

"We have an ongoing longitudinal study that we started in the fall of 2020 with a cohort of ninth graders," Schacter said. "We've been doing surveys and follow-up surveys with this group throughout their four years of high school. This grant allows us to continue to observe this cohort in college and see if their previous experiences with bullying are affecting them academically or socially after high school."

Schacter hopes to continue the study moving forward to observe a wider range of students exposed to different circumstances to see if their results are consistent.

"The current cohort started ninth grade during the COVID-19 pandemic," Schacter said. "I'd like to recruit another larger cohort in the future to compare some of what we are seeing among students who weren't in high school during COVID."

"This funding from the Spencer Foundation will allow Dr. Schacter and her research team to gain valuable insight into the long-term effect that bullying has on our younger generation," said Ezemenari M. Obasi, Ph.D., vice president for research & innovation at Wayne State University. "I look forward to seeing the impact of this important work."