Electronic victimization experiences in Spanish adolescents from the general population and risk contexts

The present work aims to show the differences in the occurrence of electronic victimization in the last year, between four different samples of Spanish adolescents. Likewise, it seeks to study whether there is a relationship between having suffered electronic victimization and other forms of victimization and whether cyber-victims show differences according to sex and age group. 1,105 adolescents from secondary education centers, 149 from child and adolescent mental health centers, 129 from the protection system, and 101 from the juvenile justice system were interviewed. Victimization experiences were assessed using the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (Finkelhor et al., 2005). Electronic victimization ranged from 8.9% in the school sample, 16.8% in mental health, 25.7% in the juvenile justice system and 27.1% in the protection system. A positive relationship was found between electronic victimization and other forms of victimization in educational, protection and justice centers. Besides, girls were more likely to experience electronic victimization in the mental health and school samples. In conclusion, electronic victimization is distributed differentially according to the adolescents’ provenance group.