Differential impacts of bullying and sexual violence on girls’ self-esteem in Nigeria: the buffering role of social support

BACKGROUND: School-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) poses serious risks to adolescent girls' safety, learning, and mental health. This study assessed whether perceived social support - from family, friends, and significant others - buffers the negative effects of bullying and sexual violence on girls' self-esteem in Nigeria. METHODS: Using data from 5,936 secondary schoolgirls (aged 15-20 years) drawn from the Adolescent Girls' Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) project, we employed multilevel linear models with random intercepts for schools to test the direct (main) effects and within-level moderation of social support and SRGBV on girls' self-esteem, adjusting for student- and school-level covariates. RESULTS: Both bullying and sexual violence were significantly associated with lower self-esteem, with standardized coefficients indicating a stronger negative association for sexual violence (β ≈ -0.07, p < .001) than for bullying (β ≈ -0.04, p < .01). Perceived social support showed significant positive main effects on self-esteem across all sources (p < .001) and moderated the relationship with bullying, such that higher support from family (β ≈ 0.031, p < .01), friends (β ≈ 0.024, p < .05), and overall support (β ≈ 0.023, p < .05) attenuated its negative effect. No moderating effect was observed for sexual violence for any support source (all interaction p > .05), indicating that perceived social support did not offset the self-esteem harms associated with sexual victimization. CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrates that everyday social ties, particularly support from family and peers, can protect girls' self-esteem from the harms of bullying but appear insufficient to mitigate the severe impact of sexual violence. This suggests that effective interventions require an integrated approach: strengthening relationship-based networks to prevent and buffer bullying, alongside establishing specialized, trauma-informed responses to address sexual violence.