1
Return

Unveiling Roots of Chinese Adolescent Cyberbullying Through Explainable Machine Learning Approach

delete2026-06-01
delete0
PRE
AI
W
Wanghao Dong
Y
Yinghui Huang
X
Xin Zhao
X
Xingchao Wang *
W
Weijun Wang *
DOI:10.1111/desc.70230delete
deleteOriginal
deleteOriginal request for help
deleteShare
deleteSave
Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Cyberbullying poses a substantial threat to adolescents’ well-being, yet prevention efforts remain limited by insufficient understanding of its multilevel determinants. Guided by ecological systems theory, this study applies explainable machine learning (ML) to examine factors associated with cyberbullying perpetration across individual, family, peer, class, school, and online contexts. Questionnaire data from 2286 adolescents (Mage = 13.46 years, SD = 0.93; 11–16 years) were analyzed. Random Forest and XGBoost achieved out-of-sample accuracies of 87.35% and 85.95%, respectively. Model-based importance analyses consistently highlighted Childhood Psychological Abuse, Adverse Peer Interactions, and Cyberbullying Victimization as the highest-ranked predictors. At the system level, variables from the Family, Individual and Cyber contexts accounted for a substantial share of model importance, indicating their salience for intervention design. These findings prioritize psychosocial targets for prevention and demonstrate how explainable ML can synthesize questionnaire data to inform multi-tiered strategies against adolescent cyberbullying.
Keywords:
cyberbullying perpetration
ecosystem theory
explainable machine learning
predictive modeling

Journal

Developmental Science cover
Developmental Science
IF:
3.2
Papers:
2.9K
Citations:
9.5K

Organization

M
Ministry of Education
Scholars:
2.4K
Papers: 707
Citations: 42
W
wuhan university of technology
Scholars:
6.0K
Papers: 1.8K
Citations: 0
B
Beijing City University
Scholars:
77
Papers: 39
Citations: 194
T
the university of manchester
Scholars:
894
Papers: 405
Citations: 0
S
Shanxi University
Scholars:
1.2W
Papers: 8.2K
Citations: 1.2W
Cited Papers

Cited Papers

Citing Papers

Citing Papers