• Emanuele Souza Marques, Daniela Porto Faus, Renata Bertazzi Levy, Maria Alvim Leite, Manuel P Eisner, and PeresMaria Fernanda TourinhoMFTDepartment of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil..
• Department of Epidemiology, Institute of Social Medicine, Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil; Department of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. Electronic address: emanuelesm.ims@gmail.com.
• Prev Med. 2023 May 1; 170: 107492107492.

AbstractThis study is to identify victimization patterns and analyze the association between the experience of polyvictimization and overweight or obesity among adolescent girls and boys. The sample consisted of 2680 Brazilian ninth-graders enrolled in public and private schools, taken from the São Paulo Project for the social development of children and adolescents (SP-PROSO). Victimization was explored in two ways: (i) as per Finkelhor and (ii) by latent class analysis (LCA). The interest outcomes were overweight and obesity. Multinomial logistic regression models were used to study the relationship between victimization and overweight or obesity, controlling for confounders. LCA grouped boys and girls adolescents into three classes. These classes received the same labels, but the patterns differed between sexes. Class 1 was characterized by fewer types of victimization suffered and lower endorsement values in the analyzed items and was named bullying and indirect victimization (♀: 42.7%, n = 546; ♂: 21.6%, n = 293). Class 2 included more victimization types than Class 1 and less than Class 3. This class was labeled family violence and peer victimization (♀: 29.1%, n = 356; ♂: 47.9%, n = 652). Class 3 was named high polyvictimization (♀: 28.2%, n = 345; ♂: 30.5%, n = 418). According to Finkelhor, polyvictimization was not associated with overweight or obesity in both sexes. Only the class of high polyvictimization was associated with being overweight (ORadj: 1.60, 95%CI: 1.01-2.54) in girls. In this study, polyvictimization was associated with being overweight only among adolescent girls. Longitudinal studies in different contexts and populations are needed to understand this relationship.Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

17 keywords...

hide…