About

Amy Bellmore is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Lab Director of the PRESM Lab: Peer Relationships, Ethnicity, Schools, and Media Lab. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Connecticut and her BA from the University of California-San Diego. Her primary research focus is on school-based peer relationships during adolescence, with a specific emphasis on the impact of social risk factors such as peer rejection and peer victimization on psychosocial and academic adjustment. Bellmore's theoretical approach is informed by person-in-context social developmental models, which emphasize the connection between developing adolescents and their social contexts. A key component of this perspective is the recognition that the social context contains several influential levels, including school and classroom contexts as well as more proximal levels such as students' friendship groups and specific real-life interaction characteristics. This multi-level approach offers numerous points of possible intervention to improve adolescent lives, and understanding where and how to intervene is one of the ultimate goals of her research.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Machine Learning
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Sociology
• Clinical psychology
• Psychotherapist
• Econometrics
• Mathematics
• Psychoanalysis
• Developmental psychology

Selected publications

• Interethnic Climate and Psychological Adjustment in High School: The Role of School Belonging and Ethnic Identity

  Journal of Youth and Adolescence · 2025-09-10 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Adolescent perceptions of the ethnic composition of their friendship group and school

  Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology · 2025-04-17 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Diverse schools can provide opportunities for adolescents to interact with peers from diverse backgrounds. However, these opportunities do not automatically guarantee that adolescents will realize the benefits of diversity, particularly if they don't lead to meaningful relationships like friendships. The current study thus examined school interethnic climate as a factor that may promote friendship group inclusivity . With more than 500 tenth grade participants from three diverse high schools, we found that students perceived their friendship groups to be less diverse, with a higher percentage of same-ethnicity peers, than their school. However, positive school interethnic climate was indirectly associated with greater friendship inclusivity (i.e., a more diverse friendship group, with fewer same-ethnic peers, controlling for school ethnic composition), through an increased openness to friends perceived as different. These results can help inform the design and assessment of school-based practices aimed at optimizing the benefits provided by school diversity. • Students who attend diverse schools do not all have diverse friendship groups. • Adolescent perceptions of ethnic composition can be used to measure inclusivity. • Perception of school interethnic climate was indirectly associated with inclusivity. • School climate interventions should focus on interethnic friendships.

  PublisherDOI

• An exploration of the school ethnic context factors associated with the peer interactions of adolescents on social media

  Educational Psychology · 2025-09-26 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Exploring the Link Between Cybervictimization and Depression

  Violence and Victims · 2024-09-12

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Peer relationships

  Elsevier eBooks · 2024-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Elucidating College Students' Cyberstalking Victimization Experiences

  Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking · 2023-12-18 · 6 citations

  article

  Given that college students are high users of social media, an exploration of their experiences with cyberstalking victimization on social media is imperative. In this cross-sectional online survey study, 200 college student participants at a large state university (Mage = 19.93, SD = 1.72) were recruited. The online survey asked participants to self-identify as targets of cyberstalking; those who identified themselves as having had an experience with cyberstalking victimization were asked questions about their experience, including their relationship with the perpetrator, the duration of their experience, when the experience occurred, and the behaviors that were enacted by the perpetrator, both off and on social media. Analyses included assessing prevalence and descriptive statistics. Among participants, 14 percent self-identified as experiencing victimization. The majority (82.1 percent) experienced victimization from either a peer who was not a friend, a stranger, or an ex-romantic partner. Regarding the duration of experiences, 82.1 percent reported their experience lasted 6 months or fewer, and for the majority (67.9 percent), their experience happened over 1 year ago. Of targets, 96.4 percent experienced a communication technology behavior, whereas 92.9 percent experienced a behavior that occurred on social media. Potential implications include widening the scope of examination of cyberstalking victimization experiences in research and screening for cyberstalking victimization in college settings.

  PublisherDOI

• Connecting Feelings of School Belonging to High School Students’ Friendship Quality Profiles

  Journal of Social and Personal Relationships · 2023-02-02 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Utilizing a person-centered approach, the present study explored 614 adolescents’ reports of self-disclosure, help, conflict, and conflict resolution with a close friend to investigate variability in profiles of friendship quality, whether gender and gender homophily and ethnicity homophily of friends are associated with profile membership, and how the profiles relate to feelings of school belonging. A latent profile analysis revealed three profiles of friendship: an ideal friendship profile (25.57% of the sample), a realistic friendship profile (54.56%), and a somewhat problematic friendship profile (19.87%). Compared to adolescents in the somewhat problematic profile, female adolescents were more likely to have a realistic or ideal friendship profile than males. Adolescents with ideal and realistic friendship profiles reported the highest feelings of school belonging; those in the somewhat problematic profile reported the lowest school belonging. The advantages of attending to profiles that incorporate multiple dimensions of friendship quality to understanding the social and academic experiences of adolescents are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• The Utility of Latent Class Analysis to Understand Heterogeneity in Youth Coping Strategies: A Methodological Introduction

  Behavioral Disorders · 2022 · 61 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Machine Learning
  • Psychology

  Latent class analysis (LCA) is a useful statistical approach for understanding heterogeneity in a population. This article provides a pedagogical introduction to LCA modeling and provides an example of its use to understand youths’ daily coping strategies. The analytic procedures are outlined for choosing the number of classes and integration of the LCA variable within a structural equation model framework, specifically a latent class moderation model, and a detailed table provides a summary of relevant modeling steps. This applied example demonstrates the modeling context when the LCA variable is moderating the association between a covariate and two outcome variables. Results indicate that students’ coping strategies moderate the association between social stress and negative mood; however, they do not moderate the social stress-positive mood association. Online supplemental materials include R (MplusAutomation) code to automate the enumeration procedure, ML three-step auxiliary variable integration, and the generation of figures for visually depicting LCA results.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Competence in Interactions with Peers

  2022-03-18 · 4 citations

  otherOpen accessSenior author

  Research has suggested that social competence is not one construct, but that there are two forms of social competence. One form includes prosociality, empathy, and perspective taking. Another form includes dominance, manipulation, and Machiavellianism. Research with children has indicated that these two types of skill sets are associated with two different types of status in the peer group: peer acceptance (or sociometric popularity) and popularity (or perceived popularity). The distinction between these two forms of social competence in childhood may have implications for social development across the life span and be reflected in later relationships and social functioning in various social contexts. In this chapter, we address the dual nature of social competence in childhood and its associations with social status in the peer group and social behavior in interactions with peers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Utility of Latent Class Analysis to Understand Heterogeneity in Youth’s Coping Strategies: A Methodological Introduction

  2021 · 4 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Machine Learning
  • Psychology

  Latent class analysis (LCA) is a useful statistical approach for understanding heterogeneity in a population. This paper provides a pedagogical introduction to LCA modeling and provides an example of its use to understand youth’s daily coping strategies. The analytic procedures are outlined for choosing the number of classes and integration of the LCA variable within a structural equation model framework, specifically a latent class moderation model, and a detailed table provides a summary of relevant modeling steps. This applied example demonstrates the modeling context when the LCA variable is moderating the association between a covariate and two outcome variables. Results indicate that students’ coping strategies moderate the association between social stress and negative mood, however they do not moderate the social stress-positive mood association. Appendices include R (MplusAutomation) code to automate the enumeration procedure, 3-step auxiliary variable integration, and the generation of figures for visually depicting LCA results.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Day-to-Day Coping with Peer Victimization: Diversity of Friends, Bystanders, and Responses

  NSF · $546k · 2012–2016

Frequent coauthors

• Adrienne Nishina

  University of California, Davis

  20 shared

• Melissa R. Witkow

  16 shared

• Sandra Graham

  California Department of Education

  13 shared

• Jaana Juvonen

  University of California, Los Angeles

  9 shared

• Ji‐In You

  8 shared

• Xiaojin Zhu

  7 shared

• Chelsea Olson

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  7 shared

• Junming Xu

  Eighth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University

  7 shared

Labs

• PRESM Lab: Peer Relationships, Ethnicity, Schools, and Media LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Educational Psychology

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  2000

• M.S., Educational Psychology

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  1996

• B.A., Psychology

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1993