Method: The OBVQ was administered to the sample. Separate scales were created comprising (a) the items of the questionnaire concerning the extent to which pupils are being victimized; and (b) those concerning the extent to which pupils express bullying behaviour. Using the Rasch model, both scales were analysed for reliability, fit to the model, meaning, and validity. Both scales were also analysed separately for each of two sample groups (i.e. boys and girls) to test their invariance.
Conclusions: The OBVQ is a psychometrically sound instrument that measures two separate aspects of bullying, and whose use is supported for international studies of bullying in different countries. However, improvements to the questionnaire were also identified to provide increased usefulness to teachers tackling this significant problem facing schools in many countries.
olweus bully victim questionnaire pdf
Bullying, one of the most common forms of violence in schools, is defined as power asymmetry associated with differences in age, gender, or race which is exploited by one or more individuals with the intention of hurting or humiliating another (Olweus, 1993). Recurrence over time is also a key aspect of bullying (Berger, 2007), along with the involvement of a bully, or perpetrator, and of a victim, the target of the aggression. Some individuals may be at the same time perpetrators and victims, and are therefore classified as bully-victims (Malta et al., 2010).
A Brazilian Portuguese version of the OBVQ, Questionário de Bullying de Olweus (QBO), is also available. The QBO contains 23 items that investigate the frequency with which individuals experience and/or engage in bullying behaviors 30 days before the survey (Olweus, 1996; Fischer et al., 2010). Subjects who experience or perpetrate any of the behaviors at least three times a month are classified as victims or bullies respectively. However, the psychometric properties of the QBO have not yet been determined.
The construct validity of the QBO was established through IRT analysis using the GRM and GPCM, both of which deal with polytomous variables. The bully and victim scales of the questionnaire were independently analyzed.
Item characteristic curves for item 1 of the bully and victim scales of the Brazilian Portuguese version of the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (QBO)a. aCurves with four (a) and three (b) response categories, after standardization and transformation (c)
Once values were transformed to facilitate their interpretation, item parameters were evaluated. Table 2 shows the discriminating power and severity parameter for each item. The higher the discriminating power, the greater the contribution of the item to classifying the respondent as a victim or bully. In the victim version of the questionnaire, items 20, 15, and 3 were most discriminative, while items were 11, 4, 5, and 8 had the lowest discriminating power. The intersection between response categories 1 and 2 in items 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, and 22 suggests that the number of response categories for these items could be further reduced to two.
Unidimensionality analysis revealed that the first factor of the victim QBO scale explained 26.27 % of the variance, whereas the first factor of the bully QBO scale explained 31.05 % of the variance. A full Brazilian Portuguese version of the validated QBO appears in Additional files 1 and 2.
The aim of the present study was to determine construct validity (using IRT) and reliability of the QBO. The findings showed satisfactory validity and reliability for both bully and victim scales of the QBO.
Our findings also revealed that the items in the QBO differ in their loading to the latent variables in question. In this population, being the object of hurtful comments, persecution, or threats had high power to discriminate victims of bullying. Conversely, forcing people to be physically aggressive to others, persecuting students inside or outside the school, and issuing threats were most likely to identify bullies. These results are in line with the defining feature of bullying, which is the intention to humiliate, threaten, and harm (Olweus, 1996, Berger, 2007).
The items with the least discriminant ability for bullying victims were: being teased and being forced to hand over money or belongings, or having those taken without consent, and being humiliated in association with skin color or ethnicity. The least discriminating items in the bully scale were damaging the belongings of others and using the Internet to hurt others (cyberbullying). The fact that being teased figures among the least discriminative items for bullying victims suggests that this type of behavior may be interpreted as a friendly exchange between peers rather than an attempt to cause harm or humiliate (Volk et al., 2012).
Discriminating power is used to indicate that item estimates will remain relatively constant in future applications (Sartes & Souza-Formigoni, 2013). Concerning the QBO, that means that items with more strength to discriminate victims or bullies in our culture would be useful to assess bullying in schools in other samples of Brazilian adolescents.
The present study had some limitations. Although the replication of our method by other researchers is extremely desirable, we were unable to develop a syntax of our procedures for use in other statistical packages. Additionally, we did not provide a cutoff for the classification of bullies or victims. Nevertheless, the scores obtained by other samples on the victim and bully scales of the QBO can be calculated using IRT parameters estimated from our original data through the interactive method and tutorial available on the website www.professor.ufrgs.br/eheldt, in files model_vit.Rdata and model_agr.Rdata.
Studies show that the prevalence of bullying varies across countries and studies. This may be due to the use of different instruments, and the definitions and operationalization of the bullying concept (Menesini and Salmivalli, 2017). Nonetheless, the prevalence rates are high. For example, in a recent systematic review of studies conducted in Australia, the lifetime prevalence of bullying victimization was 25.1% and perpetration was 11.6%. For cyberbullying, the estimates were less common, 7% for victimization and 3.5% for perpetration (Jadambaa et al., 2019). Another recent meta-analysis of youth between 12 and 18 years old (n = 335,519) showed that 35% of students were involved in traditional bullying and 15% in cyberbullying (Modecki et al., 2014). Very few studies have been carried out in Latin-American countries. For instance, in Brazil, in a study conducted among 60,973 students exploring a 30-day prevalence of bullying, 5.4% reported that they had been continually bullied and 25.4% reported rarely being bullied (Malta et al., 2010). In Argentina, Resett (2016) found the following prevalence: victims 13%, bullies 6%, bully/victims 5%, and non-involved students 73%.
Regarding gender, differences between boys and girls in traditional bullying appear to be consistent. For instance, males seem to be more frequent perpetrators and victims in traditional bullying (Smith et al., 2019). However, there is a considerable variation between countries (Smith et al., 2019). Less consistent results appear in cyberbullying, where some studies report no gender differences (Brown et al., 2014), while others have found a higher proportion of females as victims (Kowalski and Limber, 2007).
There is a less clear association between socioeconomic status (SES) and bullying. In a recent systematic review and meta-analysis including 28 studies, mostly from Europe and North America, victimization and bully-victim status were positively but weakly associated with low SES, while bullying perpetration was the most weakly related (Tippett and Wolke, 2014). Further research exploring this association in middle- and low-income countries is needed.
Bullying has negative consequences in all children and adolescents involved, and some of these effects can last until adulthood (Salmivalli and Peets, 2018). For instance, victims of bullying exhibit more depressive, anxious, and somatic symptoms, lower self-esteem, lower academic performance, and suicidal ideation, among other problems (Skapinakis et al., 2011; Heerde and Hemphill, 2019). On the other hand, bullies have a higher risk for externalizing symptoms such as delinquent behaviors, substance misuse, impulsive behavior, and lower anger regulation compared with non-perpetrator students (Haynie et al., 2001). Children and adolescents who identified themselves as bully victims share the psychological consequences of both groups, and research has shown that they are the most maladjusted group (Haynie et al., 2001; Rivers, 2011). Some studies show that there are also negative consequences for bystanders, such as a higher risk of substance use than students not involved in bullying situations (Polanin et al., 2012; Gaete et al., 2017).
We were able to compare different models of the structure of the questionnaire, finding that the best model corresponds to two correlated dimensions of bullying, victimization, and perpetration. This structure has been found in other studies (Kyriakides et al., 2006; Breivik and Olweus, 2015). Additionally, we found that both subscales were correlated, which may be explained because many students who considered themselves as victims were also perpetrators.
We found that boys responded with a lower-severity parameter in almost every item. In the victimization subscale, the exception was the rumors item, in which girls showed a lower-severity parameter than boys. In the perpetration subscale, in the item about threats or being forced to do things, boys and girls had the same-severity parameter, and in the item about racial bullying, girls had a lower-severity parameter than boys. The latter may be explained because boys are more involved in bullying than girls, which is supported by other studies (Zych et al., 2015). About the rumors item, we did not expect to find differences between subscales (in the victimization subscale, girls had lower severity, and in the perpetration subscale, they had higher severity than in boys). Previous literature shows that girls are more involved in relational forms of bullying, either as victims or bullies (Wang et al., 2009). An explanation of this may be that female students in Chile are less likely to recognize themselves as spreading rumors about others because they considered these actions culturally unacceptable, similar to what happens with physical bullying among girls. However, they did recognize being the target of rumors. 2ff7e9595c
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