Systematic Validation of a Self-Administered Questionnaire to Assess Bullying: From Elementary School to High School and by Sex

Vol. 20, No. 1, 2018 Systematic Validation of a Self-Administered Questionnaire to Assess Bullying: From Elementary School to High School and by Sex Validación sistemática de un cuestionario autoadministrado para evaluar el bullying: desde primaria hasta preparatoria y por sexo Arnulfo Ramos-Jiménez (1) Óscar A. Esparza del Villar (1) Alberto Castro-Valles (1) Rosa P. Hernández-Torres (2) Miguel Murguía-Romero (3) Rafael Villalobos-Molina (3) (1) Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (2) Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua (3) Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Received: August 17, 2016; accepted for publishing: October 27, 2016) How to cite: Ramos-Jiménez, A., Esparza, O. A., Castro-Valles, A., Hernández-Torres, R. P., Murguía-Romero, M. y Villalobos-Molina, R. (2018). Systematic validation of a self-administered questionnaire to assess bullying: from elementary school to high school and by sex. Revista Electrónica de Investigación Educativa, 20(1), 26-37. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.24320/redie.2018.20.1.1535 Abstract There is a need to develop and validate an instrument to assess school bullying in the Mexican population in order to evaluate the issue and intervene accordingly. This study validates a bullying assessment instrument named Bull-M in children from 5th to 12th grade. The Bull-M was administered to a sample size of 2,030 students from 5th to 12th grade in several schools in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. A two-factor structure of the Bull-M was analyzed with confirmatory factor analyses across the whole sample and gender and educational levels. The confirmatory factor analyses indicate good model fits, strong factor loadings and adequate Cronbach’s alpha values to assess internal reliability of the factors and scale. The Bull-M can be used to assess bullying in students from 5th to 12th grade in northern Mexico. Keywords: Confirmatory factor analysis, school violence, internal reliability, emotional health. Resumen Es necesario desarrollar y validar un instrumento para valorar el acoso escolar en la población mexicana a fin de evaluar el problema e intervenir en consecuencia. Este estudio valida un instrumento de evaluación de intimidación llamado Bull-M, el cual se administró a una muestra de 2,030 estudiantes de 5o. a 12o. grado en varias escuelas de Ciudad Juárez (México). Se analizó una estructura de dos factores del Bull-M con análisis de factores confirmatorios en toda la muestra y los niveles de género y educación. Los análisis Systematic validation of a self-administered questionnaire to assess bullying… Ramos-Jiménez et al. factoriales confirmatorios indican buenos ajustes del modelo, fuertes cargas de factores y valores adecuados de alfa de Cronbach para evaluar la confiabilidad interna de los factores y la escala. El Bull-M se puede usar para evaluar la intimidación en estudiantes de 5o. a 12o. grado en el norte de México. Palabras clave: Análisis factorial confirmatorio, violencia escolar, confiabilidad interna, salud emocional. I. Introduction In many countries, repeated aggressive behavior in students, known as bullying, has become a social health problem (Levine & Tamburrino, 2014). This is because victims (the bullied) and aggressors (the bullies) have higher incidences of health complaints, depression (Due, Damsgaard, Lund, & Holstein, 2009; Fleming & Jacobsen, 2009; Hanley & Gibb, 2011), and interpersonal relationship problems (Gilmartin, 1987), which later may result in different forms of violence, criminality, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts (Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013; Fleming & Jacobsen, 2009). The global prevalence of bullying in high schools has been found to range from 5% to 45%. This figure is higher in women (Craig et al., 2009), and an increase in violent behavior has also been reported (Bickmore, 1997). In addition, it has been reported that the prevalence of school bullying may differ depending on the educational level (Nansel, Overpeck, Pilla, Ruan, Simons-Morton, & Scheidt, 2001; Sawyer, Bradshaw, & O'Brennan, 2008), decreasing in older students but not disappearing (Alzahrani, 2012; Ozkal, 2011). The reduced prevalence in older students is primarily related to physical aspects, but there is an increase in indirect or social forms, like exclusion, verbal and cyberbullying, among others (Alzahrani, 2012; Bauman, Toomey, & Walker, 2013; Ozkal, 2011). Violence in schools in Mexico has been measured nationwide as part of an extensive survey that measured several child-related aspects in 2000 (Secretaría de Salud, 2006), 2012 (Instituto Federal Electoral, 2012), and 2015 (Instituto Federal Electoral, 2015). In the year 2000, information was obtained from 4,000,000 girls and boys with the objective of estimating violence reported by students in school. The results indicated that 32% of children between the ages of 6 and 9 and 13% of children between the ages of 10 and 13 reported having been victims of violence in school (Secretaría de Salud, 2006). A similar survey, which measured only school violence in the 13 to 15-year-old age group, was administered in 2012 to 2,256,532 children across all the states of Mexico (Instituto Federal Electoral, 2012). The results indicated that 12% of students reported being harassed or intimidated by peers in school and 4% reported being victims of sexual abuse in schools. The most recent survey was reported in 2015 with a sample size of 2,916,686 children from all the states of Mexico, and violence in schools was only measured in the 10 to 13-year-old age group (Instituto Federal Electoral, 2015). The results showed that 14.9% reported physical violence, 26.3% verbal violence, 19.5% emotional violence, and 2.9% sexual violence in school. These indicators were also measured in the state of Chihuahua, where the study sample is from, and for the state the results were similar, as 14.5% reported physical violence in school, 28.6% verbal violence, 21.6% emotional violence, and 2.8% reported sexual violence in school. Bullying in Mexico has become an important topic, particularly in places were there has been a lot of violence, like in Ciudad Juárez, which was named the most violent city in the world in 2010 due to the war between drug cartels and the Mexican government. Between 2007 and 2011, more than 9,000 people were murdered in Ciudad Juárez (Valencia & Chacon, 2013), producing social, cultural and psychological consequences. Violence was part of citizens’ everyday lives, as it appeared in television broadcasts, radio, newspapers, social media, and the Internet. Children were aware of the problem since they had to live – and survive – in this environment full of violence and death. It is in this context that researchers in Mexico, and Ciudad Juárez specifically, decided to analyze this problem to intervene and attempt to minimize the negative consequences in children. Qualitative observation, direct interviews, psychometric tests and self-report metho (...truncated)