Developing a Bullying Scale for Use with University Students

Abstract

Bullying is not a new topic to be researched but the consequences of bullying for university students is an area yet to be studied. Thus, in this study our aim was to develop a bullying scale for use with university students. In order to do this we categorized their bullying behaviors as physical, verbal, emotional, and cyber; and their bullying status as bully, victim, bully-victim, and bystander. The survey we developed to validate our scale was completed by volunteer participants individually. Exploratory factor analysis was done to determine construct validity of the scale. The internal consistency values were calculated for reliability. The resultant values showed that the developed scale can be accepted as a valid and reliable scale to be used for measuring both bully and victim behaviors among young adults studying at tertiary level.