Psychometric properties of the Persian version of Bullying and Cyberbullying Scale for Adolescents (BCS-A) in Iranian students

ABSTRACT

Objective

Cyberbullying, which is defined as an intentional, aggressive, and repetitive behaviour where a person or group uses electronic devices (primarily the Internet and smartphones), is a new concept specifically for the Iranian educational system. We examined the Bullying and Cyberbullying Scale for Adolescents’ (BCS-A) psychometric properties in Persian-speaking Iranian adolescents.

Design

A sample of 301 students studying in Arak city, Iran (female = 154) completed bullying and cyberbullying scale (BCS-A), School Belonging scale (SBS), and Youth Internalizing and Externalizing Screener (YIBS and YEBS).

Result

Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the BCS-A measurement model, which structured each of the 13 items as indicators of the four victimization factors (i.e., physical, verbal, relational, and cyber), provided adequate-data model fit. These analyses also revealed that both victimization and cyber-victimization had adverse predictive effects on school belonging and positive predictive effects on internalizing and externalizing problems. Furthermore, bullying significantly predicted school belonging and mental health problems.

Conclusion

This study is the first to examine the psychometric properties of BCS-A in the Iranian sample. This study is an essential step in validating the scale for Iranian adolescents. This study has some implications for educators, researchers and policymakers.

KEY POINTS

What is already known about this topic:

•  (1) Bullying at school has become a global concern for educational psychologists

•  (2) Bullying behaviours take many forms and can occur in various environments.

•  (3) The term cyberbullying is derived from the traditional bullying behaviours common among elementary school students, such as verbal abuse, harassment, threats, and physical assaults, including hitting, kicking, and damaging other people's equipment.

What this topic adds:

•  (1) The current study investigates the psychometric properties of the BCS-A scale(n = 301). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the BCS-A measurement model, which structured each of the 13 items as indicators of the four victimization factors (i.e., physical, verbal, relational, and cyber), provided adequate-data model fit.

•  (2) victimization and cyber-victimization hadadverse predictive effects on school belonging and positive predictive effects on internalizing and externalizing problems

•  (3) Bullying significantly predicted school belonging and mental health problems.

KEYWORDS:

• Bullying
• cyberbullying
• BCS-A
• adolescents
• school belonging
• mental health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

If readers are interested in obtaining a copy of the questionnaire used in this study, they can contact the first author for more information ([email protected]).

Declaration

The authors of the paper indicate that each listed author is submitting the paper in their own personal professional capacity, and are not employees of any US-sanctioned government.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants followed the institutional and/or national research committee’s ethical standards and the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.