Development and evaluation of psychometric characteristics of the Inventory of Cognitions Related Bullying for Children

Objective: In recent years bullying has become the subject of many researches, researches which aimed to understand bullying and related factors has been increased, because of the its negative outcomes of bullying in schools. However the number of the studies which investigate the cognitions of children who are bullying others are rare. Because there is almost no scale developed to measures cognitions of bullies. The aim of this study is to develop a measure to evaluate the cognitions about bullying in children and to determine the psychometric characteristics of the scale. Methods: Bullying and the Moral Disengagement Scale and interviews which were done with children were used to develop a 25-item Likert type scale. Cognition about Bullying Inventory for Children was applied with Child Form of Bully-Victim Determination Scale and Bullying Behavior Tendency Scale to 1740 secondary public school students in Izmir, Turkey. Results: Three items in the scale were found as decreasing the alpha coefficient that's why these were eliminated form the scale. Final version was formed as 22-item scale. Internal consistency of the 22-item scale was found to be 0.91. Test retest reliability of the scale was notably high. Varimax rotation was done, as the result of the factor analysis it was found that 48.73% of total variance was explained by 3 factors. Based on correlation concurrent validity of the scale was found to be significant with the Child Form of Bully-Victim Determination Scale 'ully' subscale and with Bullying Behavior Tendency Scale. Concclusions: Cognitions About Bullying Inventory for Children was thought to be reliable and valid in acceptable levels. The scale is thought to be used in evaluation of the cognitions and be used to assess the effectiveness of psychological intervention used to reduce bullying for secondary school.