Measuring and characterizing cyberbullying among Chilean university students

This study aimed to examine the construct validity and reliability of the adapted version of the Cyberbullying Inventory for College Students for use in the Chilean university context. This measure includes 4 scales that evaluate participation in the phenomenon of cyberbullying in different roles. In addition, we analyzed the prevalence of cyberbullying and characterized experiences of cyberbullying among students. In total, 256 students (Mage= 20.25; SD = 2.24) from a Chilean university participated in this study. The results showed the one-dimensional plausibility of each of the scales and goodness-of-fit indices in conformity with the psychometric parameters. The reliability values (α and ω) ranged from 0.91 to 0.99. The results showed that 68.7% of respondents were victims, 31.2% were aggressors, 70.3% were observers of victims, and 28.5% were observers of aggressors. We also found that male students who did not live with their parents and urban residents were more involved as victims, aggressors, observers of victims and observers of aggressors. The findings highlight the importance of measures with good psychometric indicators to evaluate cyberbullying. Furthermore, university students’ experiences of cyberbullying underline the urgency of policies and intervention programs in university contexts.