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JIVXXX10.1177/0886260519868204Journal of Interpersonal ViolenceFarmani et al.

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Bullies and Victims in

Classrooms

Saeid Farmani,1 Eskandar Fathi Azar,1

Mir Mahmood Mirnasab,1 Shahrooz Nemati,1
and Shahram Vahedi1

Abstract
Although a number of studies have been conducted on the subject of bullying,
there is an absence of a standard instrument which can map the bullying
network and identify the groups involved in it. The current study aimed
to provide a standard instrument for screening bullies and victims in the
classroom, which has validity and reliability indicators to map the network of
relationships between the bullies and victims. In this regard, 337 high school
students (176 males and 161 females) were selected via cluster sampling and,
afterward, the Screening Instrument for Bullies and Victims in Classrooms
(SIBVC) was used in the sample group. To examine the concurrent validity,
Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters (MESSY) and Adolescent
Peer Relations Instrument (APRI) were used. The results depicted that the
individuals’ scores of bullying and victimization in SIBVC are positively and
negatively related to their scores in MESSY subscales, respectively. Also,
individuals’ scores of bullying in SIBVC is positively related to bullying scores
and negatively related to victimization scores in APRI. Cronbach’s alpha
method was used to determine the reliability of SIBVC, and the results

1University of Tabriz, Iran

Corresponding Author:
Saeid Farmani, Department of Education, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology,
University of Tabriz, Tabriz 51666, East Azerbaijan, Iran.
Email: [email protected]
2 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

showed that in all classes, the obtained alpha was higher than .72. Two weeks
after the first run, the instrument was reimplemented and the reliability
coefficient was (p < .001, r = .97 for bullying and r = .96 for victimization).
The results depicted that SIBVC benefited from favorable validity, and it was
able to identify the bullies and the victims quite well in the classrooms; also,
SIBVC scores had favorable reliability over time. Criteria such as the use
of dyadic nomination and network mapping among the groups involved in
bullying are the benefits of SIBVC, which make it a useful and new instrument
in bullying research.

Keywords
bullying, victimization, screening, validation, classroom, bullying networks

Introduction
Today, bullying is a widespread problem, which is likely to occur in every school
around the world (Brito & Oliveira, 2013). Different studies have reported high
and various rates of prevalence for bullying. In a study on 2,431 Greek adoles-
cents aged 16 to 18 years, Skapinakis et al. (2011) showed that 40.4% of the
boys and 21.5% of the girls were somehow involved in bullying (either as the
bully or the victim). In a study on 11- to 15-year-old boys in the Midwestern
United States, Swearer and Cary (2003) revealed that 5% of the participants
were bullies, 39% were victims, and 30% belonged to the bully–victim group,
and that, totally, about 74% of the participants were somehow involved in bully-
ing. Meta-analysis of 18 studies which were conducted from 1995 to 2016 in
different countries (America, Canada, England, Ireland, Turkey, India, Oman,
Japan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and New Zealand) revealed that the prevalence
of bullying varies from 43% to 95% (Samsudin, Isahak, & Rampal, 2018).
Viewing from the perspective of many researchers, bullying is a kind of
aggression that occurs in a power imbalance. Olweus (1973) pointed to the
situations in which one person systematically harasses another person, small
groups, or the whole class over time. Those types of aggression, which
embody the three criteria, repetition, deliberation, and occurrence in power
imbalance, were termed as bullying by Olweus (2013). Although almost all
of the researchers have referred to Olweus’s definition of bullying, they have
acted differently in operational assessment of bullying; researchers have
mainly measured bullying without emphasizing on the aspects of deliberation
and occurrence in power imbalance.
The majority of instruments devised to measure bullying are self-reports.
Such instruments seek to measure the prevalence of bullying in societies by
Farmani et al. 3

presenting questions mainly using Likert-type scales for the responses. These
instruments ask respondents to reveal how long they have been bullied or how
much they have been victimized by other people’s behavior (Espelage & Holt,
2001; Hunter, Boyle, & Warden, 2004; Orpinas & Frankowski, 2001; Solberg
& Olweus, 2003). Mostly, self-report instruments question the negativity and
repetitiveness of bullying behavior directly and disregard the criteria of delib-
eration and occurrence in power imbalance. Generally, self-report instruments
are not able to identify the bullies and the victims in a society like the classroom
as one main condition which makes a behavior bullying is its occurrence in
power imbalance, and to determine a power imbalance, the bully and the victim
must be distinguished to compare their powers. An act of aggression cannot be
labeled as bullying if two students have equal power or when peers engage in
occasional arguments or conflicts (Olweus, 2013). Thus, the extent of self-
reports’ accomplishment in distinguishing bullying from peer aggression is
somewhat doubtful (Jia & Mikami, 2015). For instance, when a student reports
that he was beaten by his classmates twice during the previous week, it is not
clear whether he is actually reporting bullying or peer aggression.
Although it is stated that bullying is a component of aggressive behavior, a
number of researchers report all types of aggressive behaviors as bullying. It is
necessary to separate bullying from the larger group of peer aggression, by con-
sidering the three criteria—repetition, deliberation, and occurrence in power
imbalance. Researchers have shown that teenagers who have experienced
repeated victimization are psychologically less healthy than those who have not
been bullied and have only experienced peer aggression (Furlong, Greif, &
Sharkey, 2005). Given the differences of these two groups (students who are
bullied and students who experienced peer aggression), uniting them or merely
emphasizing on one aspect of bullying behavior, such as repetition (which is
also seen in peer aggression), may not be appropriate (Swearer et al., 2010).
By providing a definition of bullying in which the three criteria of bullying
are mentioned, a number of self-reports claim that they have measured all
three criteria of bullying. Although the inclusion of a definition in the ques-
tionnaire may ensure that respondents gain the same understanding of bully-
ing, responses may be more likely to tap into actual bullying behavior, rather
than relying on behavioral indicators of bullying. Without validity studies, it
is unclear whether providing a definition of bullying actually leads to mea-
suring the three criteria of defining bullying or not (Swearer et al., 2010).
Therefore, it is necessary to make sure that bullying measurements really
measure bullying. Cornell, Sheras, and Cole (2006) pointed out that self-
reports are merely student based and that some students may exaggerate or
extenuate their experiences of bullying. They suggested that peer nomination
could provide more reliable information.
4 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

In another type of bullying measurement known as peer nomination, a list

of students’ names or illustrations is shown to the participants and, via inter-
view or questionnaire, they are asked to indicate who is the bully or the victim
(Perry, Kusel, & Perry, 1988; Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Osterman, &
Kaukiainen, 1996). Studies concerning nomination have routinely used a uni-
lateral method of nomination. In the unilateral method of nomination, the
respondents state which student is a bully and which one is a victim, but they
do not mention which bully harasses which victim. Recently, several research-
ers have made it possible to distinguish the two sides involved in bullying by
the use of dyadic nomination (Perren & Alsaker, 2006; Veenstra, Lindenberg,
De Winter, Verhulst, & Ormel, 2007; Verlinden et al., 2014). In dyadic nomi-
nations, the bullies and their victims are specified. These instruments are
based on a task by Perren and Alsaker (2006). They initially introduced four
types of bullying to children aged 5 to 7 years with different images and then
asked the children to identify the images of people who have done these types
of bullying to their victims. Perren and Alsaker (2006) did not mention the
validity of their task and, by combining the scores obtained from the peer
nomination and teachers’ reports, they attained a criteria to classify the stu-
dents into four groups: bully, victim, bully–victim, and uninvolved. Verlinden
et al. (2014) designed a computer task based on the Perren and Alsaker (2006)
instrument in which students were asked to name those who bullied them.
They provided evidence for the validity and reliability of their task but their
instrument was unable to identify the bully–victim group. Researchers have
revealed that the bully–victim group is the most vulnerable group; they show
depression and anxiety (Swearer, Song, Cary, Eagle, & Mickelson, 2001),
behavioral problems (Ivarsson, Broberg, Arvidsson, & Gillberg, 2005), and
psychosomatic symptoms more than other groups involved in bullying
(Houber, Tarquinio, & Hergott, 2006). Therefore, it is necessary to recognize
this group of individuals for bullying interventions and to provide them with
necessary support.
Bullying is a kind of aggression that occurs in a network of relationships,
and we need to know more about these relationships and their changes and
evolutions over time. As both sides involved in bullying are distinguished in
dyadic nomination, it is possible to examine the relationships between those
who are involved in bullying. It may be possible to investigate the effects of
antibullying programs and the changes of bullying in the course of time, in
a better way, by examining the relationships among the people involved in
bullying. It is possible that by implementation of antibullying programs at
schools the number of reports of bullying decreases but this may be due to
the decrease in the reporting of bullying by students and not because of the
decrease in the occurrence of bullying. In other words, the decrease in the
Farmani et al. 5

number of reports may be due to the change in the bullying network from
multiple victims toward several specific victims, but this does not mean that
the bullying is diminished; it means that the extent of bullying is limited to
a certain number of individuals and is being continued with the same sever-
ity. In addition, in some studies that used self-report instruments, it is stated
that whole-school programs had little influence in the decrease of the bully-
ing (Smith, Schneider, Smith, & Ananiadou, 2004). One may question
whether the implementation of whole-school programs do not have much
impact in the decrease of bullying or whether implementation of such pro-
grams causes changes in the network of bullying. To answer such questions,
there must be instruments available which can draw the distribution of bul-
lying in a network of relationships.
Looking at the research background, the gaps in the development of
appropriate screening instruments in bullying can be summarized as follows:
(a) the three criteria in defining bullying have not been directly measured, (b)
the instruments provided are not able to identify the bully–victim group, (c)
the validities of the instruments have not been well addressed, and (d) the
instruments provided do not allow for the measurement of the relationship
between the bully and the victim or the analysis of the bullying network. So
in this study, it is sought to provide an instrument for screening bullying in
the classroom, which helps to fill the gaps in the present bullying screening
instruments by using dyadic nominations and mapping a bullying network.

Controversies in Defining Bullying

According to Olweus (2013), three criteria of repetition, deliberation, and
occurring in power imbalance exist in the definition of bullying. Although
Olweus (2013) stated that there is a consensus among the researchers on the
definition of bullying, it seems that there is still room to discuss the subject. The
first controversy is whether the criterion of repetition is critical for the defini-
tion of bullying? Lancelotta and Vaughn (1989) raised the question of whether
bullying an individual only once is considered as bullying or should it repeat to
be labeled as bullying? Also, in case a person is in a 35-member class and has
bullied all other 34 students only once, is this person a bully and are the others
victims? That is, despite bullying each student once and not targeting a particu-
lar individual repeatedly, is it possible to call that person a bully?
With the emergence of cyberbullying, a question arises as to whether the
criterion of repetition should be considered for defining bullying or not. In
cyberbullying, sharing an individual’s private photos and videos can cause
serious harm as they can be shared and reposted repeatedly by others even if
the person had leaked the private photos and videos of the victim only once.
6 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Due to the abovementioned reasons, some researchers question the repetition

criterion of bullying, stating that sometimes an act of bullying (cyberbullying
or some types of social bullying like rumor) can be seriously harmful and its
effects might sustain for a long time even if it is conducted only once (Slonje
& Smith, 2008). Therefore, repetition cannot be a suitable criterion to define
bullying, and it is the degree of harmfulness of an action, which is a better
criterion in defining bullying. The repetition of an action reveals its deliberate-
ness much more, and this is one of the reasons why Olweus included the rep-
etition criterion in the definition of bullying (Olweus, 2013). In other words,
Olweus deducted deliberateness of an action by its repetition. It is obvious that
lack of repetition is not indicative of lack of deliberation. An action can be
deliberate and harmful and also can be conducted only once and be regarded
as bullying; that is why bullying can either be repeated or occur only once.
Recently, Olweus (2013) did not consider the repetition criterion as necessary;
to define bullying in the newer versions of his questionnaire, he states, “bully-
ing may occur repeatedly” or “bullying is usually repeated”; in this way, he
weakens the role of repetition in bullying. In Screening Instrument for Bullies
and Victims in Classrooms (SIBVC), all those who are correctly reported as a
bully are mapped on the bullying network; but to label an individual as the
bully or the victim, a minimum number of repetitions are required.
The second controversy in defining bullying pertains to the criterion of
deliberation. By deliberation, Olweus (1978) meant the intention of hurting
others. Some researchers criticize this definition. For example, consider a
child who wants to play with his brother’s toy, but his younger brother refuses
to give up the toy. The older child decides to pull the toy so hard as to take it
off his brother’s hand; in this way, he takes the toy with force. The younger
brother gets upset by this move and starts to cry. In this example, the older
child has no inclination to or intention of hurting the other and maybe after
watching his brother’s cries he regrets his work and returns the toy. Based on
Olweus’s (1978) definition of bullying, the older brother’s act of taking the toy
is not bullying, as he did not intend to hurt the other. One should note that bul-
lying is not necessarily conducted aiming to hurt others. As Rigby (2007)
stated, sometimes bullying is not done with the intention of hurting others, but
it is greatly harmful for the others, for example, derision of classmates for the
fun and pleasure of it. Thus, limiting bullying to deliberate acts intended to
harm others can lead to neglecting some types of bullying and prevent us from
paying attention to the other goals and motives of the bullies. In addition, there
is evidence that bullying is a purposeful behavior that is carried out to achieve
adaptive goals (Salmivalli, 2010; Volk, Camilleri, Dane, & Marini, 2012).
Therefore, some researchers consider bullying as a purposeful action that does
not necessarily intend to harm another, but may be perceived as harmful for
Farmani et al. 7

the victim (Volk, Dane, & Marini, 2014). Researchers have pointed to four
goals of the bully which include gaining social power, gaining limited
resources, enjoying, and harassing others. In SIBVC, only those aggressive
acts that are conducted with these four goals are considered as bullying, and
aggressive acts done accidentally or for retaliation are ignored.
The final controversy in defining bullying is about power imbalance.
Before considering an act as bullying and separating it from other aggressive
behaviors, one must make sure that the action has occurred in a power imbal-
ance; thus, prior to any judgment, it is necessary to determine the power
structure. Olweus (2013) regarded the superiority of power in objective fac-
tors such as greater physical strength and the difference in the number of
group members, but it seems that measuring and determining power is a chal-
lenging task. Suppose that Saeed has more physical strength than Nima; how-
ever, Nima feels more efficient and harasses Saeed. In this example, there is
a power imbalance in both physical and psychological fields. In the psycho-
logical sense, power imbalance is in favor of Nima, and in the physical
domain, power imbalance is in favor of Saeed. Now, the questions are whether
the criterion of measuring power is physical or psychological, and who is
stronger in this example?
Researchers refer to the concept of power in the general sense and regard
it as a mixture of physical and social power (O’Connell, Pepler, & Craig,
1999). Thibaut and Kelley (1959) pointed to two types of power: relative
power and usable power. They introduced usable power as a power which is
practical and easy to use for the individual; if the exercise of power is fol-
lowed by punishment or is difficult, that power is not usable. Thus, it is pos-
sible that one’s power becomes unusable due to taking others’ powers into
account. Power is not merely a constant feature like body size and strength.
Environmental, social, or situational variables, which lead to a dynamic
structure, can change the dynamics of power (Bronfenbrenner & Morris,
2006; Hong & Espelage, 2012). It is possible that one person appears to be
physically weaker than the other, but still bullies him. For example, a physi-
cally weak person may have a weapon that can help with his goals (Volk
et al., 2014). Robert Dahl (1957) defined power as control in relation to oth-
ers, meaning that “A” has power on “B” as long as he can make “B” do some-
thing that “B” would not do otherwise. Power also is considered to be
dependent on the extent of others’ obedience. Those who approve and affirm
the power of the powerful and provide authority for their actions are labeled
as obedient (Hamilton & Biggart, 1985; Lukes, 1974).
Considering the theoretical discussions in defining power, in this research
power was defined as the ability to react effectively to the negative actions
of others, which can be known as effective reaction power. In other words,
8 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

by reversing the definition of Dahl and in line with Luckes’s view, it can be
argued that “B” is powerful as long as he has an effective reaction to the
negative actions of “A”. By defining power as the ability to react effectively,
some of the controversies in the field of bullying can be ended. For example,
with the advent of cyberbullying, a question has emerged, asking how a
person could understand or imagine another’s power while he had no knowl-
edge of its existence. If power is considered as the ability to react effectively,
the notion of anonymity and the fact that the victim cannot retaliate or react
will make the bully sure that the victim is in a position of weakness and he
can start and continue the bullying. This is also evident in social bullying,
such as gossiping, manipulation of other people’s relationships, and, more
generally, hidden bullying. A person who is committing such bullying
attempts tries to stay anonymous, so that he can take away the victim’s abil-
ity to react and reduce his bullying costs.

Method
Participants
The statistical population was 12,000 individuals including all high school
students of Sahand and Osku cities. Of these, 372 (177 females and 195
males) were selected by cluster sampling from 62 schools. In the first stage,
13 schools were chosen randomly from Sahand and Osku high schools; next,
from each school, a class was randomly selected and the questionnaires were
implemented for all students of that class. The students ranged from 13 to 16
years old, the average age was 14.3 and the standard deviation was 0.82. The
number of students in each class ranged from 11 to 33, and the average num-
ber of students in a class was 28.6. The questionnaires of 35 students were
excluded from the analysis due to their absence on test days, incomplete
answers, or unanswered questions; the questionnaires of 337 students (161
females and 176 males) entered the analysis.

Research Tools
Matson Evaluation of Social Skills With Youngsters (MESSY). The MESSY
scale is compiled to measure the social skills of 4- to 18-year-old individu-
als (Matson, Rotatori, & Hesel, 1983). The original form of this scale has
six factors from which five factors were extracted in the Iranian version
after its validation by Usefi and Khayer (2002). The factors are as follows:
appropriate social skills (behaviors such as proper eye contact with others,
initiating social relationships, helping others, and calling others by their
Farmani et al. 9

names), antisocial behaviors (lying, beating others, breaking promises, and

being annoyed by other), aggression and impulsive behaviors (getting
angry and irritated easily, being headstrong and stubborn, and getting into
fights and hitting others), rivalry (considering oneself to be superior, pre-
tending to know it all, showing off, and desire for superiority over others),
and relationships with peers (having lots of friends, visiting friends, play-
ing with other kids, and having skills to make friends). They obtained split-
half and alpha coefficients of .86 for the entire scale.

Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument (APRI). The APRI was first created by

Parada (2000), which measures the bullying behavior of adolescents of the
same age. The original version of this scale has 36 questions, consisting of
two main subscales of bullying and victimization, each of which has three
subcomponents, namely, verbal (e.g., taunting, mocking, squibbing, and
insulting others), social (e.g., rejecting one individual from the group, manip-
ulating others’ communications, and provoking others against one individ-
ual), and physical (e.g., shoving, jostling, and beating). Hashemi, Kareshki,
Tatari, and Hosseini (2014) validated this instrument in a sample of Iranian
students. Two core factors were extracted by the analysis of main compo-
nents: the first factor was bullying and the second was victimization, which
could explain 44.83% of the scale’s total variance. Also, the alpha was .92 for
the bullying subscale and .94 for the victimization subscale.

SIBVC.  The SIBVC consists of two scales, namely, the Effective Reaction
Power Instrument (ERPI) and the Negative Actions Instrument (NAI).
Detailed descriptions of these instruments are provided below.

The structure of ERPI.  In this instrument, the list of students in each class
was given to the students of the same class. They were supposed to determine
the severity and risk of the reaction of each of their classmates to negative
verbal, physical, and social actions on a 3-point scale (severe, moderate, and
poor for reaction severity and very dangerous, slightly dangerous, and dan-
gerless for reaction risk). As mentioned in the previous literature, a number
of victims react to bullying and it leads to more victimization (Griffin &
Gross, 2004; Marini, Koruna, & Dane, 2006); it is likely that the reactions of
these victims are not effective. Therefore, the researchers decided to measure
the reactions of individuals in two dimensions. The first dimension was the
severity of individual’s reaction to the negative effects of others and the sec-
ond was the risk of individual’s reactions to others. Severity and risk of the
reaction represents the individual’s effective reaction power.
10 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

The structure of NAI.  This instrument measures the negative verbal, physi-
cal, and social action that occurred among the students. In this instrument,
the students are asked to report which of their classmates have done the men-
tioned negative acts to others in the past 2 months and to write the name
of the person who has committed the negative act and also the name of the
person against whom the negative act is committed. This is a type of dyadic
nomination. Thereafter, the students were asked to answer several questions
regarding the repetition rate of the actions and the person’s purpose for com-
mitting the negative actions. They were asked to report about themselves in
the same manner as a class student.

Screening the received reports and extraction of individual’s score in SIBVC. The

NAI includes a range of negative and aggressive behaviors, which embod-
ies both bullying and other aggressive behaviors. To distinguish between
bullying and other aggressive behaviors, one must screen the negative acts
reported in NAI according to the three criteria for bullying. In this regard, the
raw score obtained from ERPI was changed into a standard score. Thereafter,
any report in which the bully does not have a standard deviation higher than
the victim will be removed as a corrupt report. By so doing, the criterion of
the bully being more powerful than the victim is met. In the research litera-
ture, there are four purposes for bullying, which include gaining social power,
gaining limited resources, enjoying, and harassing others. Negative actions,
whose goals are one of these four, are considered as a deliberate act. For this
reason, acts that are done accidentally or for retaliation are eliminated. Thus,
there remain reports in which the bully is obviously stronger than the vic-
tim and has deliberately attempted to do a negative act. For each remaining
report, a bullying score was calculated for the bully and a victimization score
for the victim. This score was set according to the frequency of bullying. For
example, if the reported Person “A” has bullied Person “B” three times in the
past 2 months, three bullying scores are given to Person “A” and three victim-
ization scores are given to Person “B”. After screening all the reports, each
person had a general score in bullying and a general score in victimization.
Individual scores were converted to a standard grade score, and each person
had a standard score in bullying and a standard score in victimization.

Interviewing the students.  The interview method was used to determine the cutoff
score. A 12-hr training course was held for 13 assistants. During this period, the
assistants were trained on the concept of bullying and how to complete the inter-
view sheets with students. The assistants were trained to explain the bullying
concept to the student and to state that for bullying, the three criteria of delibera-
tion, repetition, and occurrence in power imbalance must exist. The assistant
Farmani et al. 11

asked the students to report the names of classmates who bullied them in the past
2 months and then checked the report’s accuracy by asking questions, such as
“Are you stronger or the bully?” “How many times has he or she bullied you?”
“What was his or her goal?” and “Could you stop him or her?” After the assis-
tant reaches a conclusion on the student’s report, he will share it with the student.
For example, “I think this report you are giving is not for bullying. Because you
said that he or she was not stronger than you, and that he annoyed you for retali-
ation. This is a conflict between you two, not bullying you. Do you agree?” In
this way, a validation process occurs via the triangulation method (Andreas,
2003). At the end of the interview, the assistant judges the student and catego-
rizes him or her as the bully or the victim. The students whose names are submit-
ted at least twice as the bully or the victim are known by the same label. The
criterion of being named twice is based on previous studies (Solberg & Olweus,
2003). The SIBVC’s cutoff score will be determined based on the list of the bul-
lies and the victims obtained from the mentioned procedures.

Results
Determination of the Cutoff Score
To specify the best cutoff score, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC)
curve was used. The ROC curve is a graphic method to describe the screening
characteristics of a test. ROC curve is used to determine the Sensitivity and
Specificity of the results obtained from an instrument in comparison with
another instrument. In this research, the Sensitivity and Specificity of SIBVC
were compared with the results obtained from the interview with the stu-
dents. In the following, the results of the cutoff score determination test, to
distinguish the bullies from the victims, are listed in Table 1.
As shown in Table 1, the best cutoff score for the bullies is 50.5 and that
for the victims is 52.5.
In other words, if the scores of individuals in bullying are more than 50.5,
they are regarded as the bullies, and if the scores of individuals in victimiza-
tion are more than 52.5, they are considered as the victims. The bully–victims
are those whose scores are higher than the cutoff scores in both bullying and
victimization. Finally, the uninvolved individuals are those who scored less
than the cutoff scores in both bullying and victimization. The average number
of reports a person should receive by classmates to reach the bullying crite-
rion in SIBVC was four and was three for victimization. In other words, if a
person is named four times by his classmates as a bully, that individual is
considered as a bully. It should be kept in mind that these four reports can be
for only one act of bullying.
12 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Table 1.  The Results of Cutoff Score Determination for the Bullies and the
Victims.

Bullying Victims

Cutoff Cutoff
Score Sensitivity Specificity Difference Score Sensitivity Specificity Difference
47.5 1.00 0.20 0.80 47.5 1.00 0.26 0.74
48.5 1.00 0.15 0.85 48.5 0.98 0.23 0.76
49.5 0.95 0.10 0.85 49.5 0.96 0.14 0.82
50.5 0.95 0.07 0.88 50.5 0.96 0.12 0.84
51.5 0.92 0.06 0.86 51.5 0.96 0.10 0.86
52.5 0.91 0.05 0.86 52.5 0.96 0.08 0.88
53.5 0.89 0.05 0.84 53.5 0.92 0.06 0.86

Note. The italicized numbers represent the largest difference among sensitivity and specifity
and feature as well as the cut-off point.

Validity
The validity of ERPI
Content validity ratio (CVR).  To calculate the CVR, after introducing the
instrument to 20 experts on the subject of bullying (the experts had at least
master’s degree in one of the subfields of psychology or educational sciences
and had the required information and knowledge on the subject of bullying or
had conducted studies on the subject), they were asked to state their opinions
in three options: (a) the prepared instrument is necessary to measure bully-
ing; (b) it is useful, but not necessary; and (c) it is not necessary. Seventeen
experts out of 20 considered the instrument as necessary to assess bullying,
with a CVR = 0.70, which was at the proper level.

Scale-level content validity index (S-CVI).  To compute S-CVI, experts (men-

tioned in the previous paragraph) were asked to comment on the content of the
test on four aspects, simplicity, specificity, clarity, and comprehensiveness, in a
4-point Likert-type scale (for simplicity, as an example, 1 = not simple, 2 = rel-
atively simple, 3 = simple, and 4 = very simple). Content validity results were
reported as follows: simplicity (S-CVI = 0.85), specificity (S-CVI = 0.85),
clarity (S-CVI = 0.85), and comprehensiveness (S-CVI = 0.80).

Concurrent validity.  To examine the concurrent validity, APRI was used for
the participants. Correlation coefficient between the individuals’ scores in
ERPI and the components of APRI is presented in Table 2.
Farmani et al. 13

Table 2.  The Correlation Coefficient Between the Components of ERPI and
APRI.

Bullying Components of APRI Victimization Components of APRI

ERPI
Component Physical Verbal Social Total Physical Verbal Social Total
SIR .59** .59** .54** .60** −.22** −.23** −.22** −.24**
RIR .57** .53** .47** .55** −.24** −.25** −.25** −.26**
ERP .60** .58** .52** .59** −.24** −.25** −.24** −.25**

Note. ERPI = Effective Reaction Power Instrument; APRI = Adolescent Peer Relations
Instrument; SIR = severity of individual’s reaction; RIR = risk of individual’s reactions;
ERP = effective reaction power.
*p < .05. **p < .001.

As shown in Table 2, the score of participants in ERPI has a positive

and significant relationship with the bullying components and has a nega-
tive and significant relationship with the components of the victimization
in APRI. In other words, the higher the effective reaction power of indi-
viduals, the higher their bullying scores and the lower the scores of their
victimization.

The validity of SIBVC

Content validity. CVR and S-CVI were used to determine the content
validity. Results showed that the CVR was 0.70. Also, the results for S-CVI
were as follows: simplicity (S-CVI = 0.85), specificity (S-CVI = 0.85), clarity
(S-CVI = 0.85), and comprehensiveness (S-CVI = 0.80), which is indicative
of the content validity of SIBVC.

Concurrent validity.  To evaluate the concurrent validity of SIBVC, MESSY

and APRI were used. The results of the correlation coefficient between the
scores of individuals in SIBVC and the components of MESSY along with
the two main components in APRI are listed in Table 3.
As shown in Table 3, SIBVC’s score strongly and positively correlates
with the score of individuals in bullying and is negatively correlated with the
score of the victims in APRI.

Reliability
To verify the reliability of ERPI in the classroom, two methods, retest and
alpha coefficient, were used. As shown in Table 4, all alpha coefficients are
above .72.
14 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Table 3.  The Correlation Coefficient Between the Components of SIBVC,

MESSY, and APRI.

APRI Component MESSY Component

SIBVC
Component Victimization Bullying AS AB AIB R PR
Bullying −.44** .88** .22** .47* .69** .44** .39**
Victimization .88** −.27** −.60** −.18** −.24** −.52** −.60**

Note. SIBVC = Screening Instrument for Bullies and Victims in Classrooms; MESSY = Matson
Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters; APRI = Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument;
AS = appropriate social skills; AB = antisocial behaviors; AIB = aggression and impulsive
behaviors; R = rivalry; PR = peer relationships.
*p < .05. **p < .001.

Table 4.  Alpha Coefficient for ERPI in Sample Classes.

Alpha Coefficient

Class Number N Gender SIR RIR ERP

 1 11 F .82 .87 .87
 2 33 M .88 .91 .91
 3 14 F .76 .90 .84
 4 31 M .93 .93 .94
 5 30 M .85 .88 .89
 6 25 M .81 .90 .87
 7 30 M .94 .92 .93
 8 15 F .72 .85 .80
 9 31 F .90 .95 .95
10 27 F .95 .95 .95
11 27 M .89 .91 .92
12 30 F .89 .92 .92
13 33 F .94 .95 .95

Note. ERPI = Effective Reaction Power Instrument; SIR = severity of individual’s reaction;
RIR = risk of individual’s reactions; ERP = effective reaction power; F = female; M = male.

The results of calculating the reliability coefficient showed that ERPI has
a high reliability coefficient in the 2-week interval of retest (r = .93). Also,
results showed that SIBVC had the reliability coefficient of (r = .96 for vic-
timization and r = .97 for bullying) in the 2-week interval of retest.

The Prevalence of Bullying

In the present research, and based on the determined cutoff scores for SIBVC,
23.1% of the population (78 students) were the bullies and 28.8% (97 students)
Farmani et al. 15

Figure 1.  Bullying network graph of Class 10 based on data obtained from SIBVC.
Note. SIBVC = Screening Instrument for Bullies and Victims in Classrooms.

were the victims; moreover, 4.5% (15 students) were identified as the bully–
victims, and 43.6% (147 students) were the uninvolved students.

Bullying Network Analysis

While older methods of research (e.g., surveys) focused on individuals and
their characteristics, social network analysis pays particular attention not
only to the individual qualities but also to the connections that links people.
The output of the network analysis is mainly presented as a graph. The social
actors are represented as nodes and a tie is plotted between them as an edge
or an arrow. Distribution of the nodes in the network and the links drawn
between them contain information about the features of the relationships
among the members. As an instance, data obtained from Class 10 was ana-
lyzed through UCINET 6 software using whole network approach. The
results are plotted in Figure 1.
The nodes in the graph are representative of the students of Class 10 and
the number on each node represents the individual number of each student in
the class. Arrows drawn between nodes represent the current and severity of
bullying. In fact, any bullying event in the class turns into an arrow connect-
ing two nodes or two students, and the larger diameter of arrow indicates a
greater number of bullying. As it can be observed in the graph, there are four
different shapes, each of which represents a group involved in bullying after
a screening based on SIBVC. The square represents the bully, the circle rep-
resents the victim, the triangle represents the bully–victim, and the circle-
square represents those who are uninvolved in bullying. The size of the forms
16 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

(whether they are big or small) also represents the effective reaction power of
the individuals.
One of the outputs presented in network analysis is degree. Actually,
degree is the extent an actor ties with the others, and it may be an out-degree
or an in-degree. In this example, an out-degree of a node means the extent a
person bullies and in-degree means the extent a person is victimized. As it is
depicted, Student Numbers 2 and 18 have the highest in-degree and are more
likely to be bullied. The out-degree of students at Nodes 23 and 10 is also
greater than the rest.
Another output in network analysis is centrality. Centrality in network
analysis refers to the individual who is at the core of the network and is con-
nected with more people. As, in this research, the relationship of the two
nodes together indicates the occurrence of bullying between them, then the
centrality of a node indicates its greater involvement in bullying (whether in
the role of victim or in the role of a bully or a bully–victim). In this example,
Student Numbers 2 and 18 are in the center of the screen; in other words, they
are victimized by more people in the classroom.
In network analysis, tie refers to the power of the relationship between
the two nodes. As you can see in the graph, the student at Node Number 18
has strong ties with the students at Node Numbers 10 and 23. In other words,
Student Number 18 in the class is strongly bullied by Student Numbers 23
and 10.
In demonstrating graphs in network analysis, generally, actors who are
more similar are aligned. In this example, the students at Nodes 18 and 2 are
close together, indicating that they are being bullied by almost identical peo-
ple; maybe, these two students in the real world have other affinities (e.g., a
friendship, sitting together in class, and sharing a common ethnicity). The
students at Nodes 7, 8, and 10 also have bullied similar people and are dem-
onstrated close to one another; they probably constitute a bullying group. The
students at Nodes 4 and 16 are also in close proximity and constitute another
group in bullying.
The smallest node belongs to Student Number 27. In fact, this student is
the weakest person in terms of the ability to react. Although he is the weakest,
his centrality index is low; in other words, he is not in the core of the bullying
network. The earlier studies have suggested that the bullies often target those
who cost them the least, but the findings for Class 10 show that the weakest
do not have much charm for the bullies. The results show that there are two
bully–victims in Class 10, the students at Node Numbers 25 and 22. The
student at Node Number 25 is more at the core, whereas the student at Node
Number 22 is solely exposed to the bullying of Group 7-8-10. The students at
nodes who have no connection with others in the network are called isolates.
Farmani et al. 17

In this example, the students at Node Numbers 3, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, and 26
are isolates and are all among the uninvolved group. For the students at Node
Numbers 24 and 9, there are two and one reports of bullying behavior, respec-
tively, but they are placed in the uninvolved group by SIBVC as they have not
reached the required cutoff score to be placed in the bully group. This does
not mean that these reports are of no importance, as bullying may be done in
secret and no one besides the bully and the victim is aware of it; only one or
two reports (maybe through the bully or the victim) is available, for example,
sexual bullying.

Discussion
It is said that the Achilles’ heel in studies regarding the field of bullying is the
subject of its measurement (Cornell et al., 2006) as bullying is an interpersonal
problem and the subtleties of interpersonal behaviors, such as imbalanced
power and individual goals, must be taken into account. Instruments that mea-
sure bullying should also investigate the relationship between the bully and the
victims and reveal more details about the relationship. The present study aimed
to develop an instrument for screening the bullies and the victims in the class-
room, which, in addition to considering the existing criteria in the definition of
bullying (repetition, deliberation, and occurrence in imbalanced power), can
illustrate the relationships among the groups involved in bullying.
The findings showed that the SIBVC scale had favorable concurrent and
content validity. The results showed that the effective reaction power of the
individual was positively and significantly related to bullying and negatively
related to victimization in APRI. This finding was predictable because bullying
occurs in a power imbalance in which the bully is stronger than the victim. The
results of the correlation between the scores of subjects in SIBVC and MESSY
scale components showed that the score of individuals in bullying was posi-
tively related to appropriate social skills, antisocial behaviors, aggression and
impulsive behaviors, rivalry, and relationships with peers. Previous research
has also shown that the characteristics of bullying have a strong need for domi-
nance on others and a pattern of aggressive behavior (Olweus, 1993), but the
fact that the degree of bullying is associated with the score of desirable social
skills and relationships with peers is perhaps somewhat controversial. There
are various results concerning the social skills of the bullies. A number of
researchers consider the bullies as being impaired in social skills (Nansel et al.,
2001), whereas others regard the bullies as individuals having a high Theory of
Mind who have a special conversancy to manipulate and dominate others in
social contexts, know how to control others, and can maintain their position in
bullying (Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999).
18 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

Also, the results obtained from the correlation of subjects’ scores in

SIBVC with MESSY scale components showed that individuals’ scores in
victimization were negatively related to appropriate social skills, antisocial
behaviors, aggression and impulsive behaviors, rivalry, and relationships
with peers. A meta-analysis by Moore et al. (2017) reveals that the social
impacts of the victimization in studies have been reported inconsistently.
They showed that victimization is linked to loneliness, low satisfaction of
life, and low quality of life, but it is not associated with social problems such
as carrying weapons or social crimes. Nansel et al. (2001) also found that
victimization was associated with a lack of close relationships with peers.
Based on the determined cutoff score for SIBVC, in the present research,
56.4% participants were involved in bullying. Research has cited the preva-
lence of bullying differently for several reasons: the time interval in which
bullying has been monitored (from 2 weeks up to 1 year), the data collection
method, the statistical population of the research, and the average age of the
sample group are among these reasons. In addition, the prevalence of bully-
ing is affected by data collection instruments. Instruments that cannot sepa-
rate bullying from other aggressive behaviors will naturally report higher
rates of bullying. In SIBVC, it is attempted to distinguish between bullying
and aggression among peers; yet, the results of the present study indicate a
high prevalence of bullying among Iranian students.
Investigating the relationship between individual characteristics (such as
degree of power, friendships with others) and a person’s position in the bul-
lying network can reveal more information about bullying. Identifying peo-
ple who are at the center of a network helps us to better understand the
characteristics of these individuals and their differences with those in the
margin of the network; in other words, the characteristics that make a person
more likely to be victimized or to bully can be extracted. In addition, studies
on the formation of bullying and its changes and evolution in the course of
time need instruments that can map bullying networks. Also, mapping a bul-
lying network in a classroom can help persuade school authorities to address
the issues that students experience, and it can also make data-based decision-
making useful. The SIBVC has the advantage of measuring all components
of the bullying and drawing it in a network of relationships. In addition, by
providing a standard score in rating bullying and victimization, it can identify
extreme groups of the bullies and the victims (people with very high or low
power and bullying rate) that can be used in sampling in some studies.

Limitations
One of the limitations of the SIBVC is that it is class-centered; thus, it disre-
gards the bullying conducted between the students of two different classrooms.
Farmani et al. 19

It can be problematic to only confine to this instrument to measure bullying at

schools. As, sometimes, the bullying occurs among the students of different
classes; the students of other classes or students of higher grades may bully the
other students or the younger ones. Thus, if a student is in the uninvolved group
of the bullying network of a class, it does not mean that he or she does not bully
others or is not bullied at school or outside the school. The extent to which the
bullying occurs among the students of one class or different classes has not yet
been investigated, and it cannot be stated as to what extent of the bullying that
occurred at school can be covered by the present instrument.

Implications
To conduct a research, a valid and reliable measurement of the existing vari-
ables is required. Studies in the field of bullying should be able to distinguish
between bullying and other aggressive behaviors and have an objective crite-
rion for this distinction. Also, in measuring bullying, it is necessary to concen-
trate on aspects that are specific to bullying (e.g., deliberation and occurrence
in power imbalance) rather than focusing on the bullying aspects which are
common between bullying and peer aggression (e.g., repetition). In case pre-
vious evaluations have not measured bullying accurately, it is possible that
most of our knowledge about bullying is incorrect (Swearer et al., 2010).
Bullying occurs in a network of relationships and is a group process
(Salmivalli, 2010) and, according to some, bullying is an attack on the vic-
tim’s feeling of belonging to the group and position in the group (Hawker &
Boulton, 2001); thus, to investigate bullying, all group actors and the rela-
tionships among them must be explored. It will be misleading to merely
examine the individuals involved in bullying, regardless of their positions
and their relationships with other members of the group. Therefore, research-
ers are suggested to focus their attention on bullying as an interpersonal
problem and to examine bullying in a network of relationships among the
individuals. Network analysis is a technique that can be helpful in this
regard. Although only the bullying network was analyzed in the present
study, researchers can examine other networks (e.g., friendship network) in
the classroom as well. They can also examine the positions of individuals in
the networks, their associations with bullying and victimization, and changes
in networks due to intervention programs by using network analysis. By
analyzing communication networks (bullying and friendship) in the class,
researchers can detect bullying and friendship groups and use them to inter-
vene in bullying.
In addition, it is better to measure the effectiveness of antibullying pro-
grams by comparing changes in the bullying network before and after inter-
vention. As mentioned in the Introduction section, the implementation of an
20 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

antibullying program may only change the flow and distribution of bullying,
but the severity of bullying continues to be as high as before. Therefore, it is
better to reevaluate the effectiveness of antibullying programs.
Future studies can carry out plans that include bullying conducted between
the students of different classrooms and map the bullying network of the
whole school.

Acknowledgments
The authors of this article would like to thank all the teachers who were kindly helpful
in the process of interviewing and data collection. In addition, they would like to
thank the experts who devoted their time to rate the bullying scale and responded with
utmost honesty.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

ORCID iD
Saeid Farmani   https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1997-6647

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Author Biographies
Saeid Farmani is a PhD in Educational Psychology, University of Tabriz. He is also
the head of the counseling center in Osku city. His researches focus on bullying at
school. He is interested in constructing useful instruments for educational context.
Eskandar Fathi Azar is a full professor in the Department of Educational Sciences,
University of Tabriz. He is the director of the research affair office since 2002. His
interest area is educational context and the variables that affect it.
Mir Mahmood Mirnasab is an associate professor in the Department of Educational
Sciences, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Tabriz. He
24 Journal of Interpersonal Violence 00(0)

has a PhD in psychology and education of exceptional children from the University of
Tehran. Bullying is his interest area.
Shahrooz Nemati is an associate professor of Psychology and Education of
Exceptional Children, University of Tabriz. His interests are in neurodevelopmental
disability typically in intellectual and developmental disabilities, ADHD, Autism
spectrum disorder, specific learning disability.
Shahram Vahedi is a full professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at
University of Tabriz. He is has a PhD in educational psychology. He teaches statistics
and analysis method to PhD students. His interest is in aggressive behavior.