Bullying in school: Construct validity of the French version of the Olweus revised Bully/victim Questionnaire (rBVQ)

Abstract

© 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. Bullying is a worldwide phenomenon in schools. One of the most used instruments to measure bullying is a self-report method realized by Dan Olweus. The aim of this study is to present the construct validity of The revised Bully/Victim Questionnaire [rBVQ] (Olweus) in its French version. The participants are 802 school children aged 9-12 (mean age = 10.3), including 52.4 % of girls and 47.6 % of boys. In the methods, the rBVQ was administered collectively in classrooms, by the researcher and the administration lasted 15-20. minutes. Traditionally, the rBVQ enable to identify four profiles of children's involvement in bullying: "victim", "bully", "bully/victim" and "neutral". We performed factorial analyses: an exploratory factor analysis (EFA); a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and a multi-group confirmatory factor analyses (MGCFA). Our results found satisfying indices of adequacy with the 2-factor initial model. Scalar invariance for the gender was achieved, meaning children who have the same score on the latent scores for one of the "bullying" domains would obtain the same score on the observed variable regardless of their group (boys/girls). In total, 26.8 % of the children displayed a profile of "victim", 5.6 % of "bully", 14.6 % of "bully/victim" and 53 % were "neutral". The French version of the rBVQ has a good internal validity, is easy to administer collectively and is adequate for use with children of 9 to 12 years of age.