Validating the Cisneros Self-test on Bullying in Dominican Students

Abstract

Bullying is a relevant concept in education. In the Dominican Republic, the high bullying rates call for research focused on this big issue. Bullying is composed of different dimensions and it is significantly associated with other factors such as prosocial behavior, emotional instability, suicidal ideation, or intimidation. Therefore, there is a need for an instrument that can analyze the level of bullying as a single dimension, such as the Cisneros Self-test on Bullying (Oñate & Piñuel, 2005). This instrument analyzes the intensity of bullying and values its relevance to the different factors mentioned above. Our main goal was to test the psychometric properties of this instrument, including internal consistency and factorial and nomological validity in 531 Dominican secondary students. To validate it, we utilized two instruments: the Emotional Instability Scale (Caprara & Pastorelli, 1993) and the Prosocial Conduct Questionnaire (Caprara & Pastorelli, 1993). Several competitive structural models were estimated, and the results supported the reliability and, factorial and nomological validity of this instrument. Therefore, we can conclude that Cisneros’s scale is a good, reliable, and valid instrument to measure global bullying in the Dominican Republic. We highlight its influence on future interventions considering the relevance that bullying has on many other factors such as aggressiveness, prosocial behavior, or suicide ideation.