Bullying & Cyberbullying scale for Adolescents (BCS-A): Validation and Psychometric Properties in an Egyptian Sample

Abstract

Even though youth bullying is a significant public health and educational issue, both healthcare providers and educational policymakers and practitioners have been limited in their ability to identify bullied adolescents due to a lack of a reliable and valid instrument for use in clinical and educational settings. The researcher conducted a multisite study to assess the psychometric properties of the Bullying & Cyberbullying scale for Adolescents (BCS-A), a new 26-item instrument for assessing youths' experiences of being bullied and cyberbullied.

The sample consists of 929 youths from various geographic backgrounds (433 females (46.6%), 496 males (53.4%), the sample mean age 14.8 years). The BCS-A and BFI abbreviated measures were completed by the participants. Analyses based on Classical Test Theory (CTT) were conducted, including reliability and validity assessments, item analyses, and principal component analyses. The BCS-A's diagnostic performance and test characteristics were also assessed. One component makes up the BCS-A, which accounts for 57.07 percent of the observed variance. Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's = 0.93), construct, and convergent validity were all found in the analyses. The AUROC curve was 0.70 (95 percent CI: 0.65–0.76), with a sensitivity of 90 percent and a specificity of 87 percent. The BCS-A appears to be a reliable and valid tool for healthcare providers to use in screening for bullying exposure in the clinical and educational setting, according to the findings.