Between the Bully, the Victim, and the Witness: The Romanian Adaptation of the Bullying and Cyberbullying Questionnaire (the Short Form)

Abstract

Bullying and cyberbullying behaviours can vary from physical and verbal bullying to behaviour like online sexting and cyberstalking that are easily perpetuated online. What is truly serious about this problem is the fact that most of the parents don’t even know about this type of behaviours or about the impact it has on their children, even if they are bullies, victims or witnesses to those behaviours. Thereby, this study aims to validate on a population of Romanian young people, aged between 18 and 30, the Bullying and Cyberbullying Behaviours Questionnaire (Short Form) in order to identify in a timely and adequate manner this type of behaviours. Furthermore, this study aims to investigate the relationship between bullying, cyberbullying and moral decisions while offering a deeper understanding on how to prevent this type of behaviours. For testing both convergent and divergent validities, variables such as belligerence and personality were added to the study. Albeit the models proposed in the confirmatory factor analysis didn’t show a
good fit, the internal consistencies and the convergent and divergent validities indicated acceptable values. It is important to mention however that this study contributes to present literature by introducing a third way of view, more specifically the witness view, a fact that should be considered in the future when it comes to the validation and construction of bullying and cyberbullying scales.