Revised Pro-victim Scale

Abstract

The Revised Pro-victim Scale (Rigby, 1997) is a brief psychological scale designed to measure the attitudes and beliefs of school-aged children regarding the fair treatment and defense of peers who are targets of bullying. This instrument assesses the degree of sympathy, support, or justification respondents feel toward victims of victimization. It is an updated, 10-item version of earlier instruments developed by Ken Rigby to understand the social dynamics and peer group norms surrounding school bullying incidents.

Keywords

Bullying, victimization, pro-victim attitudes, peer relations, social attitudes, school psychology, Ken Rigby, psychological assessment.

Authors

Ken Rigby

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Revised Pro-victim Scale is to quantify the extent to which young people hold supportive or defensive attitudes toward those who are bullied, contrasting these with attitudes that might blame the victim or tolerate aggressive behavior. This measurement is crucial for understanding the peer ecology of schools, as bystander behavior and attitudes are recognized as key determinants in the persistence of bullying.

The scale provides researchers and educators with a reliable tool for assessing the effectiveness of anti-bullying interventions aimed at shifting social norms within a school environment toward greater empathy and support for victims. High scores typically indicate a strong propensity to defend or sympathize with targets of peer aggression.

Construct

The scale measures the psychological construct of Pro-victim Attitudes, which falls under the broader domain of social and moral reasoning regarding peer conflict. This construct reflects an individual’s disposition to view bullying as unacceptable and to feel empathy for the victim, often encompassing a willingness to intervene or seek help on the victim’s behalf.

Items on the scale are formulated to capture two contrasting viewpoints: items reflecting support for the victim (e.g., condemning the bully) and items reflecting victim-blaming or indifference (e.g., suggesting victims deserve the treatment). By using a balance of positively and negatively worded statements, the scale aims to provide a robust measure of this specific moral and social stance toward peer victimization.

Validity

Although specific detailed validity studies for the 1997 revision are often embedded within broader research papers on bullying prevalence, the scale demonstrates strong face and content validity, as the items directly address core issues of victim support and condemnation relevant to the school context.

In general psychometric practice, construct validity for scales like this is often established through correlations with other theoretically relevant measures, such as empathy scales (positive correlation) and measures of pro-bully attitudes or aggression (negative correlation). Its consistent use in international research focusing on Australian school children and beyond confirms its utility in operationalizing the concept of peer attitudes toward victims.

Reliability

The reliability of the Revised Pro-victim Scale is typically assessed using measures of internal consistency, such as Cronbach’s Alpha. Research utilizing Rigby’s various scales, including this version, generally reports acceptable to good internal consistency, indicating that the 10 items reliably measure a single underlying construct (Pro-victim Attitudes). Consistent application across various studies focusing on adolescent populations suggests the scale offers stable measurement properties necessary for research and intervention evaluation.

Factor Analysis

The scoring structure of the Revised Pro-victim Scale, which involves summing or averaging all 10 items (with five items being reverse-scored), strongly suggests that it is designed as a unidimensional scale. Factor analysis studies, where conducted, usually support a primary factor structure corresponding to the overall Pro-victim Attitude construct. This unidimensionality simplifies interpretation, providing a single score that reflects the respondent’s overall disposition toward supporting victims of bullying.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report Psychological Scale

Format: 3-point Likert-type format (Agree, Unsure, Disagree)

Language Available: English (Original research conducted in Australia)

Population Group: School-aged children and adolescents

Age Group: Typically utilized with primary and secondary school students (ranging approximately 8 to 16 years old)

Population Details: Originally validated on Australian schoolchildren, but widely used internationally in studies concerning peer relations and victimization.

Test Methodology: Respondents indicate their level of agreement with 10 declarative statements concerning the justification of bullying and the need to defend victims. Scoring involves assigning numerical values (e.g., 1 to 3) to the responses, with specific items being reverse-scored to maintain directional consistency for the final Pro-victim Attitude score. The original PDF can be downloaded here: http://www.yooyahcloud.com/KENRIGBY/inzdL/Revised_Pro-Victim.pdf

Keywords

Peer aggression, school climate, social justice, empathy, questionnaire, attitude measurement, psychometrics, adolescent development.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Not provided in source)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Not provided in source)

Correspondence Address: N/A (Refer to Ken Rigby’s academic publications for current contact information)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The instrument was published and reported in academic literature in 1997. As an academic instrument developed for research purposes, it is often available for non-commercial research use, subject to the standard permissions granted by the author, Ken Rigby. Researchers should consult the author’s official website for the most up-to-date permissions regarding its usage in academic or educational settings. The instrument is available via the author’s questionnaire resources page: www.kenrigby.net/01a-Questionnaires.

Reference’s

• Rigby‚ K. and Slee‚ P.T. (1993) Dimensions of interpersonal relating among Australian school children and their implications for psychological wellbeing. Journal of Social Psychology‚ 133(1)‚ 33-42.
• Rigby‚ K. (1997). Attitudes and beliefs about bullying among Australian school children. Irish Journal of Psychology‚ 18: 202–220. (Source publication for the Revised Scale)
• Rigby‚ K. (2007). Bullying in Schools: and what to do about it (updated‚ revised)‚ Melbourne‚ Australian Council for Education Research.
• Rigby‚ K. (2008). Children and bullying: how parents and educators can reduce bullying at school. USA. Blackwell Publishing.
• Rigby‚ K 2010‚ Bullying in schools: Six Methods of Intervention‚ ACER‚ Camberwell.
• Rigby‚ K. (2011). What can schools do about cases of bullying? Pastoral Care in Education‚ 29(4): 273–285.
• Lester‚ L.‚ Cross‚ D.‚ Dooley‚ J.‚ Shaw‚ T. 2012. Developmental trajectories of adolescent victimization: Predictors and outcomes‚ Social Influence‚ 8(2-3):107-130.
• Lester‚ L.‚ Cross‚ D‚ Shaw‚ T.‚ Dooley‚ J. 2012. Adolescent bully-victims: Social health and the transition to secondary school. Cambridge Journal of Education; 42(2):213-233.
• Lester‚ L.‚ Dooley‚ J.‚ Cross‚ D.‚ Shaw‚ T. 2012. Internalising symptoms: An antecedent or precedent in adolescent peer victimization‚ Australian Journal of Guidance and Counselling‚ 22(2):173-189.
• Akbari-balootbangan A‚ Talepasand S.(2015). The Factorial Structure and Psychometric Properties of Bullying Prevalence Questionnaire in Secondary Schools. Journal of Education and Community Health‚ 2(2):10-19.

Items of the Revised Pro-victim Scale

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. Kids who get picked on a lot usually deserve it.
2. A bully is really a coward. (Reversed Scored)
3. Kids should not complain about being bullied.
4. It’s funny to see kids get upset when they are teased.
5. Kids who hurt others weaker than themselves should be told off. (Reversed Scored)
6. Soft kids make me sick.
7. You should not pick on someone who is weaker than you. (Reversed Scored)
8. Nobody likes a wimp.
9. It makes me angry when a kid is picked on without reason. (Reversed Scored)
10. I like it when someone sticks up for kids who are being bullied. (Reversed Scored)

Response Options: Agree, Unsure, Disagree