Participant Role Questionnaire

Abstract

The Participant Role Questionnaire (PRQ) is a widely utilized psychological scale designed to measure the specific behavioral roles students adopt during episodes of bullying. Developed by Salmivalli and colleagues (1996), the PRQ shifts the focus from the traditional bully-victim dyad to viewing bullying as a group phenomenon, where peers actively contribute to or mitigate the aggressive behavior. The instrument employs a sophisticated peer nomination methodology, requiring students to rate their classmates based on descriptive behaviors across five distinct roles: Bully, Assistant, Reinforcer, Defender, and Outsider. This approach provides a comprehensive sociometric mapping of group dynamics related to aggression in school settings.

Keywords

Participant Role Questionnaire, Bullying, Group Dynamics, Peer Nomination, Sociometric Assessment, School Psychology, Social Status, Aggression.

Authors

Christina Salmivalli, Kirsti Lagerspetz, Kaj Bjorkqvist, Karin Osterman, Ari Kaukiainen, M. Voeten.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the PRQ is to operationalize and quantify the contribution of individual students to the group process of bullying. Unlike self-report measures, the PRQ uses peer nomination to provide reliable, externally validated data on how frequently a student exhibits behaviors associated with specific participant roles (e.g., actively supporting the bully, defending the victim, or remaining detached). This allows researchers and practitioners to understand the social architecture supporting bullying behavior and identify intervention targets beyond just the aggressor and the victim.

The PRQ is crucial for studies examining the relationship between participant roles and social status within the peer group, demonstrating that while some roles (like the Bully or Reinforcer) may confer higher perceived social standing, prosocial roles (like the Defender) may also be associated with positive peer acceptance, depending on the school climate. The instrument is instrumental in designing group-level interventions that aim to shift group norms away from supporting aggressive behavior.

Construct

The PRQ measures the construct of Participant Roles in Bullying, conceptualized as a stable pattern of behavior exhibited by individuals within a group context during bullying episodes. This model posits that bullying is sustained by the reactions and behaviors of bystanders, who are categorized into five distinct roles:

• Bully: The student who actively initiates and leads the aggressive acts.
• Assistant: The student who joins in the bullying once it has begun, actively helping the bully.
• Reinforcer: The student who encourages the bullying by providing positive feedback, such as laughing or inciting the aggressor, thereby reinforcing the behavior without directly participating.
• Defender: The student who intervenes to stop the bullying, comforts the victim, or seeks adult help.
• Outsider: The student who remains detached, neither participating in nor intervening in the bullying situation, often staying physically or emotionally outside the conflict.

Validity

While the original source content does not provide specific coefficients for validity, the PRQ has demonstrated strong evidence of Construct Validity in subsequent academic literature. The scale successfully differentiates between the five theoretically distinct roles, confirming that students are consistently identified by their peers as primarily occupying one or sometimes overlapping roles.

Furthermore, the scale exhibits Criterion Validity, particularly in relation to social status and observed behavior. Research utilizing the PRQ confirms the hypothesized links between aggressive roles (Bully, Assistant, Reinforcer) and measures of social dominance or popularity, while the Defender role correlates positively with measures of empathy and prosocial behavior. The instrument’s reliance on peer nomination enhances its ecological validity, as peer ratings often provide a more objective and comprehensive view of social behavior than self-report or teacher observation alone.

Reliability

The PRQ demonstrates high levels of internal consistency across all five subscales, indicating excellent reliability. The reliability is assessed using Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients, which are consistently strong, reflecting that the items within each scale measure a common underlying construct.

The reported Cronbach’s Alpha values for the scales are:

• Bully Scale: 0.93
• Assistant Scale: 0.95
• Reinforcer Scale: 0.90
• Defender Scale: 0.89
• Outsider Scale: 0.88

These values, all well above the standard threshold of 0.80, confirm the high internal reliability of the PRQ, making it a robust measure for assessing participant roles in group aggression studies.

Factor Analysis

The structure of the PRQ is theoretically driven, based on the five hypothesized participant roles. Although detailed factor analytic results (such as confirmatory factor analysis results) are not provided in the summary source, the strong internal consistency and the clear distinction between the five subscales strongly imply a successful underlying Five-Factor Structure. This structure supports the conceptual model that these roles are independent but related dimensions of involvement in the bullying process.

The consistent reliability scores for each distinct scale suggest that the items load highly onto their intended factor (role), supporting the differentiation of behaviors that actively promote aggression (Bully, Assistant, Reinforcer) versus those that mitigate it (Defender) or remain neutral (Outsider).

Instrument

Test Type: Peer Nomination (Sociometric Rating Scale)

Format: Questionnaire administered to the entire class. The name of each student is printed on the questionnaire, and respondents rate each classmate on a 3-point Likert-type scale for each item.

Language Available: Developed in English and Finnish, widely translated and used internationally.

Population Group: School-aged children and adolescents.

Age Group: Typically used with students in late childhood through adolescence (e.g., ages 8–15).

Population Details: Administered within intact classroom settings to assess social dynamics and roles regarding aggression.

Test Methodology: Respondents rate the frequency (Never, Sometimes, Often) with which each classmate exhibits the behaviors described in the 15 items (3 items per role). The scoring uses 0 (Never), 1 (Sometimes), and 2 (Often) points. Scores are aggregated across peers to create a mean score for each student on each of the five participant roles, providing a measure of their reputation within the group.

Keywords

Aggressive Behavior, Participant Roles, Social Status, School Environment, Peer Relations, Victimization, Psychological Scale, Bystander Effect.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source material.

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected]

Correspondence Address: Christina Salmivalli, PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Turku, FIN-20014, Turku, Finland.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The original instrument was developed in 1996 (Salmivalli et al.) and published by John Wiley & Sons Inc. Permission for use and reproduction of the instrument must be obtained from the publisher, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 111 River Street, Mail Stop 8-02, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Further reproduction is prohibited without explicit permission.

The PRQ is also included in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compendium of assessment tools. The original PDF can be downloaded here: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullycompendiumbk-a.pdf

Reference’s

Salmivalli, C., Lagerspetz, K., Bjorkqvist, K., Osterman, K., & Kaukiainen, A. (1996). Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group. Aggressive Behavior, 22, 1–15.

Salmivalli, C., & Voeten, M. (2004). Connections between attitudes, group norms, and behaviors associated with bullying in schools. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 28, 246-258.

Items of the Participant Role Questionnaire

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

The name of each student in the class is printed on the questionnaire. Respondents are asked to determine, on a 3-point scale (never, sometimes, often), how often each of their classmates behaves in the ways described.

The Bully Scale

1. Starts bullying
2. Makes the others join in.
3. Always finds new ways of harassing the victim

The Assistant Scale

1. Joins in the bullying, when someone else has started it
2. Assists the bully.
3. Helps the bully, maybe by catching the victim

The Reinforcer Scale

1. Comes around to see the situation.
2. Laughs
3. Incites the bully by shouting or saying: “Show him/her!”

The Defender Scale

1. Comforts the victim or encourages him/her to tell the teacher about the bullying
2. Tells the others to stop bullying
3. Tries to make the others stop bullying

The Outsider Scale

1. Is not usually present in bullying situations
2. Stays outside the situation
3. Doesn’t take sides with anyone