Self-Reported Participant Role Scale

Abstract

The Self-reported Participant Role Scale is a psychological instrument designed to assess the self-perceived involvement of school-aged children and adolescents in peer victimization and bullying situations. Developed primarily by Pozzoli, Gini, and Vieno (2012), this scale measures four distinct behavioral roles: the Bully, the Defender, the Passive Bystander, and the Victim. The scale utilizes a self-report format to capture an individual’s frequency of engaging in specific aggressive, supportive, or passive behaviors related to observed or experienced peer conflict. The items cover various forms of aggression, including physical, verbal, and relational bullying.

The instrument is crucial for research investigating the dynamics of peer aggression in school environments, allowing researchers to explore the psychological correlates, social norms, and personal characteristics that drive individuals toward specific participant role behaviors. Psychometric analyses have demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability for the derived subscales, supporting its use in educational and developmental psychology research.

Keywords

Bullying, Participant roles, Peer victimization, Defending behavior, Passive bystanding, Aggression, Self-report measure, School climate, Victim.

Authors

Tiziana Pozzoli, Gianluca Gini, Alvise Vieno.

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Purpose

The primary purpose of the Self-reported Participant Role Scale is to provide a detailed, nuanced assessment of an individual’s involvement in bullying episodes from their own perspective. Unlike observer reports, which may miss subtle relational dynamics, this self-report measure allows for direct quantification of the frequency with which a student assumes active roles (such as initiating aggression or actively defending others) or passive roles (such as being a victim or remaining a passive bystander).

The scale is specifically structured to differentiate between three types of bullying behavior—physical, verbal, and relational—allowing researchers to analyze distinct patterns of aggressive behavior. By measuring these specific roles and types of aggression, the instrument facilitates targeted interventions aimed at reducing bullying and promoting prosocial behaviors like active defending among peers.

Construct

The scale operationalizes the psychological construct of Participant Roles in Bullying, a framework widely used in peer aggression research that posits that individuals involved in a bullying incident adopt specific, observable roles. The scale is designed to capture four primary factors (subscales), each representing a distinct role:

• Bully Role: Items reflecting the initiation of physical, verbal, or relational aggression toward peers.
• Defender Role: Items reflecting proactive efforts to intervene, support, or comfort victims of bullying.
• Passive Bystander Role: Items reflecting inaction, avoidance, or remaining neutral when witnessing a bullying incident.
• Victim Role: Items reflecting experiences of being targeted by physical, verbal, or relational aggression from peers.

This multi-dimensional structure allows for the examination of complex behavioral profiles, recognizing that individuals may endorse items across multiple roles, reflecting the fluidity of these behaviors in real-world social contexts.

Validity

While specific detailed validity data (e.g., convergent, discriminant, or predictive validity coefficients) are not fully detailed in the summary provided, the scale is grounded in established theoretical models of bullying participant roles, such as those discussed by Goossens, Olthof, & Dekker (2006). The utilization of the scale in subsequent academic research (Pozzoli, Gini, & Vieno, 2012; Kane, 2015) suggests adequate construct validity, as its measures of defending and passive bystanding have been successfully correlated with individual characteristics (e.g., empathy, self-efficacy) and perceived peer pressure.

The clear differentiation of items across the four proposed factors (Bully, Defender, Passive Bystander, Victim) provides evidence of content validity, ensuring that the scale adequately samples the domain of peer involvement behaviors. Further validation studies often confirm the scale’s ability to distinguish between students who report high levels of aggression versus those who report high levels of prosocial intervention.

Reliability

The reliability of the Self-reported Participant Role Scale has been assessed using measures of internal consistency, specifically Composite Reliability (CR) and Cronbach Alpha scores.

In the study by Pozzoli & Gini (2010), internal consistency was measured using Composite Reliability (CR) for the primary behavioral subscales, demonstrating acceptable reliability coefficients:

• Bullying (CR = 0.76)
• Defending (CR = 0.75)
• Passive Bystanding (CR = 0.76)

A separate reliability analysis conducted by Kane (2015) using Cronbach’s Alpha reported the following scores for the individual participant role subscales:

• Bully Subscale (Alpha = 0.62)
• Defender Subscale (Alpha = 0.81)
• Passive Bystander Subscale (Alpha = 0.67)
• Victim Subscale (Alpha = 0.67)

While the Defender subscale exhibits strong reliability (Alpha = 0.81), the Bully subscale (Alpha = 0.62) falls below the conventionally accepted threshold of 0.70, suggesting potential limitations in the internal consistency of the aggression items within certain populations or contexts. The Victim and Passive Bystander subscales show moderate, acceptable reliability.

Factor Analysis

The scale is implicitly structured around a multi-factor model, corresponding to the four distinct participant roles: Bully, Defender, Passive Bystander, and Victim. Although explicit details regarding the confirmatory or exploratory factor analysis results (e.g., fit indices, factor loadings) are not provided in the source material, the consistent reporting of subscale scores and reliability measures for four distinct factors across multiple studies (Pozzoli & Gini, 2010; Pozzoli, Gini & Vieno, 2012) confirms the intended multi-dimensional structure.

Researchers typically compute scores for each participant role by averaging the answers across the three items corresponding to each respective subscale, supporting the notion of four independent, yet related, underlying constructs driving behavior in bullying contexts.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report questionnaire.

Format: 12 items rated on a 4-point frequency scale.

Language Available: Original research was conducted in Italy, suggesting Italian, but published items are presented in English.

Population Group: Children and adolescents.

Age Group: Typically utilized with middle school and high school students (implied school age).

Population Details: Students in educational settings who are exposed to peer group dynamics and bullying interactions.

Test Methodology: Respondents rate how frequently they engage in or experience the described behaviors using the following response options: Never, Sometimes, Often, Almost Always. Subscale scores are derived by calculating the average of the items belonging to that specific role.

Keywords

Psychometrics, Internal consistency, Composite reliability, Cronbach’s Alpha, Peer aggression, Relational bullying, Bully, Defender, Victim, Bystander.

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Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Information not provided in source material)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Information not provided in source material)

Correspondence Address: N/A (Information not provided in source material)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The primary research establishing the use and psychometrics of the scale was published in 2010 (Pozzoli & Gini) and further validated in 2012 (Pozzoli, Gini, & Vieno). The instrument is generally considered part of academic research and is often used by researchers without specific commercial fees, though permission should be sought from the primary authors for commercial or large-scale implementation.

The original PDF containing the instrument and initial psychometric details can be downloaded here: Pozzoli, T., & Gini, G. (2010).

Reference’s

• Goossens, F. A., Olthof, T., & Dekker, P. H. (2006). New participant role scales: Comparison between various criteria for assigning roles and indications for their validity. Aggressive Behavior, 32, 343–357.
• Kane, Michelle. (2015). The Relationship Between Self-Efficacy, Empathy and Personal Responsibility On Bullying Participant Roles. Dublin Business School, School of Arts. BA (Hons) in Psychology.
• Pozzoli, T., & Gini, G. (2010). Active defending and passive bystanding behaviour in bullying. The role of personal ch‎aracteristics and perceived peer pressure. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38, 815-827.
• Pozzoli, T., Gini, G., & Vieno, A. (2012). The role of individual correlates and class norms in defending and passive bystanding behaviour in bullying. A multilevel analysis. Journal of Child Development, 83, (6), 1917-1931.

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Items of the Self-reported participant role scale

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

1. I hit or push some of my classmates
2. I offend or give nasty nicknames to some of my classmates
3. I exclude some classmates from the group and I spread rumours about them when they don’t hear
4. I defend the classmates who are hit or attacked hard
5. I try to help or comfort classmates who are isolated or excluded from the group
6. If someone teases or threatens a classmate I try to stop him/her
7. If a classmate is hit or threatened, I do nothing and I don’t meddle
8. When a classmate is hit or pushed I stand by and mind my own business
9. If I know that someone is excluded or isolated from the group I act as if nothing has happened
10. I am attacked hard hit or pushed by some classmates
11. Some classmates give me nasty nicknames or offend me
12. I know that someone spreads nasty rumours about me when I can’t hear