QUESTIONNAIRES FOR SCHOOLS ON BULLYING AND HARASSMENT

This information has been provided by Adjunct Professor Ken Rigby from the University of South Australia for distribution to South Australian Schools.

Why conduct surveys as to the prevalence of bullying in your school?

Questionnaires relating to bullying in schools can serve a number of purposes.

• They can help to raise awareness of bullying going on in a school, the forms it is taking, and the effects it is having on vulnerable students.  Without such awareness in school and the school community, a whole-school approach to bullying cannot take place. Questions that enable students to relate their experiences and describe their feelings are often most important in raising awareness.
• Teachers can better understand the attitudes and beliefs of students about bullying.  For example, how they feel about students who are repeatedly being bullied and whether they are prepared to help them.
• They can enable schools to identify groups, for whom the problem is most severe.  For example, according to years, gender and ethnicity.  This information enables schools to prioritise targets.
• They can be used to involve parents and gain their cooperation.  Schools can also greatly benefit from their knowledge, experience and understanding.
• They enable teachers to appreciate differences and similarities among staff members in how they view bullying and how they think it should be countered. Such awareness is needed if schools are to develop agreed policies and practices.
• They provide a means of monitoring changes over time in response to anti-bullying programs.  This can  only occur only if the measures are reliable and appropriate research designs and valid statistical analyses are employed.

Choice of questionnaires

Questionnaires relating to bullying may serve somewhat different purposes and users should consider carefully which to select.  Here is a brief guide:

1. To obtain a comprehensive picture of the prevalence of bullying at a school, how groups and individuals are being affected and opinions on how bullying can best be countered the Peer Relations Assessment Questionnaire (PRAQ-R) is most appropriate.  These include questionnaires that can be used with students, teachers and parents. They are available from the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) for a fee. (See below).
2. To obtain a quick  approximation of the prevalence of bullying in a school, the Bullying Prevalence Questionnaire (BPQ) devised by Rigby and Slee (1993) can be used. This provides assessments of the prevalence of behaviours and attitudes  among students that reflect a tendency to bully others, be bullied by others and to act pro-socially (This questionnaire is available for your use below).
3. To discover how staff members think they would act in addressing cases of bullying use the Handling Bullying Questionnaire (HBQ) devised by Bauman and Rigby (2008). This is an instrument used in many countries and is a useful prelude to discussions about what intervention methods to adopt. (See below)
4. To assess the extent to which students are sympathetic to the plight of victims of school bullying or tend to support bullying behaviour, use the Pro-victim Scale (Rigby,1997)
5. For teachers who want to undertake a major research project using a questionnaire for which there are published norms for over 38,000 Australian students the Peer Relations Questionnaire (PRQ) devised by Rigby and Slee (1993) may be requested. Note that it requires a considerable amount of statistical analyses to obtain the results and is suitable only for use in in-depth studies. For most studies other questionnaires are preferred. To request a copy of the PRQ and manual, email Ken Rigby at  ken.rigby@unisa.edu.au

Details of the questionnaires

THE PEER RELATIONS ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRES - REVISED (PRAQ-R)

The Peer Relations Assessment Questionnaires - Revised (PRAQ-R) is a survey package designed to obtain useful information about bullying in schools from three different sources: teachers, parents and students.

1. PRAQ-R for Junior Students aims to provide information from students from Reception to Year 5. This questionnaire has been designed to be used by younger students.  It makes use of cartoons and illustrations that are appropriate for young children with limited reading skills.  It enables the teacher to understand better the quality of children’s relationships with peers, the nature and prevalence of bullying and their readiness to seek help.

2. PRAQ-R for Senior Students seeks to identify the nature and prevalence of bullying in schools, where it takes place, consequences for students in general, perceptions of teachers’ concern for the problem and students’ wish to engage in joint action with the staff.

3. PRAQ-R for Teachers provides information about the perceived prevalence of different forms of bullying in the school, how safe the school is,  the extent to which bullying occurs between staff and students, motivation of the staff to address bullying and views on specific steps that a school can take to address the issue.

4. PRAQ-R for Parents provides information about how happy a child is at school, how often the child is bullied or bullies others, how the child has been affected by bullying and what views parents have about addressing the problem.

The information obtained from different sources helps schools to provide a comprehensive and reliable picture of many aspects of bullying among students, as well as providing guidance in setting up relevant policies and procedures.

Excel spreadsheets are provided to streamline the scoring and collation of data to provide results that can be used for follow-up discussion and intervention.

Costs in Australian dollars (at time of publication):

Peer Relations Assessment Questionnaires - Revised (PRAQ-R)

• E8000    $299.95    Whole School Set - All files, Unlimited downloads on CDROM

• E8003    $309.95    Whole School Set with How Schools Counter Bullying

• E8001   $199.95   Junior Student Set (Manual, Primary Parent Form PDF, Primary Teacher  Form PDF,                   Primary Student Form PDF, Excel Spreadsheets, Unlimited downloads on CDROM

• E8004    $209.95    Junior Student Set with How Schools Counter Bullying

• E8002  $199.95   Senior Student Set (Manual, Secondary Parent Form PDF, Secondary Teacher Form PDF, Secondary Student Form PDF, Excel Spreadsheets, Unlimited downloads on CDROM

• E8005    $209.95    Senior Student Set with How Schools Counter Bullying

To obtain copies contact:

Private Bag 55, Camberwell, VIC. Australia 3124

p: +61 3 9277 5447 | f: +61 3 9277 5499 | e: sales@acer.edu.au | w: http://shop.acer.edu.au

THE BULLYING PREVALENCE QUESTIONNAIRE (BPQ)

Download the .pdf document here

Show how often the statements are true of you. To do this tick one of the answers underneath each statement on the questionnaire.

Scoring of the Bullying Prevalence Questionnaire (BPQ)

Interpretation

This questionnaire contains 3 sub-scales and several filler items. The scoring of the scales is as follows:

   Never                       =          1

   Once in a while         =          2

   Pretty often              =          3

   Very often                =          4

Items belonging to the Scales are these:

 Bully Scale:              4, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17

 Victim Scale:            3, 8, 12, 18, 19

 Pro-Social Scale:    5, 10, 15, 20

For a shorter 12-item scale (without filler items) the items underlined should be used, as in the published article: Rigby, K. and Slee, P.T. (1993). Dimensions of interpersonal relating among Australian school children and their implications for psychological well-being. Journal of Social Psychology, 133(1), 33-42.

REVISED PRO-VICTIM SCALE (RIGBY, 1997)

Download the .pdf document here

Instructions for completion:  Read each of the sentences carefully and show how strongly you agree or disagree with it. Do this by circling one of the answers in the downloaded document.

Scoring of the Revised Pro-Victim Scale

Interpretation

Scoring

Items are scored as follows:

Items: 1,3,4,6 and 8 Agree = 1, Unsure =2, Disagree = 3

Items: 2,5,7,9 and 10 Agree =3, Unsure =2, Disagree =1

Then Sum for the total score.

THE HANDLING BULLYING QUESTIONNAIRE (HBQ)

Download the .pdf document here

Teachers have alternative ways of dealing with incidents of bullying in a school. 

To some extent, what is done depends on the circumstances in which the bullying takes place, and the severity of the bullying. It is, of course, sometimes difficult to generalize, but in answering the following questions, indicate what you think you might do. 

Imagine the following scenario: 

A 12-year-old student is being repeatedly teased and called unpleasant names by another, more powerful, student who has successfully persuaded other students to avoid the targeted person as much as possible. As a result, the victim of this behaviour is feeling angry, miserable, and often isolated. 

In using this questionnaire cite The Handling Bullying Questionnaire (HBQ) (Bauman, Rigby &  Hoppa, 2008).

Note: Feel free to make copies and use at your school with staff members. Afterwards you may find it useful to discuss why members answered as they did. It can be used to identify there is a general consensus or differences of opinion in a school staff about how cases of bullying should be handled.

REFERENCES

Rigby, K and Bauman, S (2010) How school personnel tackle cases of bullying: A critical examination. In Shane Jimerson, Susan Swearer and Dorothy Espelage (Eds) The International Handbook of School Bullying,  New York: Routledge, 455-468.  

 Rigby, K & Bauman, S (2007) What teachers think should be done about cases of bullying.  Professional Educator, ACER, Melbourne.

 Bauman, S., Rigby, K., & Hoppa, K. (2008). US teachers’ and school counsellors’ strategies for handling school bullying incidents. Educational Psychology, 28, 837–56