Question Order Affects the Measurement of Bullying Victimization Among Middle School Students

• NCJ Number: 249663
• Journal: EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT Dated: December 2015
• Author(s): F. L. Huang; D. G. Cornell
• Date Published: December 2015
• Length: 0 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2012-JF-FX-0062
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Publication Format: Article; Document (Online)
• Publication Type: Survey; Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The findings of this study raise questions about the accuracy of several widely used bullying surveys.

Abstract

Bullying among youth is recognized as a serious student problem, especially in middle school. The most common approach to measuring bullying is through student self-report surveys that ask questions about different types of bullying victimization. Although prior studies have shown that question-order effects may influence participant responses, no study has examined these effects with middle school students. A randomized experiment (n = 5,951 middle school students) testing the question-order effect found that changing the sequence of questions can result in 45-percent higher prevalence rates. 54 references (Publisher abstract modified)