Validity of Three School Climate Scales to Assess Bullying, Aggressive Attitudes, and Help Seeking

The School Climate Bullying Survey (Cornell & Sheras, 2003) is a self-report survey used to measure attitudes and behaviors associated with school bullying. Two studies were conducted to examine the valid use of its three school climate scales: (a) Prevalence of Teasing and Bullying, (b) Aggressive Attitudes, and (c) Willingness to Seek Help. In Study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed with a sample of 2,111 students from four middle schools and established reasonable fit for 20 items with their hypothesized scales. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses revealed good overall model fit. In Study 2, regression analyses using school-level measures aggregated from 7,318 ninth-grade students attending 291 Virginia public high schools indicated that the three scales were related to meaningful criteria for school disorder. (Contains 2 tables.)