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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
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)