Psychometric Properties of the Chinese Version of the Actually Received Support Scale in Students Under Bullying Victimization

Background and Purpose: The Received Support Scale of the Berlin Social Support Scales (BSSS-RS) is a subscale from the BSSS, which is used to assess the range of actual support behaviors towards coping with a stressful episode. Despite the importance of social support in coping with bullying victimization, there is a lack of valid and reliable tools to assess received support in response to school bullying in China. The purpose of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the BSSS-RS in Chinese context.

Methods: A total of 378 Chinese students (Grade 4 to 9) who had experienced school bullying in the past six months were recruited in a cross-sectional survey in Hebei province in China under a three-stage sampling method. First, the schools were selected by convenience sampling. Second, one class in each grade (from Grade 4 to 9) was selected using simple random sampling. Third, all students in the selected classes were invited to join in the study. Around half of sample (52.4%) were male and their age ranged from 10 to 17 years (Mean=13.44, SD=1.64).

The 11-item BSSS-RS was translated into Chinese using the forward-backward translation. The psychometric properties of the Chinese version of BSSS-RS from three sources (family, friend/classmate, and teacher) were examined through confirmatory factor analyses for factorial validity, reliability, and convergent validity. Independent t-tests were used to examine the scale scores across gender and grade.

Results: Confirmatory factor analyses found a superior fit for the three-factor model over the one-factor model. The three-factor model showed an acceptable model fit to the data for family and friend/classmate but not for teacher. Satisfactory internal consistency and test-retest reliability were found for emotional support (6 items), instrumental support (3 items) and informational support (2 items). The factors exhibited expected convergent validity with perceived social support, loneliness, life satisfaction, and depression. Females reported higher BSSS-RS scores from friend/classmate and students in Grade 7 to 9 reported higher scores from the three sources than their counterparts.

Conclusions and Implications: The present findings support the use of the BSSS-RS as a valid measurement of actually received support from family and friend/classmate in adolescents affected by school bullying in the Chinese context. Further studies are needed to examine the dimensionality of the BSSS-RS for teacher before it could be applied in this population.