The Development of a Cyber Violence Measurement Tool for Youths : A Multilateral Reporting of Ecological Factors

Due to COVID-19, cyber violence among the youth has soared as they spend more time online than ever before. In contrast to the deepening concerns, measurement tools that can assess the vulnerability of cyber violence in individual youth still need to be supplemented. Cyber and school violence measurement tools are currently being developed and used a lot, but there are no measurement tools that can be used whenever teachers need them in schools or classes. The measurement tools lack consideration of various factors related to cyber violence among the youth. Most of the tools are self-report questionnaires, and these self-report questionnaire forms can underestimate the harmful behavior and overestimate the damage experience. It is, therefore, necessary and important to develop measurement tools that can assess cyber and school violence, as well as provide tools for early prevention and intervention education, while meeting the needs of school sites.

The purpose of this study is to develop a multilateral reporting measurement tool that can reliably measure individual ecological factors related to cyber violence. The questionnaire was constructed through a literature review by exploring the factors related to cyber violence and was confirmed through face validity by conducting focus group interviews. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (N=671) were also conducted for statistical validation. The developed multilateral reporting measurement tool for cyber violence consists of 161 questions and six areas: online behavior, cyber violence awareness, victimization-perpetration-witness experience, coping efficacy (individuals, peers, teachers, and parents), psychological characteristics, and pro-social capabilities. In addition to the self-report of the youth respondent, this measurement tool also includes peer nomination, teachers, and parent reporting. Through this tool, it is possible to stably measure the ecological factors of individual youth who are vulnerable to or highly resistant to cyber violence. This study is meaningful in finding cyber violence and school violence perpetrators or victims by presenting the most representative perpetrators and victim behaviors while drastically reducing the number of school and cyber violence questionnaires. In particular, it will be able to help evoke the need for preventive education by objectively examining the level of cyber violence among students in the class through comparison with other classes.

In schools, teachers can refer to the measurement results to guide students, better understand the students' cyber violence-related situations, and assess their pro-social capabilities. With the measurement results, teachers and police officers can detect perpetrators or victims and intervene immediately. In addition, this measurement tool can analyze the effectiveness of existing prevention and intervention programs for cyber violence and derive appropriate suggestions. The COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing, and our school education and students' school life are largely affected. Traditional school violence has decreased, but cyber violence is increasing rapidly, and schools and teachers are not well prepared in line with this increase. Therefore, the cyber violence measurement tool developed in this study is expected to contribute to reducing the problems and gaps in the reality in schools.