A PRISMA-Based Systematic Review of Measurements for School Bullying

The measurement tools of school bullying vary, and an instructive study identifying how to select the proper tool is needed. Based on the PRISMA, quantitative research literature on school bullying published from 1978 to 2021 through multiple online databases (i.e., WoS, ScienceDirect, PsycINFO, MEDLINE, ERIC, and CNKI) were searched. After conducting additional searches, a total of 75 tools were obtained. The specific content and psychometric properties (provided by original and follow-up studies) were then analyzed. Regarding the measurement content, 16 tools provided a definition of bullying, and 14 tools simultaneously measured all three components of “intention to harm”, “repetition”, and “power imbalance”. For the control of subjective explanatory bias, 19 tools present bullying-related terms to participants. As a key part of bullying measurement, a timeframe was set in 52 tools, ranging from “past month” to “past year”. Concerning the measurement method, 73 tools administer the measures by self-report, and peer-report (n = 8) and teacher-report (n = 5) are applied by some tools. Regarding psychometric properties, existing instruments demonstrated satisfactory in terms of internal consistency reliability (n = 75) but showed limitations due to their lack of content readability, criterion validity, and measurement invariance. In combination with specific research purposes, future research can select instruments based on the consideration of definition, components, terms, timeframe, reporter and the improving of the psychometric properties of tools.