Test validity and number of response categories: A case of bullying scale

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology

Abstract

About 1147 school students were selected based on a pre-designed sampling scheme and they underwent a Bullying test where each item had 5-response categories. Class teachers independently marked the students as bully or non-bully by giving a holistic rating in a qualitative fashion without any knowledge of students' test scores. Validity of the bullying scale was found by various approaches like Point bi-serial correlation, Chi-square measure of association and function of chi-square like Contingency Coefficient, Phi Coefficient, R2 of Logistic regression separately for 2, 3, 4 and 5 response categories obtained by a collapsing data and Hit ratios. Fluctuations of validity indices were investigated to find the number of response categories, which performs best. Goodness of classification of students was done in two groups namely, bully and non-bully owing to the results of test scores and teachers' ratings. The two-point, three-point and four-point scales performed rather poorly and indices were higher for scales with 5-response categories. However, factor analysis showed that only one factor was measured by all the response categories implying unidimensionality of the Bullying Scale even if data are collapsed to have various response categories..

First Page

344

Last Page

353

Publication Date

1-1-2016

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