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Vol. 87. Issue 1.
Pages 9-17 (01 July 2017)
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Vol. 87. Issue 1.
Pages 9-17 (01 July 2017)
Original Article
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Cultural adaptation to Spanish and assessment of an Adolescent Peer Relationships Tool for detecting school bullying: Preliminary study of the psychometric properties
Adaptación cultural al español y baremación del Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument (APRI) para la detección de la victimización por acoso escolar: Estudio preliminar de las propiedades psicométricas
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Juan J. Gascón-Cánovasa, Jessica Roxanna Russo De Leónb,
Corresponding author
Jessruss5@gmail.com

Corresponding author.
, Antonio Cózar Fernandezc, Jose M. Heredia Calzadoa
a Departamento de Ciencias Sociosanitarias, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain
b Servicio de Psiquiatría, Hospital General Universitario Reina Sofía, Murcia, Spain
c Municipio Torre Pacheco, Torre Pacheco, Murcia, Spain
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Figures (1)
Tables (7)
Table 1. Characteristics of the sample under study.
Table 2. Metric characteristics of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI-Target scale.
Table 3. Internal structure of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI scale.
Table 4. Construct validity of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI scale: comparison of scores and effect size in different bullying intensity groups based on the “Social rejection—bullying” dimension of the KIDSCREEN-52 (KS-52).
Table 5. Internal consistency of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI scale.
Table 6. Evaluation of bullying intensity scores stratified by sex (0.0–100.0): Spanish adaptation of APRI scale.
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Abstract
Background and objectives

School bullying is a growing problem. The current study is aimed at culturally adapting and assessing the psychometric properties of a brief scale to measure bullying.

Material and methods

A cross-cultural adaptation of the brief scale—Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument-Bullying (APRI)—was performed using the translation and back-translation technique. The Spanish version of APRI questionnaire was administered to a sample of 1428 schoolchildren aged 12–14years in the region of Mar Menor in Murcia (Spain). Exploratory factor analysis, with oblique rotation, was used to assess the validity of the internal structure, the Cronbach's alpha to analyse their consistency, and the Kruskal–Wallis test to check their ability to discriminate between subjects with varying degrees of bullying according to Kidscreen-52 scale of social acceptability.

Results

Two factors were identified in the adapted version of APRI (physical victimisation and verbal/social victimisation), similar to those in the original scale. The questionnaire has high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha=0.94) and discrimination capacity (P<.01), with significant effect sizes between degrees of bullying.

Conclusions

The internal structure of the APRI Spanish version is similar to the original, and its scores confirm high reliability and construct validity. Further studies need to be performed with broader age ranges and confirmatory analysis techniques, to ratify the equivalence of the adapted version with the original version.

Keywords:
Peer victimisation
Bullying
Cross-cultural adaptation
Validation studies
Child and adolescent
Psychometrics
Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument (APRI)
Resumen
Fundamentos y objetivos

El acoso escolar es un problema de magnitud creciente para el que existen escasos instrumentos breves validados al español. El objetivo de este estudio es adaptar y validar una escala breve de medición del bullying.

Material y métodos

Se realizó una adaptación transcultural, mediante la técnica de traducción-retrotraducción, de la escala Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument-Bullying (APRI). La versión adaptada al español del cuestionario APRI se administró a una muestra de 1.428 escolares de entre 12-14 años de la comarca del Mar Menor de Murcia (España). Se utilizó el análisis factorial exploratorio, con rotación oblicua, para evaluar la validez de la estructura interna, el alfa de Cronbach para analizar su consistencia y el test de Kruskal-Wallis para comprobar su capacidad de discriminación entre sujetos con distintos grados de bullying según la escala Kidscreen-52 de aceptabilidad social.

Resultados

En la versión adaptada del APRI se identificaron 2 factores (victimización física y victimización verbal/social) similares a los de la escala original. El cuestionario tiene una elevada consistencia interna (alfa de Cronbach=0,94) y capacidad de discriminación (p<0,01), con tamaños de efecto considerables entre los distintos grupos de grado de bullying.

Conclusiones

La estructura interna de versión en español del APRI es análoga a la original, y sus puntuaciones confirman una elevada fiabilidad y validez de constructo. Serán necesarios estudios posteriores, con rangos de edad más amplios y técnicas de análisis confirmatorio, para ratificar la equivalencia de la versión adaptada con la original.

Palabras clave:
Victimización por acoso escolar
Acoso escolar
Adaptación transcultural
Estudios de validación
Niños y adolescentes
Análisis factorial exploratorio
Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument (APRI)
Full Text
Introduction

School bullying is defined as violent behaviour sustained by a single school-aged child or a group thereof with the purpose of hurting, humiliating or isolating another child in the absence of prior provocation and in the knowledge that the victim is unable to defend him or herself.1 It can manifest in different forms: as physical abuse (hitting, stealing, pushing), verbal abuse (insults and name-calling), or social exclusion (ignoring, marginalising). A new form has started to be considered recently, known as cyberbullying, that unfolds through the use of emerging technologies (email, mobile applications).2

The literature has demonstrated the association between bullying and health problems: depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, eating disorders or psychotic symptoms.3,4 Evidence shows that school bullying is far from sporadic; a survey of the United States youth found that 53% of males and 23% of females were experienced bullying during the current school term,5 while another study conducted in eleven European countries found an overall percentage of children that were being bullied of 20.6%.6

School-based anti-bullying interventions usually start from the awareness and appraisal of the situation,7 which require tools for the quick detection of bullying.

While the literature on the prevalence and consequences of school bullying has grown considerably, research on the development and validation of measuring tools has not grown in equal measure. For example, multidimensional measurement instruments capable of assessing the different forms in which bullying can manifest have been developed only recently.8 A challenge of bullying assessment methods is distinguishing it from everyday non-victimising behaviours. It is well known that schoolmates can engage in behaviours that look like bullying to an outside observer.9

The Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument (APRI)10–12 is a multidimensional and psychometrically validated measurement tool, but at present it is only available in English. The use of questionnaires in languages other than the one in which they were developed requires a cross-cultural adaptation to preserve their clinical and psychometric characteristics.13,14

The objective of our study was to adapt, assess and determine, in a preliminary approach, the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the APRI victim scales to contribute to the development of validated instruments that can be used in the design of anti-bullying interventions in the cultural context of Spain.

To this end, the questions under study were: a) whether the scores obtained in the Spanish adapted version of the APRI victim scales are reliable; b) the internal structure of the adaptation is similar to that of the original, and c) the tool can discriminate between groups of participants with different levels of bullying in agreement with the Social Acceptance (Bullying) dimension of the KIDSCREEN-52 questionnaire.

Materials and methodsDesign

We translated and made a cross-cultural adaptation of the APRI questionnaire, followed by an analysis of its reliability and validity in a sample of students that completed the Spanish version of the APRI questionnaire.

Instruments

The Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument (APRI-BT), which was developed by Parada,15 is a self-reporting tool comprising two subscales: one measuring bullying and the other victimisation. The latter scale, used in this study, assesses three dimensions of being targeted (physical, verbal and social bullying), each of which consists of six items scored on a Likert scale to determine how often the respondent experiences the situation (1=never, 2=sometimes, 3=once or twice a month, 4=once per week, 5=several times per week and 6=everyday). This results in scores whose addition produces overall score on an ordinal scale. High scores represent more frequent victimisation compared to low scores.14 There are no conflicts regarding authorship with the authors of the original English version of the APRI.

Translation, cross-cultural adaptation and structuring of the APRI target scales/APRI-T

We used the forward and backward translation method (Fig. 1)13: two translators who were native Spanish speakers made an initial translation of the original version independently. In collaboration with the research team, the translators revised the two translations and developed a first version of the Spanish questionnaire by consensus. This version was translated back to English, after which the resulting version was compared with the original for the purpose of resolving any disagreements and producing the second version of the questionnaire.

Figure 1.

Cross-cultural adaptation process.

(0.15MB).
Assessment of understandability

Previous to the administration of the instrument, we conducted a pilot study with 10 adolescents aged 12–16 years (six male, four female). We performed individual interviews using probing and paraphrasing methods.16 Once this phase was completed, we had the final version of the questionnaire.

Procedure

The definitive assessment tool was administered to students enrolled in Spanish compulsory secondary education (ESO) in six secondary schools in a town of the region of Cartagena (South East Spain) (n=1706).

We collected the data in late May 2013. The questionnaires were self-administered by the students, with an approximate duration of 15min.

Other variables under study

In addition to the adapted scale from the APRI-BT, we included the three questions on the “social acceptance” dimension of the KIDSCREEN-52.17,18 We also included sociodemographic variables such as age, sex, school year (of the ESO), social class of both parents according to the criteria of the Sociedad Española de Epidemiología (Spanish Society of Epidemiology)19 and parental educational attainment.20

Construct validity

Once we had completed the final version of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI (Appendix 1), we conducted preliminary psychometric analyses. First, we performed a descriptive analysis of the characteristics of the study sample and the questionnaire items. Then we verified the appropriateness of the factor analysis by means of Bartlett's test and the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test.21 To identify the structure of the initial model, we performed exploratory factor analysis using the least squares method. We selected factors applying the Kaiser criterion (preserving factors with eigenvalues greater than one) and confirmed the results with a scree plot. Since we worked on the assumption that the factors were correlated, we used the Oblimin oblique rotation method to maximise the loading of items onto the different factors.

We compared the ability of the scale to discriminate between the three bullying level groups (a, 0.0; b, 0.1–25.0; c, 25.0–100.0), classified based on the scores obtained in the “social acceptance” dimension from the KIDSCREEN-52, by comparing their averages by means of the nonparametric Kruskal–Wallis test.22,23 Furthermore, we estimated the effect size of the difference between the groups under study (mean difference between groups relative to the standard deviation of the baseline group).

Consistency analysis

To assess the reliability of the questionnaire by analysing its internal consistency, we calculated Cronbach's alpha with 95% confidence intervals.

Other psychometric analyses

We also analysed the floor and ceiling effects (percentage of responses in the lower and upper extremes of the scale, respectively). We determined the acceptability of the instrument based on the missing data in each dimension and the overall response rate. We calculated the scores in the dimensions of victimisation by bullying by adding the points of all items (0=never to 4=constantly). Later on, we transformed these scores into a scale that went from 0 (minimum bullying) to 100 (maximum) to facilitate their interpretation. We used the IBM SPSS 21.0® software for the statistical analysis.

Assessment of bullying intensity

Based on the definition of bullying (abuse sustained through time), we assessed its intensity by assigning 0 points to options in which there had been no bullying (“never”) or it had been experienced infrequently (“occasionally”), while the remaining options were recoded with a value of 1 (“sometimes”), 2 (“often”) and 3 (constantly) points.

ResultsCross-cultural adaptation

Two items required modification to achieve cultural equivalence: “tropiezan contra mí” (“bump into me”) rather than “chocan contra mí” (“crash into me”), “me ponen motes” (“they give me nicknames”) rather than “me llamaron por nombres que no me gustaban” (“I was called names I didn’t like”). During the interviews, two children agreed on having difficulty remembering the number of times that a situation had occurred each month or week. This is why we substituted the categories in the original Likert scale by a less ambiguous scale. The new scale has five categories of frequency that range from “never” to “constantly”. Considering the boom of emerging technologies and the growing importance of bullying through technological platforms in recent years,24 our research team considered that we also needed to include an item on cyberbullying.

Description of the study sample

Of the 1706 students in the initial sample, 1428 participated in the study, which corresponded to a response rate of 83.70%. Fifty-three percent (731) were male and the mean age was 14.6 years (SD=1.2 years) (Table 1).

Table 1.

Characteristics of the sample under study.

  Frequency  Percentage (%) 
Mean age (SD): 14.58 (1.18) years
Male  731  53.0 
School year (ESO)
7th  413  29.0 
8th  418  29.4 
9th  337  23.9 
10th  255  17.9 
Paternal social class
I or II  192  14.4 
III  91  7.0 
IV or V  874  67.7 
VI  134  17.9 
Maternal social class
I or II  148  11.1 
III  95  7.1 
IV or V  402  30.1 
VI  689  51.6 
Paternal educational attainment
No education  166  12.7 
Primary education  423  32.4 
Secondary education  528  40.5 
Higher education  188  14.4 
Maternal educational attainment
No education  152  11.6 
Primary education  427  32.6 
Secondary education  537  41.0 
Higher education  194  14.8 
Paternal ethnic origin
Spanish  907  63.5 
European Union  40  2.8 
Maghreb  254  17.8 
Latino-Ecuador  135  9.5 
Other  35  2.5 
Maternal ethnic origin
Spanish  898  62.9 
European Union  47  3.3 
Maghreb  257  18.0 
Latino-Ecuador  142  9.9 
Other  34  2.4 
Average  1428  100 

ESO: Compulsory secondary education. Social class: I: upper management in private or public sector; II: business owners; III: middle management in private or public sector; IV: skilled manual labour, V: unskilled labour; VI: other.

Most participants belonged to the least privileged classes: 67.7% of fathers worked in semi-skilled and unskilled manual labour, and more than half of the mothers were housewives or currently unemployed.

Acceptability of the questionnaire

Of the 1428 study participants, only 14 did not complete the questionnaire, with an overall acceptance rate of 99.0%. The lowest acceptance corresponded to the item about bullying through social networks (98.1%). In the other extreme, items on physical victimisation by being pushed and the item that dealt with the damage to personal property were the items with the highest specific-response rate (98.9%). The remaining items in the questionnaire were answered by a mean of 1407 participants.

The percentage of missing values for one or more items in each dimension and in the overall scale amounted to less than 5% (2.2% in the physical victimisation dimension and 4.3% in the verbal/social dimension) (Table 2). If we were to exclude the cyberbullying item, the percentage of missing values in the verbal/social subscale would drop by nearly one point (3.6%).

Table 2.

Metric characteristics of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI-Target scale.

Dimension  Mean [0–100]  Standard deviation  Missed dataCeiling effect (%)  Floor effect (%) 
      (≥1 item)  (≥50% items)     
Physical victimisationa  4.9  10.9  2.2  1.1  0.1  60.6 
Social/verbal victimisationb  8.1  12.8  4.3  2.2  0.1  36.5 
Social/verbal victimisationc  8.4  13.4  3.6  1.2  0.2  37.0 
Overall victimisation  7.1  11.8  4.9  1.1  0.1  32.2 
a

Including item 2.

b

Including items 17 and 19.

c

Excluding item 19 on cyberbullying.

The ceiling effect was negligible in the two dimensions of the scale (0.1%), although the floor effect was considerable (60.6% [physical victimisation] and 36.5% [verbal/social victimisation]) (Table 2).

Internal structure validity

The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (0.963) and Bartlett's sphericity test (P<.0001) showed that the items were interrelated and that the sample met the assumptions for factor analysis. Both the scree plot and the exploratory factor analysis suggested a two-factor structure.

After performing oblique rotation, we observed that all items exhibited high factor loadings ranging between 0.92 and 0.56; the assumed correlation between factors was evinced by an r coefficient of 0.77 between items (P<.001). The first-order factor, which we labelled “social and verbal victimisation”, groups the items pertaining to social exclusion and verbal abuse. This factor is nearly identical to the “verbal” and “social” dimensions of the original scale. However, item 2 in the physical victimisation subscale (being pushed) loaded more strongly onto the social and verbal victimisation factor (0.44) than the physical victimisation factor (0.22), which comprises all the “physical bullying” items in the original dimension. Something similar occurred with item 17 on the exclusion from leisure activities and item 19 on cyberbullying, with loadings of 0.58 and 0.42 onto the second-order “physical victimisation” factor in spite of their logical place in the “verbal and social victimisation” dimension (first-order factor) (Table 3). This factor structure is maintained with only slight differences in item saturation after excluding item 19 on cyberbullying.

Table 3.

Internal structure of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI scale.

  1st-order factor (social and verbal victimisation)a  2nd-order factor (physical victimisation)a 
Item 4. Offensive comments  0.927  −0.176 
Item 1. Mocking  0.888  −0.148 
Item 7. Sarcasm and teasing  0.656  0.112 
Item 13. Ridiculing  0.611  0.215 
Item 11. Put downs regarding physical appearance  0.607  0.149 
Item 3. Social rejection  0.597  0.118 
Item 6. Derision/exclusion in presence of others  0.591  0.118 
Item 18. Offensive nicknames  0.582  0.072 
Item 14. Spreading rumours  0.467  0.259 
Item 2. Pushing  0.444  0.220 
Item 9. Schoolmate conspiracies  0.419  0.310 
Item 12. Exclusion from social gatherings  0.412  0.255 
Item 10. Damage to personal property  −0.089  0.779 
Item 16. Threat of physical aggression  0.031  0.769 
Item 15. Aggression by throwing objects  0.007  0.752 
Item 17. Exclusion from leisure activities  0.153  0.586 
Item 5. Hitting  0.118  0.568 
Item 8. Intentional bumping  0.233  0.484 
Item 19. Cyberbullyingb  0.157  0.422 
a

Factorial analysis using least square method and Oblimin oblique rotation.

b

The factorial structure is sustained when the item on cyberbullying is excluded.

Discriminatory power of the scale

The questionnaire can discriminate between subjects experiencing different degrees of bullying (Table 4). The mean scores were lowest in the no-bullying group both in the two dimensions and the overall scale, increased significantly in the moderate bullying group, and peaked in the severe bullying group (P<.001). The effect sizes were also considerable, and ranged between a minimum of 0.7 and a maximum of 3.2.

Table 4.

Construct validity of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI scale: comparison of scores and effect size in different bullying intensity groups based on the “Social rejection—bullying” dimension of the KIDSCREEN-52 (KS-52).

Dimension of APRI-BT  Degree of social rejection-bullying (KS-52)Pa  Effect sizeb
  None
(0.0)
(n=566) 
Moderate
(0.1–25.0)
(n=534) 
Severe
(25.1–100.0)
(n=306) 
  None vs moderate  None vs severe 
  95% CI  95% CI  95% CI       
Physical  1.5±0.4  4.5±0.7  12.1±2.0  <.01  0.7  2.3 
Social/verbal  2.4±0.4  8.1±0.9  18.8±2.1  <.01  1.1  3.3 
Overall scale  2.1±0.4  6.9±0.8  16.7±2.0  <.01  1.1  3.2 
a

Kruskal–Wallis test.

b

x¯group−x¯noneσnone.

Reliability of the scale

The internal consistence of the overall scale was very high, with a Cronbach's α coefficient of 0.94 (CI, 0.936–0.945). The dimensions in the scale were also highly consistent, with a Cronbach's α of 0.85 (CI, 0.83–0.862) for the “physical victimisation” factor—including item 2, being pushed—and an even higher value for the “social and verbal victimisation” factor—including items 17 and 19 pertaining to the exclusion from leisure activities and to cyberbullying—of 0.92 (CI, 0.914–0.926) (Table 5). This consistency was maintained and did not improve with the removal of items from the overall scale or subscales (Table 5).

Table 5.

Internal consistency of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI scale.

Dimensions  Cronbach's α  95% CI 
Overall scale  0.943  (0.936–0.945) 
Target-physicala  0.851  (0.838–0.868) 
Target-verbal and socialb  0.920  (0.914–0.926) 
a

Cronbach's α if item 2 is eliminated=0.841.

b

Cronbach's α if item 17 is eliminated=0.916; Cronbach's α if item 19 is eliminated=0.92.

Evaluation of bullying intensity scores

The percentile scores for bullying intensity we obtained in the possible range of 0 to 100 were low. Males scored higher than females in all dimensions for any given percentile. The difference between male and female respondents in the assessment of bullying averaged 1.8 points at the 85th percentile, and 28.2 points at the 97th percentile (Table 6). Only 6.3% of female participants had experienced physical bullying, a percentage that doubled in males (12.1%).

Table 6.

Evaluation of bullying intensity scores stratified by sex (0.0–100.0): Spanish adaptation of APRI scale.

Percentile  PhysicalSocial/verbalOverall
  ♀  ♂  ♀  ♂  ♀  ♂ 
70  0.0  0.0  0.0  0.0  0.0  0.0 
75  0.0  0.0  0.0  0.0  0.0  1.8 
80  0.0  0.0  2.6  2.6  1.8  1.8 
85  0.0  0.0  2.6  7.7  3.5  5.3 
90  0.0  5.6  7.7  15.4  5.3  10.5 
95  5.6  22.2  12.8  26.9  10.5  26.3 
96  5.6  27.8  15.4  30.8  12.3  28.1 
97  6.7  28.5  19.3  42.4  15.8  36.8 
98  11.1  44.4  23.1  51.3  17.7  45.9 
99  22.2  70.6  32.1  74.8  27.2  72.2 
Discussion and conclusions

The five-step cross-cultural adaptation method used in the study confirmed the semantic equivalence of the resulting scale and the original, as has been observed in other studies on cross-cultural adaptation.25

Self-reporting tools are the most practical way to detect victimisation by school bullying in educational institutions. The repetitive nature of the behaviour may be detected by frequency scales due to the ease of their interpretation.11 By asking about specifics, the items in the scale obtain results that are more accurate than they would be if the items were based on broader terms, such as bullying, abuse or harassment. The way the student conceives of these terms might result in an underestimation or overestimation of the abuse.26

When it comes to the reduction in the number of response categories from six to five, we did not find a consensus as to the ideal number in the reviewed literature. Various authors have provided evidence that increasing the number of choices increases the reliability and validity of the scales, while agreeing that expanding the number of choices beyond eight does not offer any further benefit.27 This suggests an increased reliability of the Spanish adaptation of the APRI scale. On the other hand, some authors believe that the sensitivity of instruments increases with increasing number of answer choices, that is, that there is an improvement in the capacity to perceive changes through time, something that would be useful in evaluating the effect of interventions.28

Since we could not analyse and compare the two response categories, we do not know the effects of these differences, which is a limitation of our study; thus, further research is needed to compare these differences.

The factor analysis of the adapted version of the APRI identified two factors: “social and verbal victimisation” and “physical victimisation”. The main difference from the original version is that the latter reflected three factors, separating items related to social and verbal victimisation into two factors. It is not surprising that they appeared merged in our analysis, as they both represent the psychological component of aggression as opposed to its physical component.29 Verbal bullying and social exclusion are not incompatible, and many students who suffer from social exclusion are also subjected to derogatory language.30 Another factor worth noting is that the original scale was less reliable (α coefficients between 0.81 and 0.89)12 compared to the adaptation analysed in our study. The three items in the subscales that load onto factors that are conceptually different from what would be suggested from their content in the final questionnaire were included in the factor where they would belong based on logic, as doing so did not decrease the reliability of the scale.

The potential sources of bias that may account for the described differences are that the sample studied for the validation of the original APRI scale came from a population with a broader age range (10–18 year) compared to the sample in our study (12–14 years). Furthermore, there was a small prevalence of males in our sample (53%).

The acceptability of the content was supported by the high rate of overall acceptance (99%) and the few missing data in the items comprising the different dimensions. The lower response rate for the cyberbullying item may be due to the overall underprivileged background of the sample, as many participants may have lacked access to these new technologies.

At first glance, the significant floor effect of the scores obtained with the adapted version of the APRI may seem surprising. However, we must take into account that this questionnaire is measuring a phenomenon which, while being on the rise, is not prevalent.

Our results show that the instrument is highly reliable overall and in each of its factors. The discriminatory power of the adapted scale is high. The effect sizes between the different groups under study that theoretically should be different, exceeded the threshold of 0.5 that has been traditionally considered for defining a significant difference.24

Exploratory factor analysis is a statistical method that is both appropriate for and widely used in questionnaire validation. However, we need more sophisticated tools to assess for multi-group or multi-factor measure invariance used in confirmatory factor analysis. The concept of invariance refers to whether the factor structure is similar in different groups.31 This type of approach was already applied to the English version of the APRI questionnaire.32

On the other hand, the inclusion of an additional item on cyberbullying in the Spanish adaptation enhances the construct validity of this scale and does not alter its psychometric properties. However, it results in a slight increase in missing data.

Conflicts of interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the Department of Education of the City Council of Torre Pacheco, Murcia, Spain.

Appendix 1
Spanish adaptation of the APRI-Bullying/Target scale of Parada et al.

Below, we detail some situations that a student may experience. Please, mark the frequency with which you have encountered these situations during this academic year.

During this academic year, in my school…  Never  Occasionally  Sometimes  Often  Constantly 
1. They tease me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
2. They push me to bother me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
3. They won’t be friends with me because someone/some people do not like me (n○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
4. They say mean things about me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
5. They hit me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
6. Someone ignores or excludes me only when he/she is with their friends  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
7. They have fun playing nasty tricks on me or joking about me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
8. They bump into me to bother me when they pass by me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
9. They get others to not speak to me and turn them against me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
10. They damage my belongings on purpose  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
11. They say unpleasant things about my looks  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
12. I am not invited when they get together or go to parties or the homes of other students because someone who is going does not like me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
13. They mock me saying unpleasant things about me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
14. They tell lies about me to hurt me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
15. They throw objects at me to bother me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
16. They threaten to hit or hurt me  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
17. They exclude me from activities, games or meetings on purpose  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
18. The give me nicknames I don’t like  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 
19. They’ve harassed me through social networks (Tuenti, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.)  ○  ○  ○  ○  ○ 

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Please cite this article as: Gascón-Cánovas JJ, Russo de Leon JR, Cózar Fernandez A, Heredia Calzado JM. Adaptación cultural al español y baremación del Adolescent Peer Relations Instrument (APRI) para la detección de la victimización por acoso escolar: Estudio preliminar de las propiedades psicométricas. An Pediatr (Barc). 2017;87:9–17.

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