The development of a new cyberbullying attitude measure

Three studies were conducted to validate a new positive attitude towards cyberbullying measure. Our developed measure is a self-report assessment that consists of nine items. Study 1 (N = 166) used exploratory factor analysis and found two distinct factors: Harmful Cyberbullying Attitudes (HCA; five items) and General Cyberbullying Characteristics (GCC; four items) that both had adequate reliability. The factor structure was replicated using confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2 (N = 336). Additionally, our new measure correlated significantly with existing measures of cyberbullying attitudes and cyberbullying behaviors. Finally, Study 3 (N = 159) further replicated the results of Study 2 and also showed that our HCA measure predicted cyberbullying perpetration above and beyond other cyberbullying attitude measures. Overall, our research suggests that our new cyberbullying attitude measure is reliable and valid. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.