Administering the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire

The OBVQ-R is a 42-item self-report questionnaire that assesses events related to bullying behaviors between peers at school using a referential period of 2 months. It also includes questions about attitudes toward bullying and school climate (Solberg and Olweus, 2003) (see Supplementary Material).

Before administering the questionnaire, a definition of bullying was read out aloud for students. After general demographic questions (gender, school grade), the questionnaire started with two global questions where students could identify themselves as victims or bullies: “How often have you been bullied at school in the past couple of months?” (victims), and a similar question for harming others (perpetrators). It also asked about nine types of bullying, which included (1) calling mean names or teasing; (2) exclusion; (3) hitting, kicking, and pushing; (4) spreading rumors; (5) taking money or damaging belongings; (6) threatening; (7) making racial comments; (8) making sexual remarks or gestures; and (9) cyberbullying. It also asked if the children or adolescents had suffered any other form of bullying that was not mentioned (Solberg and Olweus, 2003). Another group of nine questions asked about characteristics of the bullying situations (e.g., the bullies’ grade level, number of bullies, the length of time the student has been suffering from bullying, and the location where it took place). The questionnaire also included nine questions about actions that have been taken in school by teachers or parents to stop bullying. Finally, two questions asked about what students think of teachers’ and parents’ opinions about bullying (Solberg and Olweus, 2003; Vessey et al., 2014).

The answers were coded into a five-point scale from 0 to 4 (0 = it hasn’t happened to me in the last two months, 1 = it happened to me only once or twice in the last two months, 2 = it happened to me 2 to 3 times a month, 3 = it happened to me once a week, 4 = it happened to me several times a week) (Solberg and Olweus, 2003). The psychometric properties of the OBVQ-R have been studied elsewhere, as mentioned above, and internal consistencies range from 0.8 to 0.9 (Breivik and Olweus, 2015).