Psychometric Analysis of Cyber-Victimization Scale and its Relationship with Psychosocial Variables for girl students

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the psychometric adequacy of the Cyber-Victimization Scale among 326 girl students of Tehran that were selected with the use of virtual snowball sampling. In this correlational study, they completed the Cyber-Victimization Scale (Buelga et al., 2019), Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (Purcell, 2007), and Multidimensional Peer Victimization Scale (Joseph & Stockton, 2018). The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods and internal consistency were used to compute the CYBVICS's factorial validity and reliability, respectively. To examine the construct validity of the CYBVICS, correlations between different dimensions of CYBVICS with Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale and Multidimensional Peer Victimization Scale were computed. The results of principal component analysis (PC) and varimax rotation replicated 2-factor structures: direct cyber-victimization and indirect cyber-victimization in the Iranian sample. The goodness of fit indices of confirmatory factor analysis with the use of AMOS confirmed the 2 extracted factors. Correlational analyses between CYBVICS's factors with Multidimensional Peer Victimization Scale's factors provided initial evidence for the CYBVICS convergent validity & correlational analyses between CYBVICS's factors with Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale's factors provided initial evidence for the CYBVICS discriminant validity. Internal consistency for the CYBVICS's factors was desirable (a=0.93). In sum, these findings provide evidence for the validity and reliability of the CYBVICS as an instrument to assess the Cyber-Victimization among Iranian girl students.