Preschool peer bullying scale-teacher form: A development and validation study

TThe Pre-School Peer Bullying Scale Teacher Form was developed in this research. For the exporatory factor analysis (EFA) procedure, data were collected from 279 pre-school teachers working in Gaziantep. A 28-item draft form was conducted as the data collection tool. The common variance values of the 28 items were firstly examined in the EFAprocedure, and the items with the highest factor loadings were identified among the 28 items. This resulted in 14 items. The EFA performed with the varimax rotation method suggested two factors. While the first factor included 9 items with loading values higher than .52, the second factor involved 5 items with loading values higher than .64. Considering item contents, the first dimension is named physical/relational bullying and the second dimension is named verbal bullying. To confirm the Pre-School Peer Bullying Scale Teacher Form with 14 items, a second data collection process for confirmatory factor analyis was performed. Data were collected from 247 preschool teachers working in p İstanbul. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed on this data. The two-factor structure was confirmed by the second data which revelaed that the tested model had acceptable fit indeces. Therefore, the Pre-School Peer Bullying Scale Teacher Form was found as a valid and reliable measurement tool. The Pre-School Peer Bullying Scale Teacher Form will be an important contribution to the peer bullying literature as well as the researchers interested in preventing bullying in preschool. In addition, the Pre-School Peer Bullying Scale Teacher Form will be an important measurement tool for school counselors, pre-school teachers and school administrators who want to combat peer bullying. Keywords: Pre-School, Peer Bullying, Validity, Reliability, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis