Development of a Screening Scale to Identify Cyber Victims

The Cyber Victimization Scale (CVS) for adolescents was developed to screen and assess the cyber victims. The goal of this study is to analyse the factor and criterion validity and the reliability in a sample of adolescents from Delhi/NCR. For this purpose, extensive literature review, focused group interviews and a survey was conducted on a sample of 100 school students, aged 16-18 years, studying in grade 11th and 12th. Next, pilot data was collected on a sample of 200 adolescents to establish factor structures using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) in SPSS software 21.0. Using the final scale of 10 items falling under three factors (forms of cyber victimization, traditional bullying, & routes to cyber victimization), data was collected on a sample of 1010 adolescents and victims (n= 127) were screened out. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed using Smart PLS software 2.0 on a randomized sample of 249 adolescents (Victims=127; Non-Victims=122). It is concluded that CVS is a valid and reliable self-report tool of identifying cyber victimization in adolescents.