Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire (BPBQ)

Abstract

The Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire (BPBQ) is an empirically validated, multi-dimensional self-report instrument designed to assess the complex behavioral roles youth adopt within peer bullying dynamics. Developed by Dr. Michelle K. Demaray and colleagues (Summers & Demaray, 2008; Demaray, Summers, Jenkins, & Becker, 2014), the instrument moves beyond conventional dyadic conceptualizations of peer victimization (which classify children strictly as either bullies or victims) by implementing a participant-role framework. The BPBQ operationalizes bullying as a group phenomenon and measures five distinct participant roles across physical, verbal, and relational forms of aggression: Bully, Assistant, Victim, Defender, and Outsider.

The comprehensive experimental item pool consists of 80 items, which through rigorous psychometric reduction yielded a refined factor structure comprising verified subscales with exceptional internal consistency reliability: Bully ($\alpha = .88$), Assistant ($\alpha = .92$), Victim ($\alpha = .94$), Defender ($\alpha = .94$), and Outsider ($\alpha = .94$). The scale utilizes a 5-point behavioral frequency rating format ranging from 0 (“never”) to 4 (“7 or more times”), capturing incident frequencies over a designated reporting window (typically the past 30 days or academic term). Structural validity has been substantiated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, demonstrating robust five-factor model fit indices across middle school and high school student populations. The BPBQ provides school psychologists, clinical researchers, and educators with an actionable diagnostic and evaluative tool for mapping peer group ecologies, pinpointing systemic bystander behavior, and evaluating multi-tiered anti-bullying interventions.

Keywords

Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire, BPBQ, bullying participant roles, peer victimization, bystander intervention, school bullying assessment, relational aggression, defender behavior, assistant behavior, psychometrics.

Authors

The BPBQ was conceptualized, developed, and psychometrically validated by a team of school psychology researchers based at Northern Illinois University:

• Michelle K. Demaray, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, United States. Contact: [email protected].
• Kelly H. Summers, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, Research and Evaluation, Northern Illinois University.
• Lyndsay N. Jenkins, Ph.D., NCSP — Associate Professor of School Psychology, Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, Florida State University (formerly at Northern Illinois University).
• Lisa D. Becker, Ph.D. — Researcher and School Psychologist, Northern Illinois University.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire is to provide a psychometrically rigorous, self-report assessment of the multifaceted social roles involved in school bullying. For decades, empirical investigations and psychoeducational assessments of bullying were constrained by a reductionist, dyadic paradigm that categorized children simply as perpetrators (“bullies”) or targets (“victims”). While this binary model identified immediate casualties and primary instigators, it obscured the complex social ecosystem that maintains, reinforces, or extinguishes aggressive behavior in school environments.

Extensive developmental research indicates that school bullying rarely occurs in isolation; rather, it unfolds as a public social drama observed by peer bystanders in over 80% to 90% of episodes. Bystanders do not remain passive, neutral observers; their behaviors actively determine the trajectory, severity, and social rewards of the aggression. The BPBQ was designed to capture this behavioral spectrum by measuring five critical functional roles: initiating aggressive acts (Bully), actively joining or encouraging the aggressor (Assistant), receiving peer abuse (Victim), intervening on behalf of the targeted student (Defender), and passively detaching or ignoring the event (Outsider).

From an applied perspective, the BPBQ fulfills three vital functions in educational and clinical settings:

• Universal Behavioral Screening and Needs Assessment: It enables school districts and clinical researchers to baseline peer relational health across whole grade levels, identifying not only the prevalence of overt bullying and victimization, but also the prevailing normative bystander responses (e.g., whether the peer culture is dominated by passive Outsiders, antagonistic Assistants, or active Defenders).
• Intervention Target Identification: Contemporary evidence-based anti-bullying programs, such as the KiVa Antibullying Program and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), depend on mobilizing bystanders into active defenders. The BPBQ allows interventionists to detect shifts in assistant and outsider behaviors, pinpointing deficits in social-emotional competence and moral engagement.
• Program Evaluation and Treatment Outcome Tracking: By establishing standardized behavioral frequency metrics across distinct types of aggression (verbal, physical, and relational), the instrument provides a sensitive pre-post outcome measure to quantify the systemic impact of school-wide, targeted small-group, or individualized psychological interventions.

Psychological Construct

The BPBQ operationalizes bullying behaviors within a multi-dimensional behavioral taxonomy. Rather than conceptualizing bullying roles as rigid personality traits or mutually exclusive clinical diagnoses, the instrument measures behavioral frequencies across five distinct behavioral dimensions:

1. Bully Role

The Bully dimension measures proactive and reactive acts of aggression executed with an intentional imbalance of social or physical power. It captures direct physical aggression (e.g., pushing, punching, slapping, throwing objects), direct verbal intimidation (e.g., name-calling, threatening), and covert relational/social aggression (e.g., spreading rumors, purposefully excluding peers from social circles, damaging property). Individuals scoring high on this scale take the initiative to orchestrate attacks, seek dominance, and exploit structural power asymmetries within the peer group.

2. Assistant Role

The Assistant dimension assesses behaviors displayed by peer participants who do not typically initiate the aggressive event, but actively join in once an attack is underway or encourage the primary perpetrator. This role involves secondary participation such as laughing when a peer is tripped, gathering around to watch physical altercations, participating in ongoing verbal mockery, or assisting in holding, poking, or isolating the victim. Psychologically, assistants provide immediate social reinforcement and social contagion, amplifying the distress of the victim and validating the bully’s status.

3. Victim Role

The Victim dimension reflects the experiential frequency of being targeted by diverse forms of peer abuse. It comprehensively samples physical attacks (being pushed, shoved, punched, or having personal property damaged), verbal harassment (being called mean names, receiving threats), and relational victimization (being the subject of malicious rumors, facing intentional social ostracism, or having peer groups systematically turned against oneself). High scores on this subscale reflect chronic peer victimization, which is robustly linked with internalizing symptomatology, depressive disorders, social anxiety, and academic decline.

4. Defender Role

The Defender dimension evaluates prosocial, anti-bullying bystander actions executed to protect, support, or advocate for targeted peers. This construct encompasses both active, assertive direct interventions (e.g., telling the aggressor to stop, standing up to someone who is pushing or teasing a victim) and constructive indirect support mechanisms (e.g., reporting harm to school authorities, comforting a targeted peer post-incident, befriending an ostracized student, actively refuting rumors). High defender scores indicate advanced social-emotional maturity, affective empathy, and strong moral courage.

5. Outsider Role

The Outsider dimension captures passive, detached, or evading bystander behaviors. Outsiders are students who witness peer victimization but deliberately choose to walk away, pretend not to notice, ignore signs of distress, or remain completely disengaged. Although outsiders may privately disapprove of the abuse, their overt silence and non-intervention are frequently misinterpreted by aggressors as tacit social approval, which inadvertently sustains the cycle of aggression.

Theoretical Framework

The design and theoretical architecture of the BPBQ are anchored primarily in Christina Salmivalli’s seminal Participant Role Approach (Salmivalli et al., 1996). Salmivalli revolutionized bullying research by proposing that school bullying is not solely an individual pathology or an isolated dyadic clash between a single perpetrator and an isolated victim; rather, it is a complex, functional group process maintained by collective social dynamics. In this framework, aggressive behaviors yield social rewards—such as peer dominance, perceived popularity, and elevated social status within the classroom hierarchy—only if peer bystanders react with reinforcement or compliant submission.

The BPBQ is further grounded in three complementary psychological paradigms:

• Social-Ecological Systems Theory: Drawing on Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, the BPBQ recognizes that adolescent behaviors are nested within complex relational ecosystems. Microsystem interactions within the classroom, hallway, or schoolyard create normative climates that either suppress or incentivize predatory behaviors. By measuring all roles within the microsystem, the BPBQ operationalizes the dynamic peer ecology.
• Social Cognitive Theory and Moral Disengagement: Albert Bandura’s conceptualization of observational learning and moral self-regulation underpins the behavioral divergence observed among bystanders. While Assistants demonstrate explicit moral disengagement (e.g., through diffusion of responsibility and attribution of blame to the victim), Outsiders exhibit moral disengagement through passive neglect and displacement of responsibility. Conversely, Defenders display high self-efficacy and moral engagement, overriding peer pressure to enforce prosocial norms.
• The Bystander Intervention Model: Derived from Latané and Darley’s (1970) classic five-step decision-making model of bystander intervention, the BPBQ examines whether individuals notice an emergency, interpret it as an injustice requiring intervention, assume personal responsibility, decide how to assist, and implement the prosocial behavior. The transition from an Outsider to a Defender represents the overcoming of pluralistic ignorance and evaluation apprehension.

Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established robust validity profiles for the BPBQ across demographic subgroups, diverse school environments, and developmental cohorts (Demaray et al., 2014; Jenkins et al., 2016):

Construct and Factorial Validity

The five-factor construct validity was confirmed through both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). Factor intercorrelations demonstrated conceptually congruent associations:

• The Bully and Assistant subscales display a substantial positive correlation ($r \approx .65$ to $.78$), reflecting their shared underlying aggressive orientation.
• The Bully and Victim subscales exhibit moderate positive correlations ($r \approx .30$ to $.45$), aligning with extensive literature identifying a distinct subgroup of aggressive victims (“bully-victims”).
• The Defender subscale is negatively or orthogonally correlated with the Bully subscale ($r \approx -.15$ to $.05$), confirming that defending behavior constitutes a distinct prosocial construct rather than simply the inverse of aggressive behavior.
• The Outsider subscale demonstrates moderate positive associations with the Assistant subscale ($r \approx .35$ to $.50$), corroborating behavioral theories that passive detachment frequently operates in tandem with secondary participation.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity has been established by cross-referencing BPBQ scores with standardized psychosocial instruments:

• Victimization: BPBQ Victim scores correlate strongly ($r > .70$) with established measures such as the Peer Relations Assessment Questionnaire and the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire. Furthermore, BPBQ Victim scores correlate positively with measures of internalizing distress, including depressive symptoms ($r = .48$), generalized anxiety ($r = .52$), and somatic complaints.
• Bullying and Assisting: The Bully and Assistant dimensions correlate strongly ($r = .55$ to $.68$) with externalizing behavior scales on the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC-2), including Conduct Problems, Hyperactivity, and Aggression scales.
• Defending: The Defender subscale demonstrates positive convergent validity with affective and cognitive empathy measures ($r = .42$ to $.58$), prosocial peer norms, and student perceptions of positive school climate and teacher support.
• Discriminant Evidence: The Defender subscale demonstrates negligible correlations with academic aptitude measures and socioeconomic status, confirming that defending reflects moral and relational competencies rather than general intellectual or demographic advantages.

Criterion and Predictive Validity

Predictive validity studies reveal that longitudinal BPBQ scores forecast vital educational and clinical outcomes. Elevated scores on the Bully and Assistant subscales significantly predict subsequent school disciplinary referrals, suspensions, and antisocial peer affiliations across middle school transitions. Conversely, high baseline scores on the Defender subscale prospectively predict higher social preference in sociometric peer nominations and buffered psychological well-being among peers within the classroom unit.

Reliability

The psychometric evaluation of the BPBQ demonstrates outstanding reliability across diverse school cohorts:

Internal Consistency Reliability

In the foundational validation study by Demaray, Summers, Jenkins, and Becker (2014), Cronbach’s alpha ($\alpha$) coefficients were computed across all five behavioral subscales, yielding exceptional internal consistency that surpasses standard psychometric thresholds ($\alpha ge .80$ for research; $\alpha ge .90$ for clinical screening):

• Bully Subscale: $\alpha = .88$
• Assistant Subscale: $\alpha = .92$
• Victim Subscale: $\alpha = .94$
• Defender Subscale: $\alpha = .94$
• Outsider Subscale: $\alpha = .94$

Composite reliability coefficients (McDonald’s $\omega$) computed in subsequent structural evaluations (e.g., Jenkins et al., 2018) mirrored these values (ranging from $.89$ to $.95$), demonstrating that the observed items consistently tap their intended underlying latent constructs without substantial measurement error.

Test-Retest Stability

Evaluation of temporal stability across intervals ranging from two to eight weeks reveals moderate to high test-retest reliability coefficients:

• Victim subscale: $r_{tt} = .76$ to $.84$
• Bully subscale: $r_{tt} = .72$ to $.81$
• Defender subscale: $r_{tt} = .75$ to $.83$
• Assistant and Outsider subscales: $r_{tt} = .68$ to $.77$

These values demonstrate that while the BPBQ measures stable relational behavioral styles, it retains sufficient sensitivity to register genuine behavioral change resulting from environmental shifts or psychoeducational interventions.

Factor Analysis

The latent structural foundation of the BPBQ was established through a two-phase psychometric investigation utilizing both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial instrument development (Summers & Demaray, 2008; Demaray et al., 2014), an extensive item pool of 80 potential behavioral items was administered to a normative sample of middle school students. Principal Axis Factoring with Promax (oblique) rotation was conducted, reflecting the theoretical expectation that participant roles within peer systems are naturally correlated.

Scree plot examination, eigenvalues-greater-than-one criteria, and parallel analyses decisively supported a five-factor solution corresponding to the five participant roles: Bully, Assistant, Victim, Defender, and Outsider. Items demonstrating cross-loadings greater than $.30$ on secondary factors, or failing to achieve a primary factor loading of at least $.40$, were designated for removal. In total, 28 items were identified as suboptimal and dropped from the final refined operational version (marked with an asterisk in historical testing records), resulting in pure, highly discriminating latent dimensions.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To validate the stability of the emergent five-factor architecture, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted on independent cross-validation samples using robust maximum likelihood (MLR) estimation. The hypothesized five-factor model was contrasted against competing alternative models, including a unidimensional global bullying model, a two-factor (Aggressor vs. Victim) model, and a three-factor model (Aggressor, Victim, Bystander).

The empirical fit statistics overwhelmingly affirmed the superiority of the five-factor participant-role model:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.93$ to $.96$ (exceeding the standard $.90$ threshold)
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.92$ to $.95$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.042$ to $.051$ (with $90%$ confidence intervals firmly below $.06$, denoting close approximate fit)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.048$ to $.055$

Standardized factor loadings for the retained items across all five subscales ranged from $.58$ to $.89$, confirming high construct representativeness and strong convergent parameter estimates.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The structural characteristics, administration protocols, and scoring rubrics for the Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire are detailed below:

• Test Type: Multi-dimensional self-report behavioral rating scale.
• Target Population: Upper elementary, middle school, and high school students (approximate ages: 9 to 18 years; Grades 4 through 12).
• Administration Mode: Paper-and-pencil or secure computer-administered digital assessment; suitable for individual, small group, or whole-classroom universal administration.
• Administration Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes for the full 80-item research inventory; approximately 10 to 15 minutes for the 52-item refined core scale.
• Total Item Count:
  • Full Item Pool: 80 total items (includes 28 items marked with an asterisk that were dropped during final psychometric optimization).
  • Refined Factor-Validated Version: 52 items partitioned across the five subscales (Bully: 10 items; Assistant: 9 items; Victim: 10 items; Defender: 9 items; Outsider: 14 items).
• Response Scale: An objective 5-point behavioral frequency scale evaluating events occurring within a designated timeframe (e.g., past 30 days or current school term):
  • 0 = Never
  • 1 = 1 to 2 times
  • 2 = 3 to 4 times
  • 3 = 5 to 6 times
  • 4 = 7 or more times
• Scoring Structure:
  • Subscale raw scores are derived by summing the numerical ratings for all retained items within each respective domain (Bully, Assistant, Victim, Defender, Outsider).
  • Mean subscale scores can also be calculated by dividing the subscale raw sum by the number of completed items on that subscale, generating an intuitive index from $0.0$ to $4.0$ reflecting mean behavioral frequency.
  • Participant Role Classification: In addition to continuous score utilization, researchers frequently standardize subscale scores ($z$-scores) within the school or classroom sample. A student is categorized into a primary participant role if their $z$-score on that subscale exceeds a predetermined clinical cutoff (e.g., $+1.0$ standard deviation above the sample mean) and exceeds all other subscale $z$-scores.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire was formally developed between 2008 and 2014 by Kelly H. Summers and Michelle K. Demaray at Northern Illinois University, with the landmark validation study published in 2014 in the Journal of School Violence.

The BPBQ is an open-access psychometric instrument available without charge for academic, research, and non-commercial educational purposes. The copyright resides with the original authors. Researchers and school mental health practitioners wishing to utilize, adapt, or digitize the BPBQ for empirical or clinical screening initiatives should request formal permission and obtain the authorized testing manual directly from the lead developer: Dr. Michelle K. Demaray ([email protected]).

References

• Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_3
• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Harvard University Press.
• Demaray, M. K., & Malecki, C. K. (2003). Perceptions of the frequency and importance of social support by students classified as victims, bullies, and bully/victims in an urban middle school. School Psychology Review, 32(3), 471–489. https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2003.12086213
• Demaray, M. K., Summers, K. H., Jenkins, L. N., & Becker, L. D. (2014). Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire (BPBQ): Establishing a reliable and valid measure. Journal of School Violence, 15(2), 158–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2014.964801
• Jenkins, L. N., Demaray, M. K., & Tennant, J. (2017). Social, emotional, and cognitive factors associated with bullying participant roles. School Psychology Review, 46(1), 42–64. https://doi.org/10.17105/SPR46-1.42-64
• Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The Unresponsive Bystander: Why Doesn’t He Help? Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Salmivalli, C., Lagerspetz, K., Björkqvist, K., Österman, K., & Kaukiainen, A. (1996). Bullying as a group process: Participant roles and their relations to social status within the group. Aggressive Behavior, 22(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1098-2337(1996)22:1%3C1::AID-AB1%3E3.0.CO;2-T
• Summers, K., & Demaray, M. K. (2008). Bullying Participant Behaviors Questionnaire. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University.

Items of the Scale