The Development and Validation of the Teacher Violence Scale

Abstract

Problem Statement: One of the initial tasks of the school staff is to create a safe environment, which is free of negative behaviors and role models. However, there has been a concern for the violence in the schools. Most of studies in the literature has focused on aggression, violence, and bullying among students. But, teacher violence against students hasn't been studied sufficiently. In order to investigate this type of violence, a self-report instrument is needed. Purpose of the Study: This study aimed to develop and validate the Teacher Violence Scale (TVS), which measures different forms of violent behaviors displayed by teachers against students. Method: The psychometric properties of the TVS were explored on two separate participant groups. The first one was consisted of 583 (61.0% girls and 39.0% boys) high school students. The second one was composed of 878 (36.7% girls and 63.3% boys) high school students. The initial phases of scale development started with defining the target construct, generating items, and receiving expert reviews. The pilot form was administered to the first participant group and the final form was validated on the second participant group. In addition, some evidence for convergent, discriminant and divergent validity of the TVS were explored. Lastly, the internal consistency for the entire scale and the sub-dimensions of the TVS and the item analysis of the TVS were investigated. Findings and Results: The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) indicated that the TVS is a 36-item scale with 5 factors namely physical violence (11 items), sexual violence (6 items), accusing/humiliating (8 items), taunting (5 items), and oppressing (6 items). This 5-factor structure explained approximately 64 percent of the total variance. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the 5-factor model was validated [χ2(584) = 1330.27, χ2/df = 2.28, RMSEA = .04, SRMR = .06, NNFI = .99, CFI =.99]. The TVS had a strong evidence for convergent, discriminant and divergent validity. In addition, it had good internal consistency for the scores of entire scale and sub-dimensions. Conclusion and Recommendations: This study presented some psychometric evidence for the TVS. The results of EFA and CFA indicated that the TVS is a 36-item scale with 5 sub-dimensions. It is expected that the TVS will fill a gap and will be a useful instrument to measure teachers’ violence towards students. Further studies should provide additional evidence for predictive and cross validity and testretest reliability of the TVS.

Keywords

• Teacher violence, scale development, validity, reliability,high school students

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