Various Demographic Area Pretesting Activities

MEMORANDUM February 21, 2012

May 15^th, 2012

To: Shelly Martinez, OMB

From: Kathy Chandler, NCES

Through: Kashka Kubzdela, NCES

Re: Response to May 4^th, 2012, OMB Passback to NCES on the Generic Clearance Letter (OMB# 0607-0725): School Crime Supplement Bullying Questions, part of the National Crime Victimization Survey, submitted to OMB by the Census Bureau

Question from OMB to NCES: Can you provide some type of side by side or annotation for this questionnaire which we received from Census for pretesting?  We would like to understand what’s new and revised and depending on what it is and how extensive, some rationale as well.

Response to OMB:

From the material provided by Census:

Objectives:

         Test the clarity and effectiveness of several potential survey items related to bullying (see the questions being cognitively tested in the OMB1218ombschoolcrimebullyingenc1.pdf document submitted with the original clearance package), and assess the extent to which differences between these items would affect respondents’ answers.

         Provide recommendations for how items could best be worded to produce consistent, reliable, and meaningful response data.

Response from NCES

The first two items being tested are items currently being used in the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) (items 1 and 2 on page 1 of OMB1218ombschoolcrimebullyingenc1.pdf).

Item 3 (page 1) is taken from The Bully Survey (found on page 69 of the CDC report, Measuring Bullying Victimization, Perpetration, and Bystander Experiences: A Compendium of Assessment Tools (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/BullyCompendium-a.pdf)). It uses an approach similar to that used by YRBS and is included for comparison purposes.

All of the remaining items are from the School Crime Supplement (SCS) (all items on pages 2 and 3).

The items being cognitively tested represent two different approaches to asking about bullying and cyberbullying. The YRBS provides a definition and then asks a “yes/no” item about whether the student has experienced bullying or cyberbullying. The SCS asks whether the student has experienced specific kinds of bullying or cyberbullying behaviors. The point of this cognitive lab work is to determine whether one approach is better than the other in terms of measuring bullying and cyberbullying per the formal definitions found on the www.stopbullying.gov website. Those definitions are the following:

Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.

Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place using electronic technology. Examples of cyberbullying include mean text messages or emails, rumors sent by email or posted on social networking sites, and embarrassing pictures, videos, websites, or fake profiles.