Correlates of relative bullying roles among youth

This study investigated the contribution of personality, psychological, and familial factors as differential risk factors associated with specific relative bullying roles. Participants included one thousand and ninety-six high school students (59.3% female and 40.7% male) who were aged between 13 and 19 years (M = 16.21 ± 0.96). Exploratory (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were conducted to explore the factor structure of the Relative Bullying Scale-Youth and Relative Victimization Scale-Youth among adolescents, and multinomial logistic regression was performed in order to investigate the risk factors for specific relative bullying roles. Results for EFA and CFA revealed a unidimensional factor structure for both of the scales. While Machiavellianism, psychopathy, narcissism, aggression, and sibling perpetration were associated with being a pure-bully, narcissism, aggression, sibling, and parental victimization were associated with being a pure-victim. Moreover, psychopathy, aggression, sibling perpetration, and sibling and parental victimization were correlated with being a bully-victim. The findings demonstrated that, besides individual personality factors, psychological and family factors also have an impact on specific roles of relative bullying. More importantly, findings suggest that prevention and intervention strategies should be tailored by targeting Dark Triad traits in perpetrators and providing support for familial victimization experiences in victims and bully-victims.