The development and initial validation of an instrument measuring levels of violence suffered and practiced by students in higher education. Issue 2 (5th February 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Guilherme, Alexandre A; de Lara Machado, Wagner; Monteiro Sanchez, Guilherme; de Oliveira Rosa, Leticia
• Is Part Of: Policy futures in education. Volume 21:Issue 2(2023)
• Page Start: 168
• Page End: 189
• Publication Date: 2023-02-05
• Subjects: higher education -- violence -- prejudice -- bullying; Education -- Periodicals; Education and state -- Periodicals; 379.05
• DOI: 10.1177/14782103221097208
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1478-2103

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the development and initial validation of an instrument, namely IV-SOPRA (Index of Violence Suffered and Practiced), measuring levels of violence suffered and practiced by students in Higher Education institutions; thus, seeking to advance research into the issue of violence connected to Higher Education. Participants are undergraduate students ( n = 1188), who responded to an online questionnaire from a university in the south of Brazil. This was a convenience sample. The population was from all undergraduate courses offered at the partner university (i.e. Arts and Humanities; Social Sciences; Sciences; Medicine). Data analysis was conducted using R environment (R Core Team, 2020), and lavaan package (Rosseel, 2011). Confirmatory factor analysis was carried to investigate model fit to the data according to theorised structure of the IV-SOPRA subscales. Each subscale demonstrates good to excellent fit to the data, according to fit measures and reliability indices. The instrument provides Higher Education institutions with a tool for evaluating and diagnosing levels of prejudice and bullying on campus, so that effective measures can be put in place to deal with problems at hand.