Developmental stage of performance in reasoning about school bullying.

The Student-Bully Problem, an assessment of cognitive developmental stage adapted from Commons et al.'s (2006) Counselor-Patient Problem, was administered to 176 adolescent participants and 77 adult participants at an urban high school, urban middle school, and mid-size college (N = 253). This study investigated the following inquiries: At what cognitive developmental stages (as defined by the Model of Hierarchical Complexity) do urban high school and middle school students reason about bullying? How effective is the Student-Bully Problem at measuring cognitive developmental stage? Item and person Rasch scores were used to identify each participant's cognitive developmental stage of performance on the Student-Bully Problem, and to identify the item difficulty of the Student-Bully Problem's items. The Rasch analysis was also used to assess the validity and reliability of the Student-Bully Problem. Participants performed at the preoperational through metasystematic stages on the Student-Bully Problem. The Student-Bully Problem proved to be a useful tool in assessing cognitive developmental stage of performance in reasoning about bullying in school age youth. The Student-Bully Problem was modified with the goal of improving the instrument's effectiveness. Consequently, the Student Bully Problem (2.0) was created and administered to 116 urban high school students. Initial results (see discussion) indicate the modified version could be more effective [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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