Transcultural Translation and Reliability of Cyberbullying and Online Aggression Survey Instrument: Thai Version

Abstract

This study aims to translate a screening instrument for cyberbullying, Cyberbullying and Online Aggression Survey (COAS), to Thai, then test for its internal consistency and report the prevalence of cyberbullying. The COAS is an original instrument self-report Likert-scale questionnaire consisting of 18 questions with two subscales (9 items each), including Cyberbullying Victimization (CV) and Cyberbullying Offending (CO) scales. The COAS was transculturally translated into a Thai version by forward-backward processes then the content validity was evaluated by six child and adolescent psychiatrists. The internal consistency was explored with secondary school students aged 12 to 18 years in Khon Kaen, a province in Northeastern Thailand. The results showed that the content validity index of the COAS-Thai was 1, and the index of item-objective congruence was 0.67–1.00. From 234 participants, Cronbach’s Alpha was 0.82, with 0.77 for CV and 0.69 for CO subscales. As high as 44.87% reported being involved in a cyberbullying incidence. In conclusion, the COAS-Thai had acceptable reliability, and almost half of the participants reported being involved in cyberbullying. However, future studies are required to improve the quality of the cyberbullying survey in the context of Thai society.