Procedure and Materials. Phase 1 took place in the participants’ classrooms where they completed the measures simultaneously on individual 1000 netbook computers. The children sat at separate desks with partitioning boards on both sides to prevent them from seeing each other’s screens. The instructions indicated that we were interested in children’s opinions and that there was no right or wrong answers. We told participants that their answers would be processed anonymously and handled confidentially. During the data collection, children were not allowed to talk to each other but could ask the researchers questions at any time. During the introduction, definitions of bullying and victimization (cf., Xxxxxx, 1996) were provided and discussed. As part of the data collection, children com- pleted peer nominations for bullying (‘Who in your classroom bullies others?’) and Table 1. Mean Standardized (per Classroom) Bullying and Victimization Scores of Bullies, Victims, Bully/Victims and Noninvolved per Gender Bullying Victimization Boys Girls Boys Girls Bullies 1.22 1.06 2.19 2.10 Victims 2.17 2.15 1.18 1.04 Bully/Victims .78 .83 .52 .78 Noninvolved 2.45 2.47 2.42 2.43 victimization (‘Who in your classroom is bullied by others?’). They were asked these questions once for girl classmates and once for boy classmates. Children could answer by nominating from one up to all classmates whose names were presented on their screen in a random order.
Procedure and Materials. Phase 2 took place in a separate room at the participants’ schools with all eight children completing the measures simultaneously on individ- ual 1000 netbook computers, separated by partition screens. The instructions stated that children were asked to answer questions about the other seven children in their group. We emphasized that the questions concerned personal opinions and that the answers would be processed anonymously and handled confidentially. Cognitive empathy (four items) and affective empathy (four items) were meas- ured toward each of the seven other children in the group. Items were selected from Table 2. Cognitive and Affective Empathy Means and SDs (in Parentheses) of Bullies, Victims, Bully/Victims and Noninvolved for Each Other Total Bullies Victims Bully/Victims Noninvolved Cognitive Empathy Bullies 56.1 (18.8) — 54.6 (21.0) 52.3 (21.7) 61.3 (21.0) Victims 49.1 (17.6) 47.1 (19.0) — 47.7 (19.4) 52.5 (19.7) Bully/Victims 55.6 (16.0) 52.4 (18.9) 54.0 (18.1) / 60.3 (17.7) Noninvolved 51.2 (16.6) 51.8 (17.1) 51.2 (20.1) 50.5 (17.4) — Affective Empathy Bullies 26.1 (20.3) — 24.3 (20.4) 23.6 (22.6) 30.3 (23.9) Victims 24.0 (17.3) 23.0 (17.8) — 22.1 (18.2) 27.0 (19.3) Bully/Victims 26.2 (19.6) 24.6 (20.1) 23.5 (20.6) — 30.4 (21.8) Noninvolved 24.0 (15.1) 24.2 (15.6) 23.7 (15.9) 24.0 (15.9) — the adapted version of the Basic Empathy Scale (BES; Xxxxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxxx, 2006)—which was used in Phase 1 as part of the larger project (van Noorden et al., 2016)—and transformed to make the questionnaire target specific. For example, the cognitive item ‘I can understand my friend’s happiness when she/he does well at something’ was transformed to ‘I can understand Child X’s happiness when she/he does well at something’; the affective item ‘I become sad when I see other people crying’ was transformed to ‘I become sad when I see Child X crying’. Participants indicated to what extent they agreed with each statement by clicking on a visual analogue scale—coded as a 100-point scale— with the anchors ‘strongly disagree’ [1] and ‘strongly agree’ [100]. The reliabilities (Xxxxxxxx’s a) of the scales for the four target roles ranged from .67 to .69 for cognitive empathy and from .76 to .83 for affective empathy. Results Child Characteristics in Bullying and Empathy We first tested whether bullies, victims, bully/victims and noninvolved children dif- fered in cognitive and affective empathy for classmates in general. To do so, we averaged children’s cognitive and ...
Procedure and Materials. Participants completed the following steps. Upon opening the survey link, an online informed consent (Appendix A) explained the purpose and the participation procedures of the study. For participants who chose not to participate, they were redirected to the end of the online survey where a debriefing statement (Appendix B) was presented. For participants who agreed to participate, they were presented with a set of questions about their demographic and background information (see Appendix C). The demographic questions included items about participants’ age, sex, race, education, family financial status. Following the demographic and background questions, participants were instructed to read each of the four jokes, which were presented in a random order (see Appendix C).
