Transformations  in
Business & Economics

METHODOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF BULLYING AND HARASSMENT IN SPORT: STATISTICAL VERIFICATION
Jolita Vveinhardt, Vilija Bite Fominiene, Laima Jeseviciute-Ufartiene

ABSTRACT. Alongside with the review of the research on interpersonal relationships in organized sport, the article also reveals various problems pertaining to destructive interrelationships between athletes and between coaches and athletes, manifesting themselves as bullying and harassment and posing a threat to ensuring safe sport. Simultaneously, the relation of this phenomenon with other manifestations of destructive behaviour - aggression and antisocial behaviour - is also discussed. In order to prevent the spread and development of destructive phenomena in sport, continuous research must be carried out, the results of which would enable to make timely preventive and interventional decisions. However, a conceptual instrument which would encompass all the above-mentioned behaviour manifestations that enable to capture or predict the formation of sport bullying and harassment is missing. Therefore, seeking to fill the gap in this area, the research aim is to present a new questionnaire for diagnosing bullying and harassment in sport, detailing the logic of drawing up the questionnaire and providing psychometric characteristics.
The article exhaustively presents the logic of drawing up the new instrument and the course of adaptation of original scales and integration of new scales into the questionnaire, encompassing ten stages. As a final result of this study, the psychometric characteristics of the new questionnaire Bullying and Harassment in Sport Questionnaire (BHISQ) are presented. It is expected that such instrument will enable to diagnose bullying and harassment in sport settings as reliably as possible and will contribute to the development and implementation of anti-bullying policies.
Trends in further research: it is planned to conduct surveys employing the presented questionnaire in a larger sample and in the cases of several countries.

KEYWORDS:  scales, questionnaire, diagnostics, expert evaluation, anti-social behaviour, bullying, harassment, destructive interpersonal relationships.

JEL classification:  L83, M10, C40.