A structural equation modeling analysis of marital bullying scale

• Date: 01 August 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2045
• Published date: 01 August 2020

ACADEMIC PAPER

A structural equation modeling analysis of marital bullying

scale

Boshra A. Arnout

1,2

| Fatma Y. Al-Qadimi

1

1

Department of Psychology, King Khalid

University, Abha, Saudi Arabia

2

Department of Psychology, Zagazig

University, Zagazig, Egypt

Correspondence

Boshra A. Arnout, Department of Psychology,

King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia.

Email: prof.arnout74@gmail.com

Bullying has received increasing research interest, whether bullying among students

in schools and universities, or bullying among employees. There is still no accordance

regarding to bullying between the couple. This study aimed to investigate the con-

struct validity and psychometric properties of the marital bullying scale with

advanced statistical procedure, structural equation modeling, and exploratory factor

analysis. The researchers prepared the marriage bullying scale consisting of 25 self-

report items and applied it in a random sample consisting of (760) married individual,

and then, the researchers extracted the psychometric characteristics of this scale.

The finding indicated that the scale has psychometric properties with a high validity

and reliability. In order to ensure the validity of the structure of this scale, the

researchers developed a measurement model for marital bullying. The results of the

exploratory factor analysis pointed to the saturation of the items of the scale (25) on

five factors and accounted for 80.815% of the total variance of the scale. The first

factor was verbal bullying that accounted for 37.658%, the second factor was physi-

cal bullying that accounted for 16. 249 %, the third factor was psychological bullying

that accounted for 12.850 %, the fourth factor was social bullying that accounted for

8.584 %, and the fifth factor was family bullying that accounted for (5.475 %) of the

total variance of marital bullying. And then by using confirmatory factor analysis,

results showed that the structure of the proposed measurement model of marital bul-

lying has good fitness with the data collected from the sample of the study, which

enhances confidence in the ability of the scale to assess marital bullying. The findings

shed new light on the underlying theory behind marital bullying and proved the use-

fulness of structural equation modeling framework in scale development.

1|INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Maslow argued a hierarchy of the general needs of all human

beings, with no exception; among them are the needs for

physical care, security, acceptance, and appreciation or social

consideration. The satisfaction of these needs is essential

for physical and psychological safety of the individual (Arnout,

2017, 2018).

Bullying is a deliberate, unreasonable, and repetitive behavior

directed towards a person or group, which creates risks to the

physical and psychological health and safety of individuals. Repeti-

tive behavior refers to the enduring nature of bullying behavior

and can involve a wider range of behaviors that increase over time.

Unreasonable behavior is a behavior that a natural person, after

considering the circumstances, considers to be unreasonable,

including insulting, intimidating or threatening, being aggressive and

Received: 12 September 2019 Revised: 12 October 2019 Accepted: 27 October 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2045

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reprodu ction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

J Public Affairs. 2019;e2045. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of8

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2045

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Public Affairs published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2045. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1 of 8

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2045