Notre objectif était d’élaborer un questionnaire crayon–papier d’auto-évaluation des violences subies en milieu scolaire par des enfants ou adolescents de la part d’autres jeunes, applicable dès l’âge de 8ans et permettant de différencier plusieurs formes de violence physique et psychologique. Nous avons mis au point le questionnaire de persécution par les camarades en 17 items (PPC-17) et nous l’avons testé sur 1564 enfants et adolescents âgés de 8 à 17ans. Les analyses factorielles ont confirmé une structure en trois facteurs de premier ordre, violence physique, mise à l’écart et insultes–moqueries, saturant tous trois dans un facteur de deuxième ordre. Cohérence interne et fidélité test–retest sont satisfaisantes. Le score global est indépendant du sexe mais non de l’âge : il est plus faible chez les adolescents que chez les enfants. Le PPC-17 permet un premier repérage des jeunes susceptibles d’être harcelés en milieu scolaire et l’étude qualitative des violences subies.

Although research on school bullying has been developing in France for several years, no handy and sound self-report measure of aggression by peers is available by now in our country. The aim of this study was to design an instrument that would help (1) screen for youths at risk to be victimized, and (2) differentiate the types of aggression suffered by the respondent. We wrote a 17-item self-report paper/pencil questionnaire, the PPC-17 (persécution par les camarades=harassment by peers), consisting in very simple sentences understandable by 8-year old children and usable from ages 8 to 17 years.

Two samples were successively recruited in primary and secondary schools of the Paris larger area: the first comprised 331 youths (175 girls) 8 to 17 years old; the second comprised 1233 youths (648 girls). They were administered the PPC-17 questionnaire. As principal component analysis conducted on the first sample had suggested a hierarchical model with three first-order factors (physical aggression, exclusion, and insults/mockery) loading on a second-order one, we tested this model using confirmatory factor analyses conducted on the second sample. Gender and age effects on the scores were investigated via analyses of variance.

These analyses confirmed the good fit of the model, and its configural and parametric (factor loadings) invariance across all four gender and age subgroups (female and male children, female and male adolescents). Internal consistency of all factor scales was satisfactory with Cronbach's α coefficients ranging from .73 to .89 as well as one-week test–retest reliability with correlation coefficients ranging from .77 to .88. There was a main effect of age on all scales except insults/mockery, with adolescents reporting less harassment than children. Effects of gender were more balanced: we did not found significant gender differences on the PPC-17 total score; however, boys scored higher than girls on physical aggression, whilst girls scored higher on exclusion. Interactions indicated that male children scored higher than all other subgroups on physical aggression, and that male adolescents scored lower than all other subgroups on insults/mockery.

The PPC-17 is a short and reliable measure of the amount to which a youth feels he/she suffered from aggression by peers. It is not intended to be a measure of bullying, as classically defined. It may help both identify youths who could be victims of bullying, and differentiate three forms of aggressions by peers.