School bullying and its prevention and reduction are key concerns for students, parents, educators, counselors, and legislators and have become essential areas for research, practice, and policy. Being able to learn in a safe environment without the threat of bullying has become one of the foremost priorities in schools today. The purpose of this study was to re-examine the psychometric properties of the self-report instrument, Student Experience Survey: What School Is Like for Me (SES). Even though Edstrom, Bruschi, and Mackenzie (2004) found support for eight scales by conducting an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on the student survey items, the eighth scale, Perceived Adult Responsiveness scale alpha (.59) did not demonstrate adequate internal consistency. This finding coupled with a visual inspection of survey questions, appearing vague and confusing, warrants the re-examination of the SES by an external evaluator.

Nearly 2, 200 surveys were completed by a highly diverse sample of children in grades 3–6 in an urban district in Washington State. Internal consistency reliability was estimated using the Cronbach alpha and Spearman-Brown's split-half coefficient. Cronbach alpha were .82 for the Perceived Assertiveness (PA) scale, .66 for the Perceived Adult Responsiveness (PAR) scale, .84 for Bystander Responsibility (BR) scale, and .86 for Acceptance of Bullying/Aggression (AB) scale. Inadequate internal consistency for the PAR scale led to additional psychometric analyses. Not unexpectedly, the coefficient alpha for the total scale was low (α = .58).

To assess SES's factorial validity principal factor analyses using oblique rotations (oblimin method) were performed. Unlike the four-factor solution reported by the authors (Frey et al., 2004), only three factors emerged as pertinent SES dimensions. PA and AB scales produced factor structures similar to the original instrument. However, items from the BR and PAR scales clustered together into a single dimension. The three factors were renamed to represent the item content more accurately: (1) Perceived Competent Reaction (PCR); endorsing one's sense of prosocial behavior and self-control by acting in a composed, calm manner when faced with a stressful situation, (2): Perceived Provoked Retaliation (PPR); imposing one's own learned coping strategies to handle a stressful situation and (3) Perceived Observer Responsibility (POR); imposing limits, accountability, and assistance from self and others to deliberately become involved in a stressful situation. Further research might benefit from using the three-factor SES, rather than the four-scale measure.