ABSTRACT
Bullying and cyberbullying are clearly vital international social justice issues of our time. These behaviors have disturbing consequences for the well-being of targets, perpetrators, and communities (Parada, Craven, & Marsh, 2008; Swearer, Espelage, Vaillancourt, & Hymel, 2010). The importance of this topic makes construct validation research vital. A hallmark of academic rigor is that theory, research, and practice are inextricably intertwined; a weakness in any one of these areas undermines the others. In cyberbullying research, in particular, and traditional bullying research, in general, this hallmark is yet to be fully realized. While traditional bullying research has been grounded by seminal advances in theory, research, and practice that have established the key structural components of traditional bullying constructs, these advances have not been fully applied to cyberbullying research in a way that integrates, stimulates new directions in, and extends scholarship. It also appears that cyberbullying research has addressed substantive problems and between-construct issues before within-construct issues such as definition, structure, and measurement have been resolved. The resolution of within-construct concerns should include research that would propose, test, and refine theoretical structural models based on the available empirical evidence. Until these problems have been dealt with, it is likely that integration of advances in the field will be problematic; the generalizability of cyberbullying findings will remain severely limited; findings will be ambiguous; the complexity of the nature and structure of cyberbullying constructs will remain unresolved; and importantly, the relation of cyberbullying constructs to traditional bullying and victimization constructs will remain unclear. New theory-driven approaches are also essential whereby theory is proposed; psychometrically sound measurement instruments devised to test theoretical propositions; and the theory supported, revised, or 69refuted based on empirical evidence. Such a constructive approach would result in cyberbullying research being theory driven and soundly based on the critical interplay between theory, research, and practice.
