In recent years, bullying research has transitioned from investigating the
characteristics of the bully?victim dyad to examining bullying as a grouplevel
process, in which the majority of children play some kind of role. This
study used a shortened adaptation of the Participant Role Scale (PRS) to
identify these roles in a representative sample of 2,050 Spanish children aged
8 to 13 years. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed three different roles,
indicating that the adapted scale remains a reliable way to distinguish the
Bully, Defender, and Outsider roles. In addition, measurement invariance
of the adapted scale was examined to analyze possible gender differences
among the roles. Peer status was assessed separately by gender through two sociometric procedures: the nominations-based method and the ratingsbased
method. Across genders, children in the Bully role were more often
rated as rejected, whereas Defenders were more popular. Results suggest
that although the PRS can reveal several different peer roles in the bullying
process, a more clear distinction between bullying roles (i.e., Bully, Assistant,and Reinforcer) could better inform strategies for bullying interventions