Effectiveness of Programmes to Reduce School Bullying

Maria M. Ttofi, David P. Farrington and Anna C. Baldry

Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention

English

English

Scholarly research document, indepth reviews of programmes from many different countries, useful conclusions and recommendations

Report

Policy Makers, Researchers, School Directors.

21 - 100 pages

This report presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of anti-bullying programmes based on very specific criteria. Extensive searches were carried out to find reports on anti-bullying programmes in schools. A total of 593 reports were found, but only 59 of these (describing evaluations of 30 different programmes) were selected for inclusion in this review.

Studies were included in this review if they evaluated the effects of an anti-bullying programme by comparing an experimental group who received the intervention with a control group who did not. Four types of research design were included: a) randomized experiments, b) experimental- control comparisons with before and after measures of bullying, c) other experimental-control comparisons and d) age-cohort designs, where students of age X after the intervention were compared with students of the same age X in the same school before the intervention. Also, studies were included if bullying was measured using a self-report questionnaire and if the initial sample size (the total number of children in experimental and control conditions) was at least 200.

This report is for those interested in a really in depth professional review of the effectiveness of anti-bullying programmes from across many countries of the world. Much of the content is about the technicalities of how the project has been undertaken but for those more interested in the various programmes reviewed we recommend the descriptions in section 4, pages 30-50, these we feel are useful to enable the reader to identify programmes which may be of interest for further investigation.

We also recommend the conclusions section which identifies the most important programme elements associated with a decrease in bullying. These were parent training, improved playground supervision, disciplinary methods, school conferences, information for parents, classroom rules, classroom management, and videos. The conclusions also suggest that programmes inspired by the work of Dan Olweus worked best.

The most important programme elements that were associated with a
decrease in victimization were videos, disciplinary methods, work with peers, parent training, cooperative group work and playground supervision. In addition, the duration of the programme for children and teachers, and the intensity of the programme for teachers, were significantly associated with a decrease in victimization.

For those interested in sources for further research there is a very extensive list of references at the end of the report.

Click on the UK flag and enter the document title in the site search engine: http://www.bra.se/extra/measurepoint/?module_instance=4&name=Effectiveness_of_programmes_to_reduce_school_bullying_webb.pdf&url=/dynamaster/file_archive/081023/04395cbc57201c39fa

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