| - Metropolitan Area Child Study (MACS) |
Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme (OBPP) | programme includes everyone involved in the school system (parents, teachers, students, etc) aims to change the school environment as a whole, while specifically targeting individual students teachers are trained by the program to recognize and deal with bullying as well as implement cooperative learning strategies in the classroom students’ playgrounds and lunchroom are supervised aims to identify specific people (the bullies) and help them and their victims adults act as positive role models
studies: Olweus (1993), Black (2007) |
| longitudinal study in Norway sample was made up of students in grades 5-8 data was collected via observations and questionnaires after 2 years, 50% reduction in self-reported bullying incidents and general improvement to the social climate of the classes student self-reports showed higher satisfaction with school life, improved order and discipline, more positive social relationships, and a more positive attitude towards the school indicates high level of effectiveness
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| 13 inner city schools participated in a 4-year OBPP but only 9 schools actually completed it noted that not all schools followed the programme as intended (average fidelity was only 48%) observed bullying decreased 25% may be due to the increased supervision recommended by OBPP strangely, self-reported bullying incidents increased over the course of the programme Black (2007) argues that the mixed results could be due to less rigorous implementation, lack of resources, and cultural differences between Norway and USA Norway prizes social responsibility whereas American culture prizes individual independence.
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Metropolitan Area Child Study (MACS) | consists of: classroom programme: focuses on empathy training and social problem-solving skills training in social skills: small group sessions where students meet and discuss peer relations and social problem-solving strategies family counselling: meeting with multiple families that start with lessons and then proceed to discussions about family-specific problems
Studies: MACS group (2002), Guerra et al. (2006) |
| MACS Research Group (2002)
- longitudinal , quasi-experimental field study on elementary school students in USA
- most participants were ethnic minorities and and many were poor
- schools were divided into 4 conditions:
1 . control group (no intervention)
2 . full programme
3. only classroom programme
4. the classroom programme and social skills training
- found that the programme had negligible effect on levels of aggression in most cases
- positive effect: some students who had participated in the full programme showed less aggression compared to control group
- negative effect: students whose schools didn’t do the full program actually showed a higher level of aggression after the programme compared to the control group |
evaluation of MACS group (2002) | Guerra et al. (2006): noted that students of selected schools were unusually high-risk in terms of aggression, and the students’ social hierarchy had been largely decided violently the hierarchy was ingrained to such an extent that the culture of violence would be difficult to address – intervention programs would not have had much effect
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are school bullying intervention programs effective? | appears that school-based strategies to reduce violence are not always very effective possibly because violence i s a complex phenomenon that must be addressed at social, cultural, individual, and
socioeconomic levels Guerra et al (2006): different approaches may need to be used for different target groups Ferguson et al. (2007) performed a meta-analysis of effectiveness of school-based anti-bullying programmes
and found that overall they were not very effective should be noted that the younger the target groups, the more impact the programmes had
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