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Article history:
Received 15 March 2010
Received in revised form 21 October 2010
Accepted 25 January 2011
This study is an evaluation of a systemic, two-year, whole-school bullying intervention initiative that
was implemented in a US public high school. Students and staff members were anonymously surveyed
before and after the intervention. The goals of the initiative were to reduce bullying and victimization,
increase disclosure, increase intervention efforts, and reduce student aggression. Except for a reduction
in victimization, all goals were achieved in some measure. Self-reported bullying decreased 50% or more.
Students reporting that peers intervened in bullying increased. Staff-reported reductions in student
aggression, and staffs belief that the schools efforts to address bullying were adequate increased. This
evaluation points to the possible success of a whole-school, systemic approach to managing bullying at
the high school level.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Program evaluation
Bullying
Victimization
Bullying in high school
Bullying among adolescents
Introduction
Statement of the problem
Bullying in schools is a problem which thrust itself onto the
national stage in the United States in the late 1990s, primarily
because of the attention given to the fact that bullying was
implicated in the Columbine shootings (Vossekuil, Fein, Reddy,
Borum, & Modzeleski, 2002). While this event took place in a high
school context, suggesting that bullying was a problem for
adolescents, most research on bullying in schools has focused
on elementary and middle school children with the one major US
survey on the problem excluding students in eleventh and twelfth
grades (Nansel et al., 2001). A review of research on bullying, which
to a large extent reects work done outside of the US, indicates that
studies of bullying seldom go beyond subjects aged 14 (Atlas &
Pepler, 1998; Boulton & Smith, 1994; Craig & Pepler, 1997;
Kaukiainen et al., 2002; OConnell, Pepler, & Craig, 1999; Olweus,
1978; Salmivalli & Kaukiainen, 2004; Salmivalli & Nieminen, 2002;
Sutton, Smith, & Swettenham, 1999), and with a rare exception,
consider students up to age 16 (Olweus, 1991; Rigby & Slee, 1991;
Whitney & Smith, 1993).
Perhaps because research on bullying tends to focus on
elementary aged children (Yoon, Barton, & Taiariol, 2004), interventions generally exclude high school students. A review of three
84
[()TD$FIG]
ACTIVITIES
INPUTS
People: Building Planning
Team, SEL* Committee,
Teachers, Support Staff,
Administrators, Parents,
Students
Time
Monetary funds for surveys,
training, group meetings outside
of the school day, consultant
services, and evaluation
activities
Results of the April, 2005
Olweus Survey
Staff Responses to Olweus
Survey Data, Spring, 2006
Charge from the Building
Planning Team to address the
issue of bullying
Support from district level
administrators to design,
implement and evaluate a
bullying preventionintervention initiative
PROXIMAL
OUTCOMES
OUTPUTS
A Continuum of
Responses to
bullying for adult
intervention in
bullying situations
A safe, bullying
reporting and
follow-up system
for students, staff
and parents
Heightened student
and staff awareness
of problems around
bullying and how to
access help to solve
these problems
Acceptance of
norms which
support respectful
peer treatment and
a rejection of
bullying as a form
of social interaction
INTERMEDIATE and
DISTAL
OUTCOMES
There is an overall reduction in the
amount and severity of bullying.
The quality of social interactions
among students improves.
The schools social climate becomes
more positive.
* Social-emotional Learning
Social-emotional Learning Intervention Team
85
86
Bullying
Nine items from the student version of the Olweus Bully/Victim
Questionnaire (1996) were considered when determining if the
amount of bullying was different following the intervention as
compared to before. These questions mirrored the victimization
questions and thus the same methods for analysis were used to
measure bullying as were used to measure victimization.
Procedure
Students anonymously completed the Olweus Bully/Victim
Questionnaire (1996) in April, 2007. Two years later, students took
a survey that included questions from the Olweus Bully/Victim
Questionnaire and an additional set of questions that were
developed by the evaluator/author and piloted at a local high
school. The rst administration of the student survey yielded
approximately 870 completed surveys and the second yielded
approximately 820 surveys which represent 88% and 83% of the
student population respectively. The fact that less than 100% of the
students participated in the survey is due to absenteeism, parental
objection to student participation, incomplete surveys, or elimination of the surveys because the responses were grossly
inconsistent (e.g., student reports being a ninth grader and 19
years of age). Because the student body had changed by 50% due to
graduation and new enrollment of younger students, and due to
the inability to track surveys pre- to post-administration, this was
not a matched sample, and thus, repeated measures were not
possible.
Staff members anonymously completed a survey in January,
2007 which was designed by the evaluator/author and piloted by
the bullying initiative committee. Two years later staff members
took another survey which included all of the original questions
and an additional set of questions that mirrored the ones added to
the second student survey. The rst administration of the staff
survey yielded 120 completed surveys and the second yielded 78
surveys. This represents approximately 78% and 50% of the staff
population respectively. Again, this was not a matched sample due
to staff turnover and the inability to track surveys pre- to postadministration.
MPA followed district procedures for administering the student
surveys which were completed during homeroom periods under
the supervision of a teacher. Staff surveys were administered at
faculty or department meetings under the supervision of school
administrators or department leaders. All surveys were anonymous. The data were hand entered into SPSS v14 by district hires
and the program evaluator/author.
Measures
Victimization
Nine items from the student version of Olweus Bully/Victim
Questionnaire (1996) were considered when determining if the
amount of victimization by bullying was different following the
intervention as compared to before. If students indicated that they
had been bullied in any of the nine ways, they were considered to
have been victimized. The original questions were answered using
a 15 point Likert scale with 1 = It has not happened, and 5 = It
happens several times a week. In keeping with Solberg and
Olweus (2003) the variables for victimization were recoded into a
binary variable where 0 = It has not happened or it happened only
once or twice, and 1 = It has happened 23 times per month, once
a week or several times per week. Frequencies and percentage of
change for each item were calculated for the before- and afterintervention groups for the individual items. The nine original
items were combined into a composite variable and recoded into a
binary variable in keeping with Solberg and Olweus (2003) in order
to create a single measure of victimization.
87
Table 1
Percentages and percentage of change for self-reported student victimization and bullying, before and after the intervention.
Pre survey
N = 874
Post survey
N = 817
Percentage
of change
Pre survey
N = 870
Post survey
N = 818
8.8%
5.9%
11.4%
6.7%
+29.5%
+13.7%
10.2%
7.1%
4.3%
3.5%
57.8%
50.7%
2.9%
7.2%
1.5%
3.1%
5.1%
5.3%
4.2%
3.4%
6.5%
1.5%
2.1%
5.1%
5.5%
2.8%
+17.2%
9.7%
0.0%
32.2%
.0%
+3.7%
33.3%
3.9%
3.9%
2.5%
2.8%
4.0%
3.8%
3.4%
1.7%
1.5%
.6%
1.1%
2.2%
2.1%
1.2%
56.4%
61.5%
76.0%
60.7%
45.0%
44.7%
64.7%
Results
Victimization and bullying
Victimization
A calculation of frequencies comparing the before- and afterintervention groups for victimization indicated that some forms of
self-reported victimization increased and some decreased during
the time of the intervention (see Table 1). The Cronbach a for the
nine items was .900 so a composite variable was created and then
recoded to a binary variable. A chi-square test of independence was
performed to determine if there was a difference between the
before-intervention group and the after-intervention group. The
difference approached, but was not statistically signicant
(x2(1) = 2.83, p = .092) with a negligible effect size (.04),2 with
15.2% of students reporting victimization before the intervention
and 18.3% reporting victimization after. Although victimization
seems to have increased slightly the difference was not statistically
signicant, thus it can be concluded that self-reported victimization remained relatively stable during the time of the intervention.
Victimization by gender. A chi-square test of independence
comparing males before and after the intervention, and females
before and after the intervention was performed. The results
indicated that males reported more victimization after the
intervention (21.0% as compared to 15.9%) than before and that
the difference trended towards signicance (x2(1) = 2.40, p = .065).
There was no statistically signicant difference in self-reported
victimization for females after the intervention as compared to
before the intervention (p < .05).
Victimization by grade. Chi-square tests of independence comparing the before and after groups by grade level indicated a
statistically signicant increase in reporting of victimization for
ninth graders (x2(1) = 6.755, p = .009) with 26.0% reporting
victimization after as compared with 16.3% before. There were
no statistically signicant differences for tenth, eleventh or twelfth
2
Effect sizes for Cohens d (Cohen, 1988) used for chi-square test of
independence and independent samples t-test: r = .10 small, r = .30 medium,
r = .50 large.
Percentage of change
88
89
Table 2
Staff percentages for pre- and post-survey responses strongly agree and agree, effect sizes and statistical signicance for knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors with regards to
bullying and victimization.
Pre-survey: strongly
agree + agree N = 120
Post-survey: strongly
agree + agree N = 78
Percentage
of change
Effect size
93.3%
81.7%
52.5%
85.8%
83.3%
85.8%
97.4%
91.1%
82.0%
91.0%
87.2%
91.0%
+4.3%
+11.5%
+56.1%
+6.0%
+4.6%
+6.0%
1.152
1.393
5.048*
1.295
1.606
1.956*
.10
.09
.35
.09
.11
.13
66.7%
86.7%
83.4%
94.8%
+25.0%
+13.4%
2.719*
2.081*
.19
.14
90
91
Limitations
References
This study was limited by its before- and after-intervention
design. The fact that there was no control or comparison group
does not allow for conclusions regarding causality. Thus it cannot
be determined if the intervention produced the effects that were
observed or whether they were the result of other confounding
factors.
Another limitation of this study has to do with the fact that the
data were not repeated measures, thus reducing the statistical
power of the analysis and making interpretation of effect sizes
challenging. Additionally, due to some highly skewed data, this
study makes use of nonparametric analyses. Such analyses are not
as powerful as parametric analyses reducing the certainty with
which conclusions may be drawn.
One limitation of this study is that the intervention had only
been in place for two years when the post-intervention data were
collected. A longer pre- to post-assessment timeframe would have
given the program a longer time in which to make the types of
cultural and systemic changes that are needed for programs of this
sort to become rmly established. Ideally, a four year time span
would have been preferable because that would have allowed for
inclusion of students who came to the school as ninth graders
during the rst year of implementation with follow-up data being
collected during their last year (twelfth grade) at the school. This
group of students would have had a longer and stronger dosage
than the students who have been assessed for the current
evaluation, increasing the possibility that greater effects might
have resulted.
A further limitation of this study is that the second administration of the staff survey yielded 35% fewer completed surveys than
the rst administration. Attempts to include more staff members
were unsuccessful, so whereas the rst survey included approximately 78.0% of staff members, the second survey only reected
approximately 5.0% of the staff members. This may have affected
the reliability of the data.
Lastly, a nal limitation of this study is that the school where it
was conducted is not representative of high schools across the
United States. Meliora Public Academy resides in a wealthy
community, and the school itself is regarded as exemplary
because of its high academic standards and rigor. Thus,
generalizing these ndings to schools that do not t this prole
has its limitations.
Future directions
Bullying tends to be framed as a problem that diminishes as
students move into high school. The present study indicates that if
bullying does decrease in amount, it does not completely go away,
and in fact, this study conrms that bullying still exists at the high
school level. For this reason researchers should expand their
exploration of bullying to include the high school environment.
This study points to the possible effectiveness of a whole-school
bullying intervention at the high school level. Future research
could benet from a study design that includes a control or
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Kathleen P. Allen is a doctoral candidate in the Human Development Program at the
University of Rochester, Margaret Warner Graduate School of Education and Human
Development. Her area of interest is bullying in schools.