School-Based Programs to Reduce Bullying and Victimization: A Systematic Review

By David P. Farrington, Maria M. Ttofi. 2009

286 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BACKGROUND School bullying has serious short-term and long-term effects on children’s physical and mental health. Various anti-bullying programs have been implemented world wide and, more rarely, evaluated. Previous narrative reviews, summarizing the work done on bullying prevention, as well as previous meta-analyses of anti-bullying programs, are limited. The definition of school bullying includes several key elements: physical, verbal, or psychological attack or intimidation that is intended to cause fear, distress, or harm to the victim; an imbalance of power (psychological or physical), with a more powerful child (or children) oppressing less powerful ones; and repeated incidents between the same children over a prolonged period. School bullying can occur in school or on the way to or from school. It is not bullying when two persons of the same strength (physical, psychological, or verbal) victimize each other. OBJECTIVES This report presents a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of programs designed to reduce school bullying perpetration and victimization (i.e. being bullied). The authors indicate the pitfalls of previous reviews and explain in detail how the present systematic review and meta-analysis addresses the gaps in the existing literature on bullying prevention. SELECTION CRITERIA Studies were included in this review if they evaluated the effects of an anti-bullying program by comparing an experimental group who received the intervention with a control group who did not. The word ‘experimental’ here refers to students who received the program and does not necessarily imply randomization. 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) quasi-experimental 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. Both published and unpublished (e.g. PhD theses) reports were included. 4 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9231d1ea4b4a20a159a02d733b82756f8e779767

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Citations in the corpus

Effectiveness of school-based programs to reduce bullying: a systematic and meta-analytic review (2011, methodology): “We believe that, with the cooperation of colleagues in the Campbell Collaboration, we are able potentially to include research in many different developed countries.”
Limitations of focussing on homophobic, biphobic and transphobic ‘bullying’ to understand and address LGBT young people's experiences within and beyond school (2015, unknown): “Bullying is widely understood (at least in the UK) to consist of physical and/or verbal actions between children that are intended to cause fear, distress or harm, and that are persistently repeated over a period of time (DfE, 2010; Farrington and Ttofi, 2009).”
The Role of Social-Emotional Learning In Bullying Prevention Efforts (2013, background): “…school-based bullying prevention that complement SEL include clear bullying-related school rules and policies and improved supervision of students (Farrington & Ttofi, 2009), as well as staff training to increase staff intervention in bullying incidents through improved staff awareness and skill…”
Investigating associations between school climate and bullying in secondary schools: Multilevel contextual effects modeling (2017, background): “Although a number of different anti-bullying programs and safe school policies have been implemented in schools (e.g., Bradshaw, 2015; Farrington & Ttofi, 2009), the prevalence of school bullying does not appear to be declining significantly.”
Prevention of Cyberbullying and Cyber Victimization: Evaluation of the ViSC Social Competence Program (2015, background): “Meta-analyses show that general antibullying prevention programs are effective in reducing traditional bullying and victimization (e.g., Farrington & Ttofi, 2009; Ttofi & Farrington, 2011), and some are also effective in preventing cyberbullying and cyber victimization (e.g., the KiVa Program;…”
The Personality Trait of Environmental Sensitivity Predicts Children’s Positive Response to School-Based Antibullying Intervention (2018, background): “The more effective programs feature multiple components and are based on universal actions such as improving whole-school and classroom climate, introducing schoolwide rules related to bullying, and providing specific training for teachers and parents (Farrington & Ttofi, 2009).”
Bullying in schools: the state of knowledge and effective interventions (2017, background): “In their meta-analysis, Farrington and Ttofi (2009) concluded that such programmes are often effective, reaching an average decrease of 20–23% for bullying others and of 17–20% for being bullied.”
Bullying in Elementary School (2014, background): “Farrington and Ttofi (2009) systematically reviews evaluations of such programs and fi nds that long, high- intensity interventions that emphasize teacher and parent training, among other things, effectively reduce bullying and victimization.”
Cyberbullying Among Adolescents: A General Strain Theory Perspective (2018, background): “The items are consistent with the defined forms of traditional bullying (i.e., physical, verbal, and social; Farrington & Ttofi, 2009a, 2009b; Limber, 2011; Olweus, 1978, 1991, 1993; Popp, 2012a, 2012b; Ttofi & Farrington, 2008).”
Bullying and social exclusion anxiety in schools (2012, background): “There are alternative conceptions of bullying (for a review and analysis, see Schott 2009); however, the Olweusian formulation of bullying is dominant not only in scholarly research on bullying but also in intervention programmes and research (Farrington and Ttofi 2009).”