Peace Be With You Christ-Centered Bullying Solution Research Outcomes for 4th - 8th grade Catholic School Students

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1 Peace Be With You Christ-Centered Bullying Solution Research Outcomes for 4th - 8th grade Catholic School Students Amber Lange, Ph.D., Bedford Behavioral Health Megan Mahon, Ph.D., Heidelberg University Abstract This study addressed the questions does the amount and extent of bullying perceived by a student decline after the Peace Be With You Christ-Centered Bullying Solution, a bullying prevention and intervention program. The experiment examined the effects of the bullying curriculum on students report of amount bullied and amount of witnessed bullying. Students in grade four through eight at 13 Catholic schools in Northwest Ohio participated in a three-phase bullying prevention program. Approximately 1000 students were given a bullying survey pre-intervention and post intervention. Nonparametric testing was utilized due to overly skewed data. This occurred because the majority of students reported not being bullied and not seeing bullying both pre-test and post intervention. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was carried out between the pretest scores and the post test scores on perceived amount of bullying, witnessed bullying, and response to bullying. Significant results were found for total perceived amount bullied and total amount of witnessed bullying. Additionally, students reported talking to parents and talking to teachers as helpful post interventions. Bullying intervention programs are useful (cite) and helpful (cite) for youth today. It is not uncommon for researchers to report that being bullied as well as seeing bullying results in harmful consequences for both the victim and the aggressor. Research on bullying prevention/intervention programs is mixed. Some programs result in large effect sizes, some result in moderate effect sizes and others result in low to no effect. Those programs that appear to be successful include a reduction in the overall incidence of being bullied (physical, verbal and relational to include cyber bullying) and a decrease in witnessing bullying (physical, verbal and relational to include cyber bullying). Additionally, successful prevention/intervention programs appear to result in a decrease in overall bullying behavior (physical, verbal and relational to include cyber bullying) and an increase in action by bystanders (attempts to personally stop the behavior, reporting incidents to teacher, parent or another trusted adult). Successful prevention/intervention efforts are relevant to the needs of both students and staff as effective programs seems to improve the entire school climate. Christian schools are in need of empirically validated faith-based prevention/intervention programs that address secular issues. Additionally, Christian schools are committed to the spiritual, emotional, physical, and developmental growth of the whole person. As such, interventions that focus on the victim as well as the aggressor are needed.

2 Method Methodology consisted of a quasi-experimental pre-test posttest design. All students in their identified grade where eligible to participate in the study but only students with a completed pre and post test contributed to the data analysis. The global research question for this study was; Does amount and extent of bullying decline after the Peace Be With You Bullying Solution, bullying prevention/intervention program? The research hypothesis was; Is there a significant difference between pre and post test scores on the School Bullying Survey? Overall results indicated that amount bullied and amount of seen bullying decreased at posttest intervention. Design The experiment looked at the effects of a bullying intervention program on student reports of being bullied and seeing bullying. The independent measure was time (pre and post test) and the dependant measures were survey responses. Participants Students from Catholic elementary and middle schools were selected for this study. Grade included students in grade four through grade eight. Over 1000 students were participated in the study via a pretest survey, a post-test survey or both. A total of 664 of the 1000 student surveys were valid, 336 surveys were invalid. A grade was calculated for 356 students with 64 students in fourth grade, 81 students in fifth grade, 55 students in sixth grade, 70 students in seventh grade, and 84 students in eighth grade. Gender was identified by 358 students with 170 identifying as male and 188 students identifying as female. Race was recorded due to a lack of participants in various categories. Thus, of 354 students reporting race, 295 identified as White, non Hispanic and 59 students identified as non White, non Hispanic. Students were selected based on agreement to participate and interest from the principal of the school to have the bullying intervention program administered at a student s school. If a principal identified their school as a target school all students in the 4th -8th grade were invited to participate. Schools were a mix of elementary and middle schools. Materials The School Bullying Survey developed at the University of Toledo was utilized. This is a 23 item survey primarily with primarily forced-choice answers but does include write-ins for the item "other." This survey was chosen because it adequately defined direct and indirect bullying as well as capturing information about students perception about where, when, and what they did in regard to being bullied. It also adequately defined students' perception on teachers' responses to bullying. Additionally it was chosen because it was provided free of charge from the University of Toledo. The School Bullying Survey is attached to this analysis.

3 Procedure Principals from various Catholic schools in Northwest Ohio requested the Peace Be With You Christ- Centered Bullying Solution program from the creator of the program. The author is employed by the Catholic Diocese of Toledo as a Prevention/Intervention Schools Consultant. Upon requesting the program, the creator agreed to come into the school and present the three phase program. The creator also asked the principal to agree to have students participate in this study. Upon agreement, the creator sent packets to teachers with information, directions, and releases to participate in the study. Teachers were directed to administer the survey before the beginning of the bullying intervention. Teachers in each grade administered the survey pre and post the intervention. Each teacher received a prepublication of the Peace Be With You Christ-Centered Bullying Solution Teacher Manual in order to provide follow-up lessons after each phase of the program. The creator administered phase one assembly style. Depending on the nature of the school (elementary or middle) the information was presented assembly style (for example, all students together in the gym) with combined classes (4 and 5 and 6, 7, 8) taking one hour. Teachers were than directed to follow up with phase one activities. About four weeks later the creator returned for phase two. Phase two was a two hour block and was administered on a classroom-by-classroom basis with students. During this time the creator also trained the school counselor, if available to co-facilitate phase two sessions with the classroom teacher. This occurred because the creator was unable to attend all sessions in each grade due to the length of phase two (required two hours) and availability of the creator. Teachers were again directed to provide follow-up activities from the Peace Be With You Christ- Centered Bullying Solution Teacher Manual. Phase three occurred about one month later. For some schools this time frame was longer due to holiday breaks and the initial time of school year when the program was implemented. Phase three consisted of a final assembly lasting one hour. Teachers were again directed to provide follow-up activities. After one additional month teachers administered the bullying intervention survey. In total, the creator presented three phases lasting a total of four hours over the course of three months. Additionally, over the course of the three months teachers administered follow-up activities specifically designed to augment and support the goals of the program. Results Total amount of physical, verbal, relational, and cyber bullying counts were calculated. Grade was the independent variable. A Kruskal-Wallis test was performed. A significant difference was found for witnessing bullying by grade (p =.001) but no difference was found for being bullied by grade (p =.204). No significant differences were reported for being bullied or witnessing bullying by race at the pre or post test. Additionally, significant differences were found for gender on some variables. These variables included the total amount of places bullied post intervention, the amount of witnessed bullying post

4 intervention, and the report of being bullied post intervention. Data indicates that females reported higher scores in all three categories. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was carried out between the pretest total score and the post test total scores on where students reported bullying. Total number of places students reported being bullied within the past month was calculated. The test showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the pretest total scores and the post test total scores, z = -.147, p >.05. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was carried out between the pretest scores and the post test scores on witnessing of bullying. The test showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the pretest scores and the post test scores, z = , p =.040. The negative ranks are higher than the positive ranks indicating that the pretest scores had more reported sightings of bullying than the post test scores. When the 13 reported places were investigated separately it was found that the report of being bullied at the bus stop changed, z=-2.711, p=007 with the negative ranks higher than the positive ranks indicating that the pretest scores had more reported bus stop bullying than the post test scores. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was carried out between the pretest scores and the post test scores on bus stop. The test showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the pretest scores and the post test scores, z = , p <.05. The negative ranks are higher than the positive ranks and so the post test scores had fewer bus stops than did the pretest scores. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was carried out between the pretest scores and the post test scores on reported amount of being bullied. This included all reports of being bullied by any of the following means: physical, verbal, relational, including cyber bullying. The test showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the pretest scores and the post test scores, z = , p <.044. The negative ranks are higher than the positive ranks indicating that the pretest scores had more reported incidences of bullying than the post test scores. Total number of ways student responded to being bullied was calculated for each participant. A Wilcoxon signed ranks test was carried out between the pretest scores and the post test scores on response to bullying. The test showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the pretest scores and the post test scores, z = -.661, p >.509. This indicates that students did not report additional total ways to respond when being bullied. Although when the helpfulness of each tactic was explored separately talking to a teacher, , p=.027 and talking to mom or dad, z=-2.044, p=041 was significant. Discussion Several variables were found to be significant in this study. Most importantly there was a decline in the total amount of bullying to the student as well as a decline in the total amount of witnessed bullying of others after the Peace Be With You Christ-Centered Bullying Solution prevention/intervention. Interestingly, the two places students reported an increase in helpful behaviors included telling the teacher and telling mom or dad. This is noteworthy because a key component of the program is to

5 heighten student's awareness of the role of bullying and to be able to articulate who is responsible for bullying (everyone - as all individuals contribute an inclusive or exclusive role in the bullying [i.e. pretending not to see it, joining, telling an adult]. These results are both consistent and inconsistent with results from other studies. Both the interventionist and the researchers want the time and effort employed to implement a comprehensive bullying intervention to result in significant results; yet it is fully possible that a bullying intervention program can heighten the interest and knowledge of students and faculty on the topic of bullying. When this occurs it is possible to get an interaction effect of improved knowledge on the topic and thus an increase in post-test responses simply due to this heighted awareness of the issue. Methodological issues included some loss of controllability since both school counselors and teachers were responsible for follow-up assignments and activities. Although all teachers were required to do this, the researchers did not document this behavior. Thus, follow-up on a per teacher basis is unknown although a generalized assumption is made that teachers provided the follow-up activities. This is a practical limitation of field research and was unavoidable in this study. Additionally, a better targeted survey may have more fully identified the impact of the three phases of this specific bullying intervention program. This information was lost due to the survey format and content. Future studies should specifically target change scores in direct relationship to the specific phase of the program. Currently an additional study is underway to validate survey instruments that specifically address the three phases of the bullying intervention. These surveys will be available for students, parents, and school staff. It is hoped that these instruments, once validated, will address the methodological issue presented in this study regarding the relevance of all the questions on the current survey. In addition, follow up studies should address the perception of both the teachers and the guardians to determine if these two populations notice any difference in a student s behavior or thoughts regarding the topic of bullying. Additional studies may want to target surveys to pre-testing, mid-way testing, and post testing. Overall, caution is suggested in generalizing these results. The intervention appears to decrease the amount of bullying a student receives and the amount of bulling a student witnesses. Even so, results are specific to 4th through 8th grade students and specific to those educated in the private Catholic school system. One strong feature of the survey was the breakdown of types of bullying into physical, verbal, relational, including cyber bullying. By knowing these specific aspects of bullying teachers and administrators are better able to target future interventions. Overall the study has helped to develop theory and explain human behavior.