How to Mitigate the Problem of Bullying in Schools

Abstract

Bullying is a major problem in American schools and one that has prevailed in spite of more than half a century of efforts to mitigate the problem. One of the major peculiarities if bullying how bystanders who are fellow students allow bullying to take place. Bullies may have power over their victims but the balance of power would shift if bystanders offered their support to victims. The proposed research study herein seeks to investigate the impact of an intervention on bullying based on bystanders. The intervention would seek to augment the prosocial and self-efficacy prerequisites of the bystanders. For control and comparison, another group of students would undergo the traditional approach that focuses on bullies and their victims only.

Introduction

Bullying does not make sense in the modern age and society, yet it is a reality more so in schools. By definition, bullying is the repeated expression of aggression against an individual in a less powerful position or situation. Primarily, the two parties to bullying are the perpetrator and the victim. However, available studies show that bystanders play a critical role both in the bullying itself and the impact of bullying on the victim. Normally, bystanders far outnumber the bullies and their victims. On the one hand, bystanders act as active or passive enablers (Sampson, 2019). For example, when bystanders either cheer on the bully or play the role of an audience, they enable the bullies and give them a reason to continue in the vice. Conversely, when bystanders cower away or fail to defend the victims, they act as passive enablers as they allow something they know is wrong to happen (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017). Available research reveals a number of approaches that are applicable in mitigating bullying, through both the bullies and their victims. However, there does seem to be a research gap when it comes to the mitigation of bullying through bystanders in general. For example, there is limited research on how seeking to change the character of the bystanders would affect the overall problem of bullying. Such an effect would emanate from bystanders intervening directly as defendants for the victims and castigate the bullies. On the other hand, bystanders can influence a cultural change, which takes away the semblance of power of prestige that bullies enjoy (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017). For example, in an environment where most people consider kindness an expression of strength, bullies may be discouraged from acting out since that would present them as pariahs, not the cool kids. The proposed research project outlined herein seeks to investigate the presumed impact of bystander altering bystander behavior on the overall problem of bullying.

Proposed Research Thesis

Activities that encourage prosocial behavior amongst adolescents in middle and high school entails sharing and helping using fairness and accountability (Midget et al., 2017). According to previous studies, prosocial behavior as an intervention shows positive outcomes against bullying (Mariani et al, 2015). However, minimal information is provided on the impact of bystander roles in shaping the differentiation of the bullies from the observers (Wang et al., 2015). This is due to the low probability of students reporting actions against them as a technique to reduce stigmatization.

Although prosocial behavior is proven to reduce stigmatization and bullying, there is little evidence on reducing harmful bystander behavior (Waasdrop & Bradshaw, 2018). This research aims at adding on to the knowledge of perceived self-efficacy of an individual as a significant factor in demonstrating potential impact on increasing their ability to initiate actions against bullying. The ability to measure the levels of student self-efficacy shall improve the ways in which teachers and school administrators can select adolescent advocates against bullying (Elis et al, 2016).

Research Questions: 

Does engagement in activities to promote prosocial behavior help in increasing defendant behavior against bullying?

Is there a decrease in bullying behavior when student advocates gain self-efficacy?

Literature Review 

Available research shows that bullying is a major problem in the modern community more so among school-going children. The problem spreads from elementary schools to institutions of higher learning (Wang et al., 2015). Traditionally, the balance of power on bullying stemmed from physical strength, with the bully being the strongest kids in the group. However, societal and social changes have led to a shift in the concept of power. The balance of power may stem from cultural issues such as race, gender, religion, nationality, and ethnicity (Patton et al., 2017). The presence of new forms of bullying such as cyberbullying and verbal bullying. Now even a relatively weak student of any gender can perpetrate bullying using information technology. In the USA, the problem of bullying affects between 10% and 29% of all students, making it a major issue (Sampson, 2019). Further, with the prevalence being as high as 29%, it logically follows that almost every student is affected one way or the other by either knowing a victim or being a bystander. This grand scale of bullying makes it an important subject for further, study. Further, available research shows that bullying has averse psychological implications on all parties involved including the bullies, the victims and the bystanders (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017).

From the specific area of focus in the instant research project, available research shows that bystander conduct is an important bearing factor to the problem of bullying in schools. According to Midgett et al (2017), based on a randomized control study, intervention on defending bullying victims can be effective. Students who underwent the intervention has greater confidence in acting as advocates and defenders to bullying victims. Further, the intervention had an effect on the school environment that effectively mitigated the problem of bullying. Similarly, according to Thornberg, Wänström & Jungert (2018), how a school deals with negative bystander attitudes towards bullying is an important bearing factor in the mitigation of bullying in the school. Based on the study, it is no longer enough to deal with the issues of bullies and their victims only as bystanders also play an active or passive role.

Method 

Participants 

The participants for the proposed research are 8 th -grade students in two different public middle schools in Phoenix, Arizona. To lower the number of participants the sample group will only include two classes, thus each group will have about 46 students. Since the study will involve the whole class, there are no peculiarities for individual participants. Form a general perspective, the participants will be public school students between 12 and 14 years who are at the apex of their primary education. Being the apex class, any form of bullying will most probably happen amongst members of the same class as opposed to other classes where the bullies may be in a higher class. Selecting the whole class also increases the propensity of having equal or relatively equal numbers of boys and girls. 

Apparatus 

The only apparatus necessary for the training course is an internet-capable device, being either a phone, tablet or laptop computer. The other tools are two varying bullying intervention manuals. One manual shall focus solely on bullying intervention from the perspective of bullies and their victims. A standard manual, available in most schools can play this role. The second manual will combine the standard manual with a manual of bullying advocacy and defense. The manual will involve lessons such as prosocial behavior and self-efficacy as a defender against bullying victims. The final apparatus is a questionnaire for use in the survey. 

Procedure 

The research process will begin as a normal training process against bullying. However, each of the student’s guardians will have consented to the research process and any student whose guardian withholds consent will not participate in the study. Randomly, the selected classes will get one of the two training manuals. The school that gets manual I will undergo two training sessions and the other school three training sessions to cover the extended manual. Two weeks after the training, the students will fill and submit the questionnaire, ending the active part of the research. 

Design 

The proposed research is a mixed-method between-subjects design. The quantitative aspect of the research process will involve the number of bullying cases noticed with the target population. The qualitative aspect will involve the reasons why the students believe there is a change or there is no change in the prevalence of bullying in the class. Finally, the between-subjects design stems from the fact that each of the two study groups, based on the two schools will be subject to two different conditions. 

Results 

Based on the hypothesis, the results should reflect a difference in bullying prevalence in both schools due to the training sessions. Ideally, the rates of bullying in the two schools will vary due to the nature of the schools. The area of focus in the results is the variation in the rate of decline.

Among the most important area of results is the reason for the decline according to the students. In an ideal scenario, there will be a substantive reduction in cases of bullying between the two dates in focus, a fortnight before and after the training sessions. The reason for the changes in one school will be a reduction in the number of bullies or assertiveness by the victims. The reasons in the second school will be a change in the environment where the class as a whole does not condone bullying. Statistical analysis will focus on correlation with an alpha level of 0.05. 

Discussion 

Significant and Non-Significant Results

The significant result for the proposed study begins with there being differences in the prevalence of bullying in the two schools before and after the study period. The differences are significant, as it will show that it is possible to mitigate bullying. If there is no potential for the mitigation of bullying in schools through intervention, the very basis of the instant project fails. If the results in both schools show that bullying declined in the 4-week period addressed by the project, the project has a solid foundation as these results confirm one of its key hypotheses.

The second significant result would be a higher rate of reduction in the prevalence of bullying in school II as compared to school I. The result is significate because school one involved an application of the standard bullying mitigation approach that focuses on the bullies and their victims. This makes school in the control school. School II is the test school and used a combination of the traditional approach and a secondary approach that focused on bystanders. If the second approach showed a significantly higher rate of reduction in bullying prevalence, the results would confirm the main hypothesis for the research and provide positive answers to the research question. These results would mean that intervention against bullying that focuses on the attitudes and social standing of bystanders is effective in the mitigation of bullying in schools. If the respective reductions in prevalence exhibit congruence, then the research process provides negative answers to the research questions.

APA Ethical Guidelines: Informed Consent and IRB Permission

The research process involved an evaluation of minors complete with a questionnaire-based survey. Further, the study process also sought to expand available understanding in an important subject affecting minors in the USA and around the world. It was thus necessary to obtain informed consent and clearance from the Institutional Review Board (IRB). Since all the subjects were minor, the project sought informed consent from their guidance through assistance from the school. The students carried informed consent forms to their parents and returned them either with notification of refusal or consent. The students whose guardians declined did not participate in the process. Further, the study obtained IRB permission through a formal application that included particulars of the study and confirmation of informed consent. As a condition of IRB permission, no names of the minors would feature in any part of the study process or the resultant reports. Based on the nature of the study, debriefing statements were not necessary as no information was kept away from the study group and there was no material deception in the process.

Limitations of the Study

The research study has two main limitations. The first is the relatively small sample group that involved less than a hundred students. A larger group of more than a thousand students would be ideal, considering that the issue addressed covers millions of students around the country. The second limitation lies in the reliance on students for most of the results. It would be difficult to assess the prevalence of bullying accurately, within the sample population. Hence, the research relied on the prevalence reported by the students. The accuracy of the process depends on the honesty of the students, which amounts to an uncontrolled variable.

Nature of Future Studies

Among the important areas of future studies would be to eliminate the limitation occasioned by the inability to assess the prevalence of bullying accurately. An example of such a research process would involve a kind of ethnographic study, probably involving older students. The ethnographers can use observation to collect data before and after the interventions. The second important area of study would be to understand why bystanders do not intervene on behalf of bullying victims. Are the bystanders willing enablers or co-victims? Enablers are those bystanders who enjoy observing bullying while co-victims are the bystanders who are also afraid of the bullies. Further, how doe bullying affects bystanders who are enablers or co-victims respectively. Such studies would create a better understanding of the problem of bullying and enable the development of effective solutions thereto.

References

Ellis, B. J., Volk, A. A., Gonzalez, J., & Embry, D. D. (2016). The meaningful roles intervention: an evolutionary approach to reducing bullying and increasing prosocial behavior. Journal of Research on Adolescence (Wiley-Blackwell), 26(4), 622–637.

Mariani, M., Webb, L., Villares, E., & Brigman, G. (2015). Effect of participation in student success skills on prosocial and bullying behavior. Professional Counselor , 5(3), 341–353

Menesini, E., & Salmivalli, C. (2017). Bullying in schools: the state of knowledge and effective interventions.  Psychology, health & medicine ,  22 (sup1), 240-253.

Midgett, A., Doumas, D., Trull, R., & Johnston, A. D. (2017). A Randomized Controlled Study Evaluating a Brief, Bystander Bullying Intervention with Junior High School Students.  Journal of School Counseling ,  15 (9), n9.

Midgett, A., Moody, S. J., Reilly, B., & Lyter, S. (2017). The phenomenological experience of student-advocates trained as defenders to stop school bullying. Journal of Humanistic Counseling , 56(1), 53–71

Patton, D. U., Hong, J. S., Patel, S., & Kral, M. J. (2017). A systematic review of research strategies used in qualitative studies on school bullying and victimization.  Trauma, Violence, & Abuse ,  18 (1), 3-16.

Sampson, R. (2016). Bullying in schools: Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Problem-Specific Guides Series No. 12. U .S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services ISBN: 1-932582-11-8

Thornberg, R., Wänström, L., & Jungert, T. (2018). Authoritative classroom climate and its relations to bullying victimization and bystander behaviors.  School psychology international ,  39 (6), 663-680.

Waasdorp, T. E., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2018). Examining variation in adolescent bystanders’ responses to bullying. School Psychology Review, 47(1), 18–33

Wang, C., Couch, L., Rodriguez, G. R., & Lee, C. (2015). The bullying literature project: Using children’s literature to promote prosocial behavior and social-emotional outcomes among elementary school students. Contemporary School Psychology , 19(4), 320–329

Appendix 1: Informed Consent Form

Dear Parent? Guardian

I hereby request your permission for your child to participate in a research process that seeks to develop knowledge on how to mitigate the problem of bullying in schools. For the purposes of the research process, the student will undergo a miniature bullying intervention course. After the course, the student will fill a simple form of bullying in the school without revealing any personal details.

Kindly consult the school administration for any further particulars about the study.

Further, participation in the study is voluntary and you may decide to stop your ward’s participation at any part of the study process.

I, the parent or guardian of _______________________________, a minor ______ years of age, permit 

his/her participation the research program conducted by _______________ 

under the supervision of Dr. 

__________________. 

_________________________________ _____________ 

Signature of Parent or Guardian Date 

________________________________________________ 

Please print your name here.