The Effect of an Education Program onAttitudes and Beliefs about Bullying andBullying Behaviour in Junior SecondarySchool Students

Caroline HuntSchool of Psychology, University of Sydney, New South Wales, 2006, Australia. E-mail: caroline@psych.usyd.edu.au

This study assessed an intervention targeting bullying. Six schools were recruited, with 444 children agedbetween 12 and 15 years. Schools were randomly allocated to an intervention comprising education to stu-dents, parents and teachers about bullying and strategies believed to prevent bullying, or wait-list condition.Students reported bullying experiences on the Peer Relations Questionnaire and attitudes using the Attitudeto Victim and Bully Scales, prior to the intervention and one year later. There was little difference betweenconditions on most measures. Short-term educational approaches appear to have little impact on bullyingbehaviour, and schools may need to develop alternative approaches.

Keywords: Bullying; school interventions; victimization; bullying attitudes

Introduction

The problem of bullying in Australian schools is sig-nificant, with approximately one student in every sixsaid to be bullied by their peers at school each week(Rigby, 1998). Bullying can negatively impact upon achild’s life both physically and psychologically.Children who are bullied are more likely to reportphysical ill health, experience lowered self-esteem(some become significantly depressed), have fewfriends and tend to avoid school on a regular basis(Rigby, 1999). In line with these findings, an increas-ing number of researchers have recognised that bul-lying needs to be addressed and have evaluated arange of anti-bullying programs in schools acrossmany countries.

The most comprehensive and influential anti-bully-ing school-based initiative was developed by Olweus(1993) and aimed to manipulate the school socialenvironment by setting clear rules against bullying,implementing salient consequences for bullying, andincreasing playground supervision. The introduction ofthis program across 42 schools in Bergen, Norwaybrought about significant decreases in the rates ofbullying. However, later studies attempting to replicatethese results have showed modest and inconsistent ef-fects. For example, Roland (2000) reports on a laterinitiative across Norway in which 40 schools received apackage outlining practical approaches to counterbullying, including recommendations for direct com-munication to students who bully and their parents,support for the victims of bullying, and classroom dis-cussions of bullying. One region demonstrated a halv-ing of reported bullying 2 years later, but anotherregion demonstrated a slight increase in the rates of

bullying. While Roland argued that the poorer resultsmay be due to the lack of support for the schools, re-sults from the Flemish Antibullying Interventionshowed that varying the level of support for schools didnot have an effect on outcome (Stevens, De Bour-deaudhuij & Oost, 2000). The Flemish study found thata school-based strategy that included classroom activ-ities to increase awareness of bullying and active pro-blem solving for those students directly involved inbullying had a significant impact on later reports ofbullying in primary schools but not in secondaryschools. Contrary to these findings, an interventionprogramme conducted in Italian schools that raisedawareness of the negative effects of violence both in theschool, at home and in the community generallyshowed more positive effects on direct forms of bullyingin older (14–16 years) as opposed to younger (10–13 year) students (Baldry & Farrington, 2004). In theUSA, Meraviglia et al. (2003) investigated the effect of aprogramme for 5th grade students that aimed to reducethe social acceptance of bullying and sexual harass-ment, through staff and parent education, policydevelopment and classroom activities. While studentsin the intervention condition did not demonstrate anincrease in their knowledge of bullying behaviours, theintervention group reported more bullying at school andon the bus following the programme. In Australia,Peterson and Rigby (1999) reported the outcome of ananti-bullying intervention in a secondary school. Theintervention consisted of education to raise the level ofawareness of bullying incidents at the school, whole-school policy development, procedures for dealing withreported incidents of bullying, inclusion of bullyingissues into the curriculum, and a number of student-based initiatives. Over the 2 years of the project, it

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appears that there was little change in reports of bul-lying with the exception of the new Year 7 class.

While the research support for such �whole-school�intervention is mixed, there remains a strong commit-ment to �whole-school� anti-bullying approaches thatinvolve a significant educational component (Rigby,1996). Studies that aim to increase awareness of thenegative impact of bullying are potentially shifting stu-dent attitudes such that students are less accepting ofbullying behaviour and hence less likely to engage inbullying behaviour. There is theoretical and empiricalsupport for a relationship between attitudes and beliefstowards bullying and actual engagement in bullyingbehaviour, although the causal direction of the rela-tionship remains unclear (Boulton, Bucci & Hawker,1999; Rigby, 1997; Salmivalli & Voeten, 2004). Therelationship between attitudes about bullying and ac-tual bullying behaviour is consistent with literature thatsupports the role of children’s normative beliefs aboutthe appropriateness of aggression in predictingaggressive behaviour (Bellmore et al., 2005; Huesman& Guerra, 1997; Tapper & Boulton, 2004). In otherwords, children who condone the use of aggression aremore likely to be aggressive, as an aggressive responseis included within their repertoire of acceptable behav-iours. It is argued that in the case of bullying, attitudestowards the targets of bullying and acceptance ofbullying behaviour will predict the likelihood of whethera child might bully another.

The current study was an attempt to assess the im-pact of an educational anti-bullying intervention inAustralian high schools. Given the inconsistent resultsfor universal school-based programmes in the litera-ture, it was considered important to determine whethera focused educational intervention would have an im-pact on bullying. The study also sought to determinewhether such an intervention would be effectivethrough changing attitudes towards bullying and atti-tudes toward the victims of bullying. The study is acontrolled outcome study to assess the specific impactof education targeting the school community aboutbullying, both on attitude change and reported inci-dents of bullying. The research was also designed toprovide information about the extent of bullying acrossa number of schools within a sector of the Australianeducation system.

It was hypothesised that: (1) the provision of educa-tion will produce a shift in attitudes and behaviours,more specifically, a more sympathetic attitude to thevictims of bullying and a decreased acceptance of bul-lying among students after one year in schools thatreceive that education compared to schools who do not;and (2) the provision of education will produce signifi-cantly fewer incidents of reported bullying after oneyear.

Method

Seven secondary schools were recruited into the projectduring 2001 and randomly assigned to either an inter-vention or control condition. Two schools in the inter-vention condition dropped out of the study in the earlystages of the project, primarily due to time constraints.One additional intervention school was recruited in2002 to balance the study design. One school did not

complete the follow-up survey. Three single sex girls�schools and two co-educational schools completed thestudy. All schools had established anti-bullying policiesand were asked to continue with their standard ap-proach to bullying, which included having explicit dis-ciplinary procedures for students who were found tohave bullied others. In terms of additional strategies,one school (in the control condition) staged a play withan anti-bullying message over the time of the study. Theresearch was approved by the Sydney UniversityHuman Research Ethics Committee and the CatholicEducation Office, Sydney.

ParticipantsAcross the six schools commencing the project, consentforms and subject information were sent home with2,111 students from grades 7 to 10, with an age rangeof 12 to 15 years. In total, 444 students completed thequestionnaire battery at Time 1 (151 boys (34%) and293 girls) and of those 318 (71.6%) repeated the ques-tionnaires at Time 2. The overall participation rate forthe six schools was 22.5% ranging from 11 to 74%. Thislow response rate is a common feature in researchprojects where both student and parent consent is re-quired. The differences in recruitment rates acrossthe schools resulted in 155 students being surveyed inthe three �intervention� schools, and 289 students in thethree �control� schools.

ProcedureParticipants completed self-report questionnaires thatassessed various aspects of bullying behaviour, andattitudes and beliefs about bullying. In addition, par-ticipants completed a questionnaire that assessed eth-nic identification that is a focus of a second paper basedon the study (Nguy & Hunt, 2004). The most frequentlynominated ethnic label was Anglo-Saxon and com-prised 31.7% of the sample. The other most frequentethnic groups were Middle Eastern (19.0%), East Asian(13.0%), Mediterranean (7.9%) and Pacific Islander(2.5%).

An anti-bullying intervention was completed in thethree �intervention� schools. The author presentedinformation at parent and teacher meetings about thenature of bullying in schools, levels of bullying reportedby students in the initial survey, strategies for dealingwith bullying at the individual and school level, andtime was allowed for discussion. The teacher meetingswere held in conjunction with regular staff meetings,and all teachers were present. The parent meetingswere held after hours, usually with a small group ofparents who, due to their numbers, were unlikely to berepresentative of the parent population as a whole. Inorder to try to target the larger parent group, a sum-mary of the information covered at these meetings waspublished in the school newsletter. Furthermore, schoolstaff conducted a 2-hour classroom-based discussion ofbullying using activities from an anti-bullying work-book (Murphy & Lewers, 2000). These activities aimedto increase awareness and identification of bullyingbehaviours, to promote empathy for targets of bullying,and to help students think about various strategies fordealing with bullying. The educational intervention wasdeliberately designed to minimise the resources re-quired from school staff and to increase the likelihood

22 Caroline Hunt

that the intervention was conducted in keeping with theprotocol. It was also believed that a �minimal� interven-tion was consistent with bullying initiatives implemen-ted in many Australian schools (Soutter & McKenzie,2000), and hence the results could provide an evalua-tion of standard approaches. Furthermore, it wasthought that should the intervention be successful inreducing reports of bullying behaviour, it could be ea-sily implemented in schools in the absence of a researchcontext.

The bullying questions were repeated in the followingyear in five schools to minimise any seasonal effects onthe measurement of bullying, and to ensure that stu-dents were basing their reports of bullying experienceson a similar time period to the baseline assessment.One single sex control school did not continue with thestudy and follow-up assessments were not completed.In total, 111 participants completed the follow-up as-sessment in the �intervention� schools and 207 com-pleted the follow-up assessments in the �control�schools, resulting in a 28% and 18% drop-out raterespectively.

MaterialsPeer Relations Questionnaire (PRQ). The PRQ (Rigby,1998) is a self-report measure to assess the nature andextent of bullying problems in a student’s school. Stu-dents are asked to estimate the frequency with whichthey had been bullied by other students at their school,the nature of that bullying and whom they confide inwhen they are bullied. Other items assess the frequencywith which students bully others, the reasons they havefor bullying others and whether the bullying is doneindividually or in groups. Finally, students are askedquestions relating to how they feel about addressing theissue of bullying in their schools. The PRQ manualprovides normative data on a number of these itemsbased on an Australian sample of 26,000 students,indicating that approximately 50% of students person-ally experience some form of bullying (Rigby, 1998). Theinternal consistency of the victim scale is strong, ran-ging from .77 to .83 across different gender and agegroups. The validity of the scale is moderate, correlatingwith peer nominations between .19 and .46 (p < .001)across gender and age groups.

Attitude to Victim Scale –Short Version. The short-ver-sion of the Attitude to Victim Scale is a 10-item scalethat assesses the degree which a person is willing tojustify bullying behaviour and support bullies; theirdesire to support the victims of bullying; and theirtendency to reject children who are bullied by otherchildren because of their supposed weakness (Rigby &Slee, 1991). The internal consistency for this version ofthe scale is good (Cronbach alpha .81 for boys and .78for girls, Rigby, 1997). The internal consistency for thescale based on this sample was lower, .67 for boys and.46 for girls.

Attitude to Bullying Scale. The Attitude to BullyingScale comprises two subscales. Only the first subscalewas used in the current analyses and consisted of 7statements that list possible consequences of bullying,for example: �Bullying makes you feel good aboutyourself�. Students are asked to rate how likely they

believe a particular consequence will be for a bully.Higher scores are indicative of more positive attitudestowards bullying. The internal consistency for this scaleis moderate (Cronbach alpha .71, Rigby, 1997). Theinternal consistency for the scale based on this samplewas .76 for boys and .64 for girls.

AnalysesDifferences between the �intervention� and �control�schools were assessed across 11 outcome variables:Attitude to Victim scale, Attitude to Bullying scale,estimated prevalence of bullying at school, experienceof being bullied at school, perceived school safety,likelihood of telling somebody about being bullied,perceived ability to stop other students from bullying,attempts to stop people form bullying others, perceivedability to join in bullying others, actually bullying othersas part of a group, and bullying others alone. A repeatedmeasures ANOVA with two between-subject factors(intervention and sex) was conducted to assess mainand interaction effects for each variable. In order toreduce the risk of Type 1 errors, a conservative alpha of.01 was adopted for these multiple analyses.

Results

Effect of the educational interventionTo test whether the intervention was effective aftercontrolling for pre-test differences, the interaction effectbetween pre-/post-test, and control/intervention groupwas considered. Significant differences were found ontwo measures (Table 1). Students in interventionschools reported a significantly greater reduction inbullying others than students in the control schoolswith regard to bullying others alone (F ¼ 7.958, df ¼ 1,p < .01). Furthermore, boys showed greater reductionsin their reported bullying others when alone (F ¼ 7.958,df ¼ 1, p < .01). Significant intervention by sex inter-actions were also found for bullying others alone (F ¼6.978, df ¼ 1, p < .01). Boys in the intervention groupshowed a significant reduction in their reports of bul-lying compared to boys in the control schools andcompared to girls in both conditions. The size of thisdecrease was large (effect size ¼ .90) but represented arelatively small number of male students (n ¼ 25) in thesingle co-educational �intervention� school. There wereno further significant main or interaction effects,although a similar trend was found for boys bullyingother as part of a group, in which the main and inter-action effects were significant at .05.

Changes over timeThe within-subjects effect was considered to assess forsignificant changes between Time 1 (baseline) and Time2 across the sample as a whole. One variable showedsignificant change over time. At post-test, studentsreported that they were less likely to have been bulliedthemselves (F ¼ 9.069, df ¼ 1,254, p < .01). The effectsize of this change was .27 in the intervention conditionand .18 in the control condition.

Incidence of being bullied. Students were asked to ratehow often they were bullied during the current year ofthe study. Overall, 54.5% of students reported never

Effect of an Educational Program on School-Based Bullying 23

being bullied by another student �this year at thisschool� at Time 1. However, 19.0% reported having beenbullied a �few times�, with 6.0% reporting being bullied�lots of times�. There were no significant differences inthe frequency with which students reported being bul-lied according to gender (v2 ¼ 2.39, df ¼ 3, p ¼ .49), orethnicity (Anglo-Saxon versus other; v2 ¼ 5.42, df ¼ 3,p ¼ .14). 24 students (5.4%) reported that they hadstayed away from school on at least one occasionbecause of bullying.

Of those students who had reported the experience ofbeing bullied at Time 1, 7.7% reported that they had�often� been teased in an unpleasant way, 10.1% saidthat they had �often� been called hurtful names, 6.8%had been �often� left out of things on purpose, 2.5% had�often� been threatened with harm, and 2.7% had been�often� hit or kicked. Girls were more likely than boys toreport being called hurtful names (v2 ¼ 6.14, df ¼ 2,p < .05), while boys were more likely to have beenthreatened with harm (v2 ¼ 13.1, df ¼ 2, p < .01) or hitor kicked (v2 ¼ 22.8, df ¼ 2, p < .001). Post-hocanalyses were conducted to see whether these types ofbehaviour directed at victims changed across time.No significant changes were found at p < .05.

Incidence of bullying others. Across the sample, 80.5%of students reported at Time 1 that they had not bulliedanyone on their own during the year and 71.1% indi-cated they had never been part of a group that hadbullied someone. Nine students reported bullying oth-ers about once a week with seven reporting bullyingothers several times a week. Male students were morelikely to report bullying another person on their own incomparison to female students (v2 ¼ 19.18, df ¼ 4,p < .05). There was no significant gender difference inthe participation of bullying behaviour as part of agroup.

Discussion

The baseline survey of beginning secondary schoolstudents revealed significant reports of bullying con-sistent with existing Australian data; at least one thirdof the student sample reported that they had personallyexperienced bullying. This finding is consistent withother large school surveys in Australia (Bond et al.,2001) and overseas (Haynie et al., 2001; Nansel et al.,2001) and suggests that the current sample is repre-

sentative of the larger population of beginning secon-dary school students. While many students reporthaving been bullied by others, a smaller proportion ofstudents reported that they bullied others, either ontheir own or as a group. Again, this finding is consistentwith the research literature that indicates thatapproximately one-fifth of students will admit to bully-ing others.

There were few sex differences, although the types ofbullying behaviours experienced were largely consistentwith the research literature. Boys were more likely thangirls to have experienced direct physical bullying, whilegirls were more likely than boys to have experienceddirect verbal bullying. It is of interest that there was nogender difference in the experience of indirect or socialbullying such as being left out of things on purpose,which is usually considered to be the domain of girls.Contrary to expectations that female students would bemore likely than male students to be involved in bully-ing as part of a group, there was no sex difference onthis measure. Instead, boys were more likely to reportbullying someone else on their own.

It was predicted that the provision of a brief educa-tional intervention to teachers, parents and studentswould produce a shift in attitudes and behaviours. Morespecifically, it was predicted that there would be a moresympathetic attitude to the victims of bullying and adecreased acceptance of bullying among students afterone year in schools that received education compared toschools that did not. However it was found that studentsin �intervention� schools did not appear to change intheir attitudes towards bullying or victims across thetwo time points relative to students in the �control�schools. Instead the sample as a whole demonstratedstable pro-bullying attitudes, which contrasts withRigby (1997) who found an increase in pro-bullyingattitudes across the middle school years, with peaks atage 15–16 for boys and 13–14 for girls. The finding thatthe sample as a whole tended to report stable attitudestowards victims across time might also be favourablyinterpreted given previously reported findings that pos-itive attitudes towards victims tend to decrease acrossthe high school years (Menesini, et al., 1997; Rigby &Slee, 1991). However, this finding needs to be temperedagainst the poor internal consistency of this measure inthe current sample, particularly among girls.

It was also predicted that the intervention wouldproduce significantly fewer incidents of reported bully-

Table 1. Means and standard deviations of outcome variables across time and condition

Intervention (n ¼ 152) Control (n ¼ 248)

Time 1 Time 2 Time 1 Time 2

Attitude to victim scale 28.13 (2.10) 28.45 (1.94) 27.22 (2.33) 27.59 (2.38)Attitude to bullying scale 24.85 (7.10) 24.79 (7.35) 21.91 (8.11) 23.51 (8.78)Prevalence of bullying 2.20 (0.54) 2.25 (0.56) 2.26 (0.54) 2.25 (0.52)Experience of being bullied 5.14 (1.21) 5.47 (1.12) 5.29 (1.05) 5.48 (1.08)Perceived school safety 1.81 (0.63) 1.83 (0.59) 1.84 (0.72) 1.89 (0.71)Likelihood of telling somebody 1.59 (0.78) 1.72 (0.96) 1.65 (0.99) 1.86 (1.13)Ability to stop others bullying 1.77 (0.64) 1.71 (0.65) 1.58 (0.63) 1.61 (0.63)Attempts to stop others bullying 2.37 (0.86) 2.34 (0.83) 2.32 (0.97) 2.23 (0.94)Ability to join in bullying 4.34 (1.52) 4.62 (1.31) 4.34 (1.59) 4.40 (1.48)Bullying others with group 1.47 (0.70) 1.39 (0.72) 1.36 (0.75) 1.41 (0.76)Bullying others alone 1.30 (0.60) 1.17 (0.46) 1.30 (0.66) 1.31 (0.64)

24 Caroline Hunt

ing after one year. However, there were no differences inthe degree to which reported bullying incidents changedover time between students in the �intervention� versus�control� schools. Instead, in all schools there was asignificant decrease across time in children’s reports ofhaving been bullied. This finding is consistent withWhitney and Smith’s (1993) findings of a decreaseacross time in reports of being bullied. However, therewas a significant difference between the �control� and�intervention� schools in the number of students whoreported having bullied others. The decreased reportingof bullying others was limited to one group of malestudents in a co-educational school. While this appearsto be a strong effect, the small sample size and thelocation of this effect within one school means that theresults require replication before definite conclusionscan be drawn about the possible effects of an educa-tional intervention on boys� bullying behaviour. Therewere no apparent decreases in bullying others amongfemale students who made up the vast majority of thesample. For female students in particular, the findingsare consistent with previous research that shows agradual decrease in the proportion of students who arebullied over time from the age of 13, but no decrease inthe prevalence of those who bully others. It is possiblethat the same number of bullies come to target asmaller number of peers across secondary school.While this pattern may be developmental in nature, thechanges may also reflect efforts within the schools totarget school bullying. It is possible that schools thatvolunteer to be involved in research, are more engagedin strategies to counter bullying than the average schoolwhether assigned to an �intervention� condition or not.For example, in the current study one �control� schoolstaged an anti-bullying play between the two assess-ment occasions.

There are a number of limitations to the research, inpart due to the inherent difficulties in conductingschool-based research, but which need to be taken intoaccount when interpreting the findings. All schoolsvolunteered to be part of the study, and thus it ispossible that these schools are different in their moti-vation to implement anti-bullying initiatives relative tothe wider population of schools. Only five schoolscompleted the study, there were no single sex boys�schools, and there was only one co-educational schoolin the intervention condition. Similarly, the low parti-cipation rate raises the possibility of a selection biasamong the participants, meaning that the findingsmight not be generalisable to the larger population ofschool students. While the classroom-based activitieswere standardised, no assessment of adherence to theintervention was made, possibly calling into questionthe fidelity of the intervention. The post-test was con-ducted 1 year later to control for seasonal effects andthe period of time over which students rated theirexperiences of bullying. In hindsight, it might have beenuseful to assess for an immediate impact of the inter-vention, to determine if there were short-term effectsthat diminished over time. Furthermore, given thesuggestion of sex differences it would have been usefulto assess the prevalence of different types of bullyingbehaviour such as direct and indirect bullying. Not-withstanding these limitations, the study adds to thebody of school-based research that suggests that

changes in bullying behaviours are difficult to achievewith educational approaches alone. The strengths ofthe study include the randomised, prospective design,and the use of an intervention that is brief and relativelyeasy to administer in the school setting.

ConclusionsThe finding of significant levels of bullying acrossschools, consistent with other surveys, provides animpetus for further research into this problem. How-ever, the brief educational component did little toimpact attitudes towards bullying or actual bullyingbehaviour, with the possible exception of male stu-dents within one school. If replicated, this findingwould support the wider application of a relativelybrief and simple intervention to decrease the inci-dence of bullying amongst male students. It is unclearwhether the intervention had no impact on the femaleparticipants, or whether the impact was renderedinsignificant in the context of well established anti-bullying policies in schools in the current project. It isnoteworthy that such policies are consistent with theoriginal Olweus program that featured clear rules andsalient consequences for engaging in bullying beha-viour, and adequate playground supervision. Hencethe findings are consistent with previous researchthat indicates that school-based educational approa-ches do not have a reliable and significant effect onrates of bullying. The current study perhaps bestillustrates that there are no easy solutions in dealingwith the problem of bullying in schools. Given re-search findings that suggest that students in secon-dary schools can be more resistant to anti-bullyinginitiatives, developmental factors may be important,with adolescents less likely to respond to ideas andrules introduced by teachers (Stevens et al., 2000). Inthe current study only 38% of students indicated thatthey would be interested in working with teachers tostop bullying. Alternatively, approaches that focus onmore proximal determinants of aggression, such associal information processing, might be more prom-ising (Bellmore et al., 2005). As there are likely to befactors other than attitudes and classroom norms thatinfluence bullying behaviour (Salmivall & Voeten,2004) we need to better understand variables thatinfluence bullying behaviours, at the individual, socialand institutional levels.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported, in part, by a University ofSydney Sesqui New Staff Support Grant. I would like toalso acknowledge the support of the Sydney CatholicEducation Office and the students and teachers whoparticipated in this project.

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26 Caroline Hunt