Are internet-supported anti-bullying interventions effective among primary and secondary school students?

In a recent study published in the journal EClinical Medicinea group of researchers from Spain conducted a randomized controlled trial in groups of primary and secondary schools to evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-component web-based intervention in schools to prevent bullying and improve the school’s social environment.

Study: A school-based intervention to prevent cyberbullying (LINKlusive): a cluster randomized trial. Image credit: Lopolo/Shutterstock.com

Record

Bullying is rapidly becoming a major public health concern due to its mental health effects, social consequences, and negative health effects across the lifespan.

It involves repeated and intentional aggression involving physical or emotional harm caused by one or more perpetrators to one of their peers in situations where there is an imbalance of power, either on a physical or social scale.

Bullying has been observed in different cultures and countries and is a global problem, especially in schools.

Statistics show that a third of the world’s population has experienced bullying at least once in their lifetime, and these numbers are higher in certain populations that are considered particularly vulnerable, such as minorities and people with disabilities or special educational needs.

School programs for education and prevention of bullying are considered effective as schools provide the optimal environment and opportunity to build social and emotional skills and develop relationships with peers.

About the study

In the present study, researchers evaluated the effectiveness of a web-enabled, multi-component anti-bullying intervention called LINKlusive that combined the training, assessment, and coaching components of the intervention into one web-enabled package.

The tool also contains sociometric assessments that can guide interventions with a targeted approach and content to respect diversity.

Through a meta-analysis, researchers found that anti-bullying interventions have been shown to be cost-effective, with the effects of such interventions being maintained for 144 weeks. These interventions have also been shown to be effective among both primary and secondary school students.

However, bullying is a complex phenomenon, the management of which would require a systematic and thorough approach involving the active participation of not only students but also parents and teachers.

Furthermore, despite the overall cost-effectiveness of in-person anti-bullying interventions, the short-term financial and enduring time demands of such interventions limit the implementation of these interventions in various contexts.

Internet-based interventions provide an alternative to implementing these interventions in larger contexts, with studies indicating comparable effectiveness to in-person anti-bullying interventions.

For this school-based cluster randomized controlled trial, researchers hypothesized that a 12-week LINKlusive intervention would significantly reduce bullying.

The primary outcome measure was a reduction in peer-reported bullying, while secondary aims of the study were to assess how effective the intervention was on other measures of bullying, such as mental health outcomes including depressive symptoms, psychopathology, self-esteem. and overall quality of life.

In addition, the researchers also examined the impact of these interventions at baseline on students with special educational needs and other victims of bullying in subgroups based on primary or secondary academic level and gender. The study also looked at whether the effects of the intervention were maintained over a year.

Results

The results suggest that web-enabled school-based anti-bullying interventions such as LINKlusive could potentially reduce bullying among primary school students but not among secondary schools, especially those that enroll students with special educational needs.

Among elementary school students, the impact of the Internet-based intervention was comparable to that previously reported for other anti-bullying programs implemented in schools.

The intervention was also found to be effective in reducing the incidence of depressive symptoms and improving overall quality of life in students with initial exposure to bullying.

The researchers believe that the intervention was only effective in younger children and not in secondary school students because interventions like LINKlusive are based on the social structure of the classroom.

Therefore, such interventions are likely to be effective only in age groups for whom the classroom is the fundamental environment for a peer group, as opposed to adolescents, where peer groups often form outside of school.

However, the results supported the utility and ease of implementation of a cost-effective anti-bullying intervention that could be widely applied to elementary school children for targeted anti-bullying education and prevention.

conclusions

In summary, the study examined the effectiveness of internet-enabled anti-bullying interventions in primary and secondary school settings.

Findings suggested that due to the importance of classroom structure in peer groups among primary school students, interventions such as LINKlusive could effectively prevent bullying. However, such interventions do not appear to be effective among adolescents in high school.