Prevention 2.0: Targeting Cyberbullying @ School

Abstract

Although cyberbullying is characterized by worrying prevalence rates and associated with a broad range of detrimental consequences, there is a lack of scientifically based and evaluated preventive strategies. Therefore, the present study introduces a theory-based cyberbullying prevention program (Media Heroes; German original: Medienhelden) and evaluates its effectiveness. In a pretest-posttest design (9-month interval), schools were asked to randomly assign their participating classes to either control or intervention group. Longitudinal data were available from 593 middle school students (M Age = 13.3 years, 53 % girls) out of 35 classes, who provided information on cyberbullying behavior as well as socio-demographic and psychosocial variables. While the present results revealed worrying prevalence rates of cyberbullying in middle school, multilevel analyses clearly demonstrate the program's effectiveness in reducing cyberbullying behavior within intervention classes in contrast to classes of the control group. Hence, this study presents a promising program which evidentially prevents cyberbullying in schools.

Effects of the cyberbullying prevention program media heroes (Medienhelden) on traditional bullying

“…Media Heroes (Medienhelden in German) is a theoretically based preventive intervention program developed in Germany for the school context (Schultze-Krumbholz, Zagorscak, Siebenbrock, & Scheithauer, 2012;W€ olfer et al, 2014). Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and on the participant roles approach to understanding bullying dynamics (Salmivalli, 2010), Media Heroes seeks to prevent cyberbullying mainly by promoting empathy, providing knowledge about definitions, Internet risks and safety, and legal consequences, and promoting assertive ways for bystanders to intervene.…”

“…Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and on the participant roles approach to understanding bullying dynamics (Salmivalli, 2010), Media Heroes seeks to prevent cyberbullying mainly by promoting empathy, providing knowledge about definitions, Internet risks and safety, and legal consequences, and promoting assertive ways for bystanders to intervene. Activities include role-playing, debates, analyses of written stories, news and films, cooperative learning, and student-parent presentations (for more details see Schultze-Krumbholz, Zagorscak, Siebenbrock & Scheithauer, this issue;W€ olfer et al, 2014). Activities include role-playing, debates, analyses of written stories, news and films, cooperative learning, and student-parent presentations (for more details see Schultze-Krumbholz, Zagorscak, Siebenbrock & Scheithauer, this issue;W€ olfer et al, 2014).…”

An Investigation of Short-Term Longitudinal Associations Between Social Anxiety and Victimization and Perpetration of Traditional Bullying and Cyberbullying

“…Most research has reported higher prevalence rates of victimization and perpetration for traditional bullying than for cyberbullying (Juvonen and Gross 2008;Kowalski and Limber 2013). Traditional bullying seems to peak during middle school (or the first 2 years of secondary school), whereas cyberbullying peaks somewhat later (for an overview of prevalence rates, see, for instance: Kowalski et al 2014;Olweus and Limber 2010;Wölfer et al 2014).…”

Efficacy of Cyberbullying Prevention on Somatic Symptoms—Randomized Controlled Trial Applying a Reasoned Action Approach

“…Participating schools decided whether they wanted to participate in IG‐L or IG‐S and school principals and/or heads of departments randomly assigned the classes to the conditions (see also Wölfer et al., ). Schools were asked in advance to provide a control group class for every intervention class.…”

“…For other publications that used parts of the data set at hand to answer different research questions see Wölfer et al. () and Schultze‐Krumbholz et al. ().…”