ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

The Bullying Literature Project:

An Evaluation of a Class-wide Bullying Intervention Program

by

Lauren Kelley Couch

Master of Arts, Graduate Program in Education

University of California, Riverside, June 2015

Dr. Cixin Wang, Chairperson

As the problem of bullying on school campuses gains more attention among educators nationwide, the need for effective bullying prevention programs increases. Existing bullying interventions have either had mixed results in terms of effectiveness or have been highly resource intensive and challenging to implement. This study seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of The Bullying Literature Project (BLP), a brief class-wide bullying intervention designed to integrate into the existing curriculum and provide educators a cost-effective way to target bullying on campus. The BLP was implemented for five weeks in four elementary school classrooms; two fourth grade classrooms served as a waitlist control. Students completed a pre-test and post-test examining bullying behavior, victimization, bystander defending behavior, victim coping behavior, and attitudes related to bullying. Teachers completed a pre-test and post-test in which they reported on the bullying behavior, victimization, and pro-social behavior of their students. After controlling for gender and grade level, the results of a repeated measures ANOVA revealed significant treatment effects for teacher report of students’ pro-social behavior. A significant treatment effect was also found for student self-reported pro-bullying attitudes. Students in the control classrooms reported an increase in pro-bullying attitudes, while students in the treatment classroom did not show a change. However, no differences were seen between the treatment and control classrooms for student- or teacher- reported bullying or victimization. Additionally, no treatment effects were seen for bystander defending or victim coping behavior. Implications for practice for school psychologists and directions for future research are discussed.

A large proportion of adolescents experience significant psychological distress, but a vast majority never obtain needed mental health services. The availability of school-based mental health services has increased immensely in recent years, but ongoing challenges impact students’ utilization of these services. Research on mental health help seeking pathways for adolescents suggests that mental health literacy (MHL), stigma towards seeking help, and context-specific barriers to care are key factors to consider. However, much of the existing literature on these constructs has not focused on help seeking in school-based mental health care settings or has taken place outside of the United States. The present study sought to explore the relationships between MHL, stigma, and school-based barriers to care, as well as to examine how these factors are related to mental health help seeking intentions in school settings. Structural equation modeling procedures (e.g., path analysis) and logistic regressions were used to estimate the relationships between variables of interest. Path analyses revealed an inverse relationship than expected between MHL and adolescents’ help seeking intentions; results suggested that higher levels of MHL negatively predicted adolescents’ school-based help seeking intentions for services. Results from logistic regression analyses suggested that informational barriers to care in schools predicted adolescent help seeking intentions; students who endorsed fewer informational barriers to care were more likely to express help seeking intentions for school-based mental health services. Significant associations were also found between perceived stigma and barriers to care in schools. Specific findings highlighted the importance of providing information to students about mental health services available at their school. Furthermore, study findings may assist researchers and school-based personnel better understand and support adolescents’ help seeking for school-based mental health services.

Previous research has suggested that moral disengagement is strongly associated with bullying. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a five-week class-wide bullying intervention, The Bullying Literature Project - Moral Disengagement Version (BLP-MD), on moral disengagement and bullying among elementary school students. This intervention is developed to be incorporated into a general language arts curriculum and uses bibliotherapy (i.e., reading children’s books on topics related to bullying), writing, and role-playing activities to teach students social skills and promote moral reasoning and positive bystanding. A quasi-experimental design using mixed ANOVA was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the BLP-MD. A sample of 84 grade students from four classrooms and their teachers participated in this study. The results revealed significant time by treatment interactions for decreasing both victimization and moral disengagement in treatment classrooms compared to wait-list control classrooms. That is, the combination of the between-subjects factor (BLP-MD versus control) and within-subjects factor (time) influenced these dependent variables. The program also resulted in improved perception of peer friendships and was rated as having high social validity for both students and their teachers.

Bullying victimization is a problem that permeates schools today, and the current literature base reveals an association between bullying victimization and negative mental health outcomes. Further, students of minority ethnic backgrounds (e.g., Asian American adolescents) have been shown to be at an increased risk of bullying victimization. This victimization based on ethnic group membership has been coined peer ethnic victimization. One group of students that are more at-risk for peer victimization is Sikh American adolescents, which may result from them being stereotyped as foreigners by others. The purpose of this study was to examine victimization and mental health outcomes in Sikh American adolescents. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was utilized to examine the relationships among wearing a religious head covering, being perceived as a foreigner, different types of victimization (i.e., physical, verbal, and relational) and mental health outcomes (i.e., self-esteem, depressive symptoms, and anxiety related to perceptions of school safety) for these students. The final model suggested that being perceived as a foreigner mediated the relationship between wearing a religious head covering and all three types of victimization, and that victimization mediated the relationship between being perceived as a foreigner and mental health outcomes. Implications for school psychologists are discussed.