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Reducing Bullying and Victimization: Student- and Classroom-Level Mechanisms of Change

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Abstract

This longitudinal study examines the mediating mechanisms by which the KiVa antibullying program, based on the Participant Role approach, reduces bullying and victimization among elementary school students. Both student-level mechanisms leading to reduced perpetration of bullying and classroom-level mechanisms leading to reductions in bullying and victimization are considered. Analyses are based on a sample of 7,491 students (49.5 % boys) nested within 421 classrooms within 77 schools. At the beginning of program implementation, the children were in Grades 4, 5, and 6 (mean age 11.3 years). Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to analyze whether changes in the hypothesized mediators accounted for later reductions in the outcomes. At the student level, antibullying attitudes and perceptions regarding peers’ defending behaviors and teacher attitudes toward bullying mediated the effects of KiVa on self-reported bullying perpetration. The effects on peer-reported bullying were only mediated by antibullying attitudes. At the classroom level, the program effects on both self- and peer-reported bullying were mediated by students’ collective perceptions of teacher attitudes toward bullying. Also, perceived reinforcing behaviors predicted bullying but did not emerge as a significant mediator. Finally, bullying mediated the effects of the classroom-level factors on victimization. These findings enhance knowledge of the psychosocial developmental processes contributing to bullying and victimization and shed light on the key mechanisms by which school bullying can successfully be counteracted.

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Notes

  1. Although observed variables (i.e., scale means at the student level) were used in the primary analyses, confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were first performed on all the items or parcels created by averaging a given set of items (see Little et al. 2013). The CFAs established support for the hypothesized structure of the constructs of interest. Furthermore, tests of weak factorial invariance (i.e., invariance of the factor loadings) at the different levels indicated full invariance across time for all the constructs. Thus, analyses of the structural relations between the measures were warranted (Vandenberg and Lance 2000). Details regarding the CFAs are not reported in the current paper but are available by request from the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland

    Silja Saarento & Christina Salmivalli

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    Aaron J. Boulton

  3. Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, Australia

    Christina Salmivalli

Authors
  1. Silja Saarento
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  2. Aaron J. Boulton
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  3. Christina Salmivalli
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Correspondence to Silja Saarento.

Additional information

The data used in this study were collected during a randomized controlled evaluation trial of the KiVa program developed at the University of Turku. The development of the program and the related research is funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. The present study was also supported by the Academy of Finland Grants 121091 and 135577 to Christina Salmivalli and by the Turku University Foundation’s grant to Silja Saarento. We thank the whole KiVa project team, and especially Marita Kantola and Jonni Nakari, for their contributions to the data collection.

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Saarento, S., Boulton, A.J. & Salmivalli, C. Reducing Bullying and Victimization: Student- and Classroom-Level Mechanisms of Change. J Abnorm Child Psychol 43, 61–76 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-013-9841-x

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