Anti-bullying interventions at school: aspects of programme adaptation and critical issues for further programme development

Abstract

Recently, a growing interest in problems at school of peer aggression and victimization was observed. As a result, intervention strategies appropriate for this kind of problem were required. The Norwegian anti-bullying intervention that was developed and evaluated by Olweus (1992) in the region of Bergen was considered to be a good model for other countries to implement interventions against peer aggression within the school environment. It was therefore adapted to the educational settings of other countries. This paper aims to discuss the adaptation processes of the Bergen anti-bullying programme and to give guidelines to advance further programme development. For this, the DFE Sheffield Bullying Project (Smith and Sharp, 1994), the Anti-bullying Intervention in Toronto schools (Pepler et al., 1994) and the Flemish anti-bullying project (Stevens and Van Oost, 1994) were considered in the analyses. Discussion of the adaptation processes of the Bergen model programme revealed that the adapted interventions largely succeeded in incorporating the core components of the Bergen model programme, taking into account the characteristics of the implementation environment. This suggests that for bully/victim interventions, the dilemma of programme fidelity and programme adaptation could be solved adequately. However, from a health promotion perspective, some critical issues for programme improvement were observed. Three suggestions for change were made, indicating that anti-bullying actions at schools may benefit from: (i) a clear overview of the learning objectives, specified per target population; (ii) more attention to parental involvement and family interventions; and (iii) additional information about the adoption processes of the anti-bullying interventions within schools.