Caregivers' Advice and Children's Bystander Behaviors During Bullying Incidents.

Many bullying prevention programs take a bystander approach, which encourages children to intervene when they are bystanders to bullying incidents. Little is known about how caregivers' advice to children might promote or undermine the positive bystander behaviors targeted by these programs. Accordingly, the aim of the current study was to investigate relations between caregivers' advice and children's bystander behavior during bullying situations. Participants were 106 racially/ethnically diverse 4th- and 5th-grade students (M age = 10.5 years, SD = .71 years), their classmates, and their caregivers. During classroom visits, peers reported on children's bystander behaviors. During home visits, caregivers and children completed a coded interaction task in which caregivers advised children about how to respond to bullying situations at school. Results suggested that (a) bystander intervention was positively predicted by caregivers' advice to help/comfort the victim, (b) bystander passivity was positively predicted by caregivers' advice to not intervene and negatively predicted by caregivers' advice to help/comfort the victim, and (c) bystander reinforcement/assistance of the bully was positively predicted by caregivers' advice not to intervene and not to tell adults. Results support a link between caregivers' advice at home and children's corresponding behavior when they are bystanders to bullying situations at school. These results emphasize the importance of collaboration between families and schools to reduce school bullying. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Teacher factors contributing to dosage of the KiVa anti-bullying program.

The KiVa Anti-Bullying Program (KiVa) seeks to meet the growing need for anti-bullying programming through a school-based, teacher-led intervention for elementary school children. The goals of this study were to examine how intervention dosage impacts outcomes of KiVa and how teacher factors influence dosage. Participants included 74 teachers and 1409 4th- and 5th-grade students in nine elementary schools. Teachers and students completed data collection at the beginning and end of the school year, including measures of bullying and victimization, correlates of victimization (depression, anxiety, peer rejection, withdrawal, and school avoidance), intervention cognitions/emotions (anti-bullying attitudes, and empathy toward victims), bystander behaviors, and teacher factors thought to relate to dosage (self-efficacy for teaching, professional burnout, perceived principal support, expected effectiveness of KiVa, perceived feasibility of KiVa). The dosage of KiVa delivered to classrooms was measured throughout the school year. Results highlight dosage as an important predictor of change in bullying, victimization, correlates of victimization, bystander behavior, and intervention cognitions/emotions. Of the teacher factors, professional burnout uniquely predicted intervention dosage. A comprehensive structural equation model linking professional burnout to dosage and then to child-level outcomes demonstrated good fit. Implications for intervention design and implementation are discussed.

Use of latent profile analysis to assess the validity of a peer-rejected group of children.

The goal of this article was to validate the existence and qualities of a peer-rejected group of children using latent profile analysis (LPA). Two separate racially/ethnically diverse samples (Study 1: N = 2,052 second graders; Study 2: N = 594 fourth and fifth graders) completed peer nominations of liking and disliking, from which we calculated Social Preference and Social Impact scores. These scores served as indicators in the LPAs to form LPA groups. In addition, we collected self-, teacher-, and peer-report report data on aggression, depressive symptoms, peer victimization, and social competence. In each sample, an LPA group emerged in which most children were classified as rejected using the Coie, Dodge, and Coppotelli ( 1982 ; CDC) approach (Study 1: 95%; Study 2: 86%). However, in both samples, only a minority of children classified as rejected using the CDC approach fell into this LPA group (Study 1: 46%; Study 2: 36%). The LPA group that mirrored the CDC rejected group received more maladjusted scores than all other LPA groups on aggression, depressive symptoms, peer victimization, and social competence. Furthermore, when compared to children classified as rejected using only the CDC approach, children classified as rejected under both the LPA and CDC approaches were more maladjusted in terms of all sociometric and socioemotional variables. LPA analyses across two developmental levels validated the existence of an empirically derived group of children who overlapped closely with the CDC rejected group. However, this group was considerably smaller and more maladjusted than the CDC rejected group.