KiVa - Bangor University

Transcription

Canolfan Ymyrraeth Cynnar
ar Sail Tystiolaeth
Centre for Evidence Based
Early Intervention
Adeilad Nantlle
Safle Normal
Prifysgol Bangor
Gwynedd. LL57 2PZ.
Ffôn: 01248 383 758
Nantlle Building
Normal Site
Bangor University
Gwynedd. LL57 2PZ.
Tel: 01248 383 758
E-bôst/ E-mail: [email protected]
Gweinyddu/Administration: [email protected]
Gwefan/ Website: https://www.bangor.ac.uk/psychology/cebei/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ cebei_bangor
KiVa Anti-bullying
Programme
Professor Judy Hutchings and Suzy Clarkson
May 2016
Cyfarwyddwraig/Director:
Professor Judy Hutchings, DClinPsy, FBPsS.
Index
1. What is KiVa?
2. Evidence from Finland
3. KiVa in the UK - introduction
4. Evaluating KiVa in the UK
5. Training opportunities in the UK
6. Extract from the ESTYN report “Action on
bullying” – case study Marlborough School
7. Publications and media coverage
Further information about the KiVa Anti-bullying programme is available from:
Dilys Williams,
Ground Floor,
Nantlle Building,
Normal Site,
Bangor University,
Gwynedd. LL57 2PZ.
Tel. No: 01248 383 758.
E-mail Address: [email protected]
1. KiVa, a school based anti-bullying programme Why
was KiVa developed?
Alongside achieving excellent academic outcomes (Sahlberg 2011), the Finnish Government decided to make a
concerted effort to enhance child well-being and recognised the need to monitor bullying levels. For many years
the government relied upon legislation that placed obligations on schools to design their own action plans and
required a commitment from school staff to intervene immediately in bullying situations (“zero tolerance”)
however this failed to produce any changes in levels of child reported bullying. At the same time Prof. Salmivalli
and colleagues, at Turku University had completed many years of research on the architecture of bullying and
the role of bystanders, so the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture contracted with Turku University to
develop and evaluate a bullying programme for schools within the Finnish comprehensive system (grades one
to nine, children aged seven to fifteen years).
What is KiVa?
KiVa is an acronym for “Kiusaamista Vastaan” (against bullying) and kiva is also a Finnish adjective for nice
(Salmivalli, 2010). The programme is based on robust research that shows how the responses of bystanders
maintain or decrease bullying behaviour (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist et al., 1996). It aims to affect norms
and skills, behaviour, attitudes, and the classroom and school climate. The programme has universal actions, at
both class and school level, and indicated actions that address confirmed cases of bullying.
Universal components
The universal curriculum contains three lesson units suitable for ages 7-9, 10-12, and 13-15 years respectively.
Training, resources, class lessons, online activities, and parental advice and support have been developed.
Units 1 and 2 both have ten structured lessons, each lasting approximately an hour and a half. Typically, these
are split into two 45-minute lessons a month and cover being part of a team, respect for others, learning about
emotions, group interaction processes and group pressure. They also provide explanations about types of
bullying, how it is influenced by the bystander, its consequences and how both individuals and the class as a
group can reduce it. The lessons include: discussions (class and small groups), role-play, video clips of people
talking about having been bullied, group work, written assignments and whole class activities. Both Units have
online games linked to lesson topics that teach pupils by developing knowledge “I know”, rehearsing what to do
“I can”, and transferring these skills into everyday life “I do”. The games can be played at school and/or at
home.
The programme contains power-point presentations to guide teachers through the lessons, for whole school
assemblies and for parent evenings. KiVa posters are displayed throughout the school and yellow, high visibility
KiVa vests are worn by staff at break and lunchtimes to remind both pupils and staff that they are in a KiVa
school. Parent involvement and support is encouraged and KiVa has a public access website for parents and
other individuals interested in learning more about KiVa, bullying and how to support children to speak up about
and/or stand against bullying.
Through the class lessons, the programme promotes social skills, such as making friends and supporting and
protecting children from victimisation. This increases pupil empathy for their bullied peers (Pelegrini, 2002)
providing them with the foundations for friendships, conflict resolutions and social responsibility. Giving bullied
pupils friendship skills reduces their risk of being bullied and increases the likelihood of their being accepted
(Hanish, Ryan, Martin, & Fabes, 2005). Pupils possessing higher levels of empathy are typically more socially
skilled, liked by their peers, and less aggressive (Arsenio, Cooperman, & Lover, 2000; Denham, 2006).
Dealing with actual bullying incidents
The programme includes detailed actions that are undertaken by a KiVa team and the class teacher when a
bullying incident is identified. The KiVa team can include teachers, members of school staff, educational
psychologists, governors, etc. Incidents that are brought to staff attention are screened
against the KiVa definition of bullying. The definition of bullying is clearly defined, the behaviour of a more
powerful or high status child towards a lower status child (power imbalance), a repeated and an intentional act,
Cases that meet the three KiVa criteria, are dealt with by the KiVa team. In the Finnish randomised controlled
trial (RCT) approximately 60 per cent of referred cases were accepted by the KiVa team, on average nine cases
per school per year. Other problems were identified as misunderstanding, disagreements and unintentional acts
and are dealt with by normal school processes.
Indicated actions are scripted and discussions are short and solution focused. A member of the KiVa team first
meets the victim, to gain an understanding of the situation and offer support. The team then meets individually
with the bully or bullies. In this meeting the bully is asked to develop, and commit to, actions to help the victim.
Follow up meetings are arranged with both parties. The class teacher also arranges for one or two high status
peers, whom the victim has identified as not having been involved in the bullying, to support the victim. This
process encourages continued positive behaviour (Rigby, 1996).
Pupils complete an annual survey at the end of each school year reporting on whether they have been
victimised or have bullied others. The results are fed back to the school, along with national figures, so that their
progress in reducing bullying can be evaluated and compared with the results for the country as a whole. Only
the school sees its own results.
2. Evidence for KiVa from Finland
KiVa was developed, piloted and evaluated between 2006 and 2009, in an RCT involving 28,000 pupils in 234
schools (117 intervention and 117 control). Pupils completed a wide variety of assessments that included selfreports, peer reports and dyadic questions. Teachers also completed assessments concerning their attitudes
towards, and effectiveness and effort in, dealing with bullying incidents (Salmivalli, 2010).
After one year of implementation, KiVa significantly reduced both bullying and victimisation for seven to 11
year old children. Results for children aged 12 to 15 years varied according to gender, with larger effects for
boys than girls. The results also varied according to gender split of the class, with larger effect when there
was a higher proportion of boys in the class (Karna, Voeten, Little et al., 2011).
KiVa team actions with identified bullying cases demonstrated a 98% improvement in the victims’ situation and
bullying ceased in 86% of reported incidents (Karna, Voeten, Little, et al, 2011a). Other positive results included
improvements in academic engagement and school liking (Salmivalli, Garandeau, & Veenstra, 2012), increased
empathy towards victims and commitment to defend victims (Karna, Voeten, Little et al., 2011b) and reduced
internalising problems and negative peer perceptions (Williford, Boulton, Noland et al., 2011).
Following the successful RCT, a national roll out of KiVa began in autumn 2009, initially with 1450 schools
and KiVa is now delivered in over 90 per cent of comprehensive schools in Finland (approx. 2,700 schools)
and showing year on year reductions in bullying.
For further information on KiVa see www.kivakoulu.fi/there-is-no-bullying-in-kiva-school
3. KiVa in the UK – implementation
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, schools are required by law to have a policy for dealing with bullying.
However, as with Finland prior to the development of KiVa, the law only provides guidance on what is required
and the content and quality of work done varies considerably between schools (Smith et al., 2008b). A wide
range of interventions to reduce bullying are in use across the UK, including peer support programmes and the
Safe to Learn initiative (DCSF, 2008). However, to date there is little evidence of their effectiveness.
In 2011 Professor Salmivalli spoke about KiVa at Cambridge University and the first author then presented
the programme at a Welsh Government meeting of school improvement officers. In July 2011, the Welsh
Government invited Directors of Education to apply for a “Training in Behaviour Management” Grant. This
funding was provided for training in “well evaluated” approaches and
KiVa was included on the list. This led to our initial pilot trial in the 2012/3 academic year for which 17 schools
enrolled.
Evidence for KiVa in the UK
The Welsh Pilot trial
At commencement of the study, only Unit 2 (for children aged 9 to 11 years) had been translated in to English
because, in trials in Finland, this was the age at which the best results were obtained (Karna, Voeten, Little, et
al, 2011a). Fourteen Welsh schools from across North and South Wales and three Cheshire schools were
recruited and trained for delivery in the 2012/3 academic year. The programme was delivered to mainstream
Primary School pupils in Years 5 (age 9-10 years) and/or Year 6 (age 10-11 years) pupils.
Prof. Salmivalli and a colleague from Turku University delivered a one-day training course for staff from the 17
schools in North and in South Wales. Parallel teaching sessions were delivered on (1) the school wide universal
components - for the school KiVa lead and class teachers and (2) the targeted approach used to deal with
confirmed bullying incidents - for the KiVa team lead who is responsibility for implementing the targeted actions.
The authors supported the programme throughout the school year with telephone and email contact and with
termly meetings for school representatives at three locations across Wales. Support covered responses to
queries on the programme, implementation and data collection.
School registrations were processed through Bangor University and funding from the training enabled the
appointment of a part-time KiVa administrator. Training covered how to register and launch KiVa in your
school, how to set up and undertake the pupil survey, introduction to lesson content, materials and the KiVa
rules that are generated from the lessons, how to access the various online resources including the KiVa
games. In the parallel session KiVa team members were introduced to the scripted process delineating how
to deal with confirmed bullying incidents.
A European funded Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) was obtained to support evaluation of
this pilot trial by the second author in a partnership between Bangor University and Early Intervention
Wales Training Ltd.
The pupil measure was the annual KiVa online pupil survey that record whether pupils self-identify as victims,
non-victims, bullies or non-bullies. Versions of this questionnaire have been used by hundreds of researchers
world-wide, including in some large scale studies (Curry et al., 2012).
At the start of the survey the following definition of bullying is read to the children
“It is bullying when one or more children deliberately and repeatedly make another child feel bad.
The bully usually has power over the victim and the victim of bullying is usually unable to defend
himself or herself against the bully. A child is being bullied when one or more children say mean or
unkind things about him or her, make fun of him or her, or call him or her mean and unkind names,
completely ignore him or her, leave him or her out of their group of friends, or leave him or her
outside on purpose, hit, kick, push or order him or her around or, for example, lock him or her in a
room try to make other children dislike him or her by spreading lies about him or her, or by sending
mean notes or doing other unkind things other than the ones mentioned above. Also, it is bullying
when a child is teased repeatedly in a mean and unkind way. Friendly and playful teasing is not
bullying. It is also not bullying when children willingly argue or fight.”
A brief version of the definition is, additionally, supplied before each item to remind the pupils of the
nature of bullying within this study and the components of the definition, the requirements of intentionality,
repetition and power imbalance between the victim and the bully. In addition to the child survey teachers
completed questionnaires on their experience of delivering the programme.
The programme was delivered in the 17 schools to either year 5, year 6 or both years. Four schools delivered
the programme to year five pupils, eight to year six pupils and five to years five and six pupils, 748 pupils
received the programme.
Thirteen schools participated in both pre- and post-test measurements. Four schools were excluded, two did
not provide post-test data and two provided post-test data from less than 50% of pupils. The
pre-test response from the thirteen schools was 473 and the post-test response was 472, representing 82% of
the pupils in the intervention classes.
Results
The pre-test rate of self-reported victimisation was 16% and for bullying was six per cent. At post- test mean
victimisation decreased to nine per-cent, and bullying to two per-cent, a six per-cent reduction in victimisation
and four per-cent reduction in bullying.
A repeated-measures t-test demonstrated that significantly more pupils reporting being a victim at pre- than
at post-test, t(12,)=2.147, p(one tailed)=.01. For bullying, significantly more pupils self- reported bullying at
pre- than at post-test, t(12)=2.76, p(one tailed)=..01.
Follow-up of the KiVa pilot schools into their second year of receiving the programme has shown that the
reductions in bullying reported by year five children at the end of year five have been maintained at the end
of year six.
Teachers rated the experience of delivering the programme via an online survey. Delivery of the lessons was
reported to be “Easy”, by 73.3 per cent of respondents and 75-100 per cent of pupils were reported as
engaged with, and enthusiastic about, the lessons. The suitability of lessons for reducing bullying was rated
on a five-point scale. The mean response of 4.47 indicated that lessons were deemed very suitable for this
goal of reducing bullying. Teachers also gave very positive feedback about the level of discussion generated
by the programme lessons and reported that pupils who were not so forthcoming in other lessons enjoyed
contributing in KiVa lessons.
A recent “Action on Bullying” report by ESTYN (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales,
2014) the Welsh school inspection service, in June 2014, included a case study on Marlborough School,
Cardiff, one of the Welsh KiVa schools, as an example of good practice in addressing bullying (pp19-20).
The Lottery funded RCT trial
KiVa was selected for the trial in Wales due to the strong evidence, from the many trials conducted by the
programme developers, in both the rigorous RCT and the broader roll out of the programme across Finland.
The positive response to the Welsh pilot trial contributed to a decision to seek funding from the BIG Lottery
innovation fund for Wales for a small RCT of the KiVa programme This is currently being undertaken by a
partnership between the Dartington Social Research Unit and
Bangor University. This involves delivery of Unit 1 and 2 and targets all KS2 pupils,( years 3 – 6) in the twenty
schools from across Wales that were recruited.
5. Training for KiVa
The successful pilot outcomes led to the development of a plan to disseminate and provide support for
effective roll out of the programme (www.preventionresearch.org). There are a number of training and
support needs:
i)
a KiVa school coordinator needs to be trained and supported to take charge of the project within
the school to launch the KiVa programme and ensure that teachers and all school staff are trained
and resourced to deliver the universal aspects of the programme effectively. This person needs to
ensure that class lessons are delivered, parents are informed, KiVa posters are displayed and
KiVa vests are worn by playground supervisors.
ii)
training is needed in how to set up and run the on-line KiVa pupil survey and access to online
resources for teachers, parents and children. This requires back-up support and was provided in
the pilot trial by the authors, both psychologists.
iii)
KiVa team members require training in the strategies to address confirmed incidents of bullying.
KiVa training for the UK
Following training in Finland, the Bangor Centre is now licensed as the UK Centre and able to offer training for
both schools and for trainers who will take responsibility for disseminating to, and training, schools in their
locality. We are offering both types of training during the spring term 2016. Our training license covers the whole
of the UK.
KiVa Anti-Bullying Programme: Training for Schools
Training Date: 14th & 15th March 2017 at CEBEI offices at Bangor University
KiVa training for schools
Training for schools wishing to deliver KiVa in 2017-2018 will be delivered on 14th & 15th March 2017 subject
to sufficient interest. This will be a two-day training. Two staff from each participating school should attend the
training. One would ideally be the Head Teacher or school KiVa co-ordinator who will be responsible for
introducing KiVa into the school, undertaking the general implementation of the universal programme,
introducing the programme to the whole school staff, organizing the KiVa online pupil survey, planning the
launch within the school, and with parents, and ensuring that KS2 class teachers are resourced to deliver the
lessons. The other participant should be the KiVa team lead who will co-ordinate the activities of the small team
that will address any confirmed bullying incidents. The workshops cover the school wide universal programme
and the KiVa team strategies for dealing with confirmed bullying incidents. The training costs £600 per school
(plus VAT) and includes one copy of the Unit 1 and 2 manuals for KS2 with their detailed lesson plans and
materials.
Prior to the training, schools need to register, through our Centre, with KiVa Finland in order to access the
additional teacher material. The initial cost of KiVa registration for a school in the first year is £2.50 per KS2
pupil with a minimum payment of £200. In subsequent years the registration costs £2 per KS2 pupil with a
minimum payment of £150 (all prices plus VAT). This gives schools access to online resources and the annual
child survey and enables children to play the on-line games at home or in school. Schools also need to
purchase a manual for each KS2 class teacher and associated resources. Further details on the cost of school
participation in this programme are set out below:
First year Registration costs £2.50 (plus VAT) per KS2 pupil (minimum £200 plus VAT)
Subsequent Registration costs £2.00 (plus VAT) per KS2 pupil (minimum £150 plus VAT)
Unit 1 and 2 manuals - £50 each (one per KS2 teacher)
KiVa school posters @ £7.50 (plus VAT) for six
A2 KiVa Rules posters @ £1.00 (plus VAT) each (optional)
A4 KiVa Rule Cards @ £20.00 (plus VAT) for pack of 100 (optional)
KiVa playground vests/tabards @ £8.35 (plus VAT)
KiVa package 6 posters and 4 vests/tabards - £37.50 (plus VAT)*
* School are required to purchase one set of 6 posters and 4 tabards
KiVa Anti-Bullying Programme: Training for Trainers
Training Date: 14th & 15th March 2017
KiVa training for trainers
The course involves joining a two-day training for schools, currently scheduled for 14th & 15th March
2017. This provides an opportunity to learn the structure and content of school training programme.
The third day is a day for trainers only during which we discuss trainer related issues and support,
give advice on recruitment of, and ongoing support for, schools and cover all logistics about
registration of schools, collection of school annual fees, etc..
The training fee includes a copy of the Unit 1 and Unit 2 KiVa manuals, for KS2 pupils, plus other
KiVa resources and training resources to support delivery of training to schools. This training is
primarily intended for Local Authority sponsored trainers such as special schools advisers,
educational psychologists or representatives of other organisations with a strong interest in bullying
prevention, such as Healthy Schools coordinators, etc..
KiVa trainers can train and support schools in KiVa delivery within their agreed geographical areas.
Ongoing support for trainers will be provided from our Centre in Bangor. The three day training plus
materials costs £1000 + VAT and the trainer’s representatives must also pay a £1,000 +VAT license
fee to KiVa Finland, for the right to use this material as a trainer. This license will be renewed every
two years and renewal is likely to involve an online update and a small renewal of the license fee.
KiVa trainer – additional information
Once trained and registered trainers can recruit and train schools in your locality. There is no set
fee for the provision of training. We envisage that some Authorities will fund trainer training and
provide free training for schools whereas others will have different arrangements. We will inform
you of any enquiries from schools in your area.
Trainer responsibilities
The contract will be with your organisation that will invoice schools for their initial and ongoing
annual registration with KiVa Finland and for the cost of the additional materials, manuals, posters
and tabards. This money will be collected by your organisation and paid to Finland through the
KiVa UK office at Bangor.
Follow-up support for trainers
In order to support KiVa trainers, in addition to email and telephone consultation, we plan to hold
workshops to provide an opportunity for feedback and sharing of experiences. These will be offered
for £50 per day to cover basic admin and refreshments. Location of support days will be decided
later, depending on the location of trainers.
KiVa conferences in 2016
The results from our pilot trial were presented at our annual conferences on 2 February 2016 in
Bangor and 3rd February 2016 in Cardiff. We were also fortunate to obtain funds to bring Prof
Salmivalli, who developed the KiVa programme at the University of Turku, to speak at these two
conferences at which KiVa schools in Wales talked about their experience with the programme.
Conference presentations and additional information on published papers relating to KiVa in the UK
are available on our website (https://www.bangor.ac.uk/psychology/cebei/).
nd
Following the conference a presentation was made to the Welsh Government Anti-bullying leadership
group with data from the 60+ schools that are delivering KiVa which reports baseline rates of reported
victimisation at 22% and of perpetrating bullying at 7% from a sample of 6200+ pupils. Data from
3500+ children in 44 schools in Wales that had delivered KiVa for one year showed reductions of 7%
in reported victimization and of 2.5% in reported bullying perpetration. This presentation is also on
the website (https://www.bangor.ac.uk/psychology/cebei/).
6. Extract from ESTYN report “Action on Bullying: A review of the effectiveness of action taken by
schools to address bullying on the grounds of pupil’s protected characteristics” June 2014.
Marlborough School was included as a case study for excellence in addressing bullying in this report although
the KiVa programme was not named, see extract below pp 20-21. See the Estyn Report at
http://www.estyn.gov.uk/english/docViewer/315915.6/action-on-bullying-june-2014/?navmap=30,163,
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Marlborough Primary School takes a comprehensive, strategic approach to dealing with bullying
Context
Marlborough Primary School serves the areas of Penylan and Roath in Cardiff. There are currently around 510 pupils on
roll, including around 60 part-time pupils in the nursery. The school has 16 classes and two specialist resource base
classrooms for children with moderate to complex learning difficulties. Currently, about a third of the pupils come from
ethnic minority backgrounds. Around a quarter of the pupils speak English as an additional language. Among these pupils,
there are 26 different home languages. Approximately 12% of pupils are entitled to free school meals. The school has
identified 10% of pupils as having additional learning needs, including 5% who have a statement of special educational
needs.
Strategy
Reported instances of bullying were relatively low, but the school felt that they were being reactive rather than proactive in
dealing with issues. Staff developed and piloted a more strategic approach to dealing with reported bullying. This
comprises a comprehensive programme of class lessons, web-based games, a website for parents and materials for
teachers.
The school anticipates any bullying and tries to prevent it from escalating. It deals robustly with all instances of bullying.
Action
As part of the strategy, the school established a project team consisting of a class teacher, teaching assistant and
educational psychologist.
The school used an online questionnaire as a baseline to find out about pupils’ perceptions and experiences of bullying.
The University of Bangor delivered an in-service training for the project team and a twilight session for all the school staff.
Following on from this, the project team delivered further training to school staff and an awareness session for parents
and carers.
The school is using the programme across key stage 2. Every month, all children receive a lesson on how to recognise
and deal with bullying and what to do if they experience or encounter bullying.
Pupils and staff refer all reported cases to the project team. The project team undertake the investigation and work at both
an individual level and group level with the victim and perpetrators. They ensure that all incidents are recorded
appropriately and monitor them to identify patterns or concerns.
Outcomes
As a result of the programme there is:
· greater awareness of what constitutes bullying and how to report and deal with bullying by all school stakeholders;
· a consistent whole-school approach to dealing with incidents of bullying;
· increased in-school capacity when dealing with the victims and perpetrators of bullying, which reduces the need to rely
on outside agencies;
· a preventative approach, which involves intervention at an early stage to support children from becoming potential bullies
or victims of bullying;
· a holistic package of support for victims of bullying that also links to the work of the school on emotional literacy and to
Student Assistance Programme (SAP) support packages;
· consistent and effective promotion of anti-bullying through the curriculum; and
· a reduction in the reported incidents of bullying and of re-offending rates.
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7. Publications and media coverage in the UK
A number of articles have been published about KiVa that have made reference to the KiVa Wales project including
reference to our pilot trial that commenced during the 2012/3 academic year. This trial is the only one for which we
currently have results.
Press coverage
th
1. Times Educational Supplement article on 18 July 2014 “ Banish bullying with a whole-school approach” by Ed
Dutton describes KiVa and mentions the Welsh trial.
nd
2. Daily Post October 22 2013 “Developing schools anti-bully programme”.
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3. Sunday Times article on 8 June 2014, “Don’t just watch, do something” describes KiVa and mentions the Welsh
KiVa trial.
4. Optimus Education article March 2016 “Don’t just stand there, do something” describes KiVa in two Welsh schools.
Publications
1. An interview with Professor Salmivalli was published in the Psychologist in April 2014 (Volume 27-Part 4) in which
she made reference to the ongoing project work in Wales. http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/
archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=27&editionID=238&Ar ticleID=2448
2. Nick Axford, Judy Hutchings, Gretchen Bjornstad, Suzy Clarkson and Anna Hunt. KiVa: Helping schools and
parents beat bullying, Better Evidence-based Education, Issue 15: http://www.betterevidence.org/issue-15/kivahelping-schools-and-parents-beat-bullying/
3. An article “KiVa evidence-based anti-bullying programme for schools” by Professor Judy Hutchings, Dr Sue Evans,
and Suzy Clarkson is published on the Network Autism website: http://network.autism.org.uk/good-practice/casestudies/kiva-evidence-based-anti-bullying- programme-schools
4. EARA Newsletter May 2013 “Wales leads the way in the UK in trialling the KiVa programme” by Judy Hutchings:
https://www.earaonline.org/wp-content/.../11/newsletter-may-2013.pdf
5. Clarkson, S. (2015) Together against bullying. The Psychologist 28 (2), 550-551.
6. Hutchings, J. & Clarkson, S. (2015) Introducing and piloting the KiVa bullying prevention programme in the UK.
Educational and Child Psychology 32 (1), 49-61
7. Axford, N., Farrington, D. P., Clarkson, S., Bjornstad, G. J., Wrigley, Z and Hutchings, J. (2015) Involving parents
in school-based programmes to prevent and reduce bullying: what effect does it have? Journal of Children’s
Services. 10 (3) 1-10.
8. Hutchings, J. & Clarkson, S. (2015) Rolling out evidence-based programmes in schools. Better: Evidence-based
Education 7 (2) 20-21.
9. Clarkson, S., Axford, N., Berry, V., Edwards, R.T., Bjornstad, G., Wrigley, Z., Charles, J., Hoare, Z., Ukoumunne,
O., Matthews, J. and Hutchings, J. (2016) Effectiveness and micro-costing of the KiVa school-based bullying
prevention programme in Wales: study protocol for a pragmatic definitive parallel group cluster randomised
controlled trial. BMC Public Health (2016) 16:104. DOI 10.1186/s12889-016-2746-1.
In press
1. Our work is to be featured in the Bangor University 2013/4 Annual Review.
Further information/discussion on the trial is available on the following websites:
The Centre of Evidence-Based Early Interventions website:
https://www.bangor.ac.uk/psychology/cebei/kiva.php.en
The Dartington Social Research Unit website:http://dartington.org.uk/projects/kiva-bullying- prevention-wales/
Evidence4impact website: http://www.evidence4impact.org.uk/programme.php?Index=80
The Society Central website hosted by Sussex University has a feature on KiVa “New ways to tackle bullying”, our
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work and training opportunities at Bangor (April 8 2014): http://societycentral.ac.uk/2014/04/08/new-ways-to-tacklebullying/
Bangor University News and Events webpage: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/news/university/testing-an-effective-antibullying-programme-for-wales- 16563
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Author: Professor Judy Hutchings, Dr Sue Evans and Susan Clarkson
Organisation: Bangor University, Powys Teaching Health Board
Date of publication: 25 September 2014
Exclusively sponsored by:
KiVa: an Evidence-Based Anti-Bullying Programme for Schools
KiVa history
KiVa means nice in Finnish but is also an acronym for against bullying, with Ki and Va being the
first two letters of those words in Finnish.
The KiVa programme was developed by Professor Salmivalli and colleagues at Turku University
in Finland. Prof Salmivalli is a social psychologist who spent many years researching bullying and
its impact and, in particular, the role of the bystander in the bullying process.
Her research demonstrated that the behaviour of bystanders – helping or reinforcing the bully,
walking away, or supporting the victim - played a significant role in whether the bully persisted
in bullying. This provided the empirical basis for the KiVa programme. It is not necessary or in
many cases even possible to change the victim, who may have developmental or other
challenges, but the goal is to change the response of the bystander towards the bully and the
victim.
The Finnish education system achieves high academic outcomes but has close to average levels
of reported bullying, in line with the rest of Europe. To address this, the Finnish Government
required all schools to have a bullying prevention policy. However, over a ten-year period, no
changes were shown in reported bullying levels. So, in 2006, the Ministry of Education
approached Prof Salmivalli and funded the development and evaluation of KiVa.
KiVa defines bullying as having three components:
a difference in status between the bully and the victim
intentional acts
repeated acts.
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shown at the top of the page. Please see Network Autism Terms and Conditions for details.
The core features of the KiVa programme are the universal, whole school activities. However,
there is also a structured process for dealing with confirmed bullying incidents.
The KiVa survey
There is an annual anonymous online survey in which children report whether they have been
bullied, have bullied, or are aware of bullying. The school receives its own results and the
combined results for all KiVa schools in their country. This enables them to monitor their own
progress annually and to compare their school with other KiVa schools.
Universal, whole-school KiVa activities
Finnish children start school at age seven and remain in the same school until age 15. There are
three KiVa units with detailed manuals covering this age range.
The curriculum for Units 1 and 2 contains ten 90 minute lessons, designed to be delivered
monthly throughout the school year. The lessons are beautifully scripted and include online
materials and PowerPoint presentations.
The lessons contain many different components:
whole class and small group discussions
line exercises where children consider their own situation or behaviour and position
themselves on a line
role play
games and activities
written assignments
brief video-clips, e.g. an adult talking about the impact of having been bullied.
In Unit 1 there are visualisation scripts for use at the end of each lesson. All lesson materials are
provided, e.g. visual material showing different emotions. To support the lessons, children play
KiVa online games in which they rehearse what they have been learning using “I know, I can, I do”, as a framework for learning. Action requires knowledge (I know), learning the skill (I can) and putting it into action at the appropriate time (I do). The games are played at home or at
school, giving children an opportunity to play and learn at other times.
The curriculum starts with a focus on:
social skills
being friendly
being part of a team
learning an emotion vocabulary
gradually addressing the issues of bullying more specifically.
Children learn to recognise participant roles in bullying:
the victim
the bully
the bully’s assistants
reinforcers of the bully (who watch and maybe laugh)
silent approvers (who walk away)
defenders of the victim.
The lessons develop the KiVa rules that lead to a KiVa contract that is signed by the children at
the end of the year. Examples of rules are:
“We treat everyone with respect”
“We will all tell someone about bullying”.
KiVa posters are displayed school-wide, high-visibility playground KiVa vests remind children
that this is a KiVa school, and there are whole school assembly PowerPoint presentations, a
parents’ website, and materials for a parent evening.
Indicated actions
A school-based KiVa team are trained in the indicated strategies used to deal with accepted
referrals of bullying. Any member of staff learning of a possible bullying incident completes a
referral form.
The KiVa team reviews it against the criteria:
Does the incident involve a power differential?
Is it repeated?
Is it deliberate?
The KiVa team deal with problems that meet these criteria and not those that arise from:
disagreements
arguments
accidents or fall out between children of equal status
Teachers have found this definition helpful for pupils and for parents.
The KiVa team goal is to get the bully/bullies to devise and commit to a plan to solve the
problem. They need not admit blame but are invited to help the victim. This approach has been
shown to be as effective as the blame approach. The class teacher also recruits some pro-social
children to support the victim. The plan is reviewed after two weeks and has a very high success
rate.
The research from Finland
The evidence for the success of KiVa in Finland is overwhelming, a randomised controlled trial
(RCT) involving 237 schools and over 30,000 pupils aged from 7-15 years reported that:
98% of confirmed bullying incidents either stopped completely or were reduced there were significant reductions in child-reported bullying and victimisation across a
range of bullying behaviours:
o verbal
o physical
o social exclusion
o social manipulation
o threats
o racist
o sexual
o cyber bullying (importantly) the biggest effects were found among 10 -11 year old children
year on year results have shown consistent reductions in reported bullying.
Following the RCT, KiVa was disseminated across Finland with government funding and is now
delivered in over 90% of Finnish schools. The results from this broad roll-out suggest that
nationwide there has been a reduction of 12,000 victims and 8,000 bullies.
KiVa in the United Kingdom (UK)
The KiVa Finland situation, where schools had policies but no evidence-based practice, seemed
similar to the current UK situation and in 2011, the Welsh Government included KiVa in a list of
evidence-based programmes. This led to a pilot trial coordinated from Bangor University.
Fourteen Welsh and three Cheshire primary schools participated in a trial of Unit 2 with year 5
and 6 pupils during the 2012/13 academic year. The results showed significant improvements in
both reported bullying and victimisation, and lessons were well received by teachers and pupils,
including by pupils who did not always engage in discussions. Another benefit was that the KiVa
curriculum covers half of the KS2 Personal, Social, Health, and Emotional curriculum
components.
These early positive results encouraged the BIG lottery to fund the Dartington Social Research
Unit and Bangor University to undertake a small RCT. The trial targets 7-11 year olds in twenty
schools across Wales. Schools receive training and resources for two years. Preliminary results,
comparing the intervention and control schools’ bullying rates after one year of implementation, the 2013/14 academic year, are expected later this year.
Control schools have now been trained and resourced and will be delivering the programme
during the 2014/15 academic year. In a further development Powys Children and Young
People’s Partnership have trained an additional 10 schools and will train a further 12 schools
during 2014-15, with plans for a rolling programme for interested primary schools. So far the
training has been well received and schools are enthusiastic about implementing the
programme.
KiVa training in the UK
Bangor University is an accredited training centre for the KiVa programme in the UK. This allows
the Bangor team to train school-based staff in programme delivery and also to train trainers
who recruit and train schools in their own locality. At present Units 1 and 2, covering the
curriculum for pupils aged 7-12 years, have been translated into English. Additional
development work is being undertaken in Finland on the curriculum for older pupils, so UK
training activity during 2014/15 will focus on implementing the programme in primary schools.
Training for schools involves two days and covers all aspects of launching KiVa. Participants also
receive detailed instructions on how to support pupils in completing the online survey and
playing the KiVa online games.
Training for trainers is a three-day certified course that licenses participants to train schoolbased staff in their area and covers the research background, universal and indicated
components, and issues to consider in recruiting and training school staff.
More information
Further information on KiVa - detailed information on the programme and research
background supporting KiVa
Information about KiVa activities and training in the UK
Information on training costs and school registration costs can be obtained from Elin
Williams, KiVa Wales Administrator.
About the authors
Judy Hutchings, OBE, is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Centre for Evidence
Based Early Intervention at Bangor University.
Sue Evans is Consultant Child Psychologist, Lead for Parenting and Children’s Social Competence Programmes, Powys Teaching Health Board.
Susan Clarkson is a PhD student and KiVa Research Project Support Officer at Bangor University.
EARA$Newsletter$May$2013$
1. The KiVa Anti-bullying Program
Christina Salmivalli (University of Turku, Finland)
KiVa antibullying program has been developed at the University of Turku with funding from
the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. KiVa is an acronym for “Kiusaamista
Vastaan”, that is “Against bullying” or “Anti-bullying”. The Finnish word kiva also means a
person being nice, kind, or friendly. The KiVa program was evaluated during 2007–2009 in a
large randomized control trial involving approximately 30 000 students and their teachers.
Since 2009 the program has been disseminated to Finnish schools and currently 90% of all
Finnish comprehensive schools have registered as users of the program (Salmivalli &
Poskiparta, 2012).
KiVa is a theory-based intervention program based on the notion that bullying is a group
phenomenon. Rather than consisting of separate aggressive acts towards a student, bullying is a
rather stable relationship between the victim and the perpetrator(s), further embedded within
the larger peer group. KiVa is founded on the idea that the way in which peer bystanders, who
are neither bullies nor victims, behave when witnessing bullying is crucial for either
maintaining bullying or putting an end to it. By bullying others the perpetrator may gain and
sustain status in the peer group. If the peer group does not provide rewards to the perpetrator,
for example by laughing when a child gets bullied, the perpetrator does not get the social
rewards he or she is after. Influencing the peer context is thus essential in preventing and
reducing school bullying.
The KiVa program includes both universal and indicated actions. Universal actions are targeted
at all students, in order to raise awareness of bullying and of the role that the peer group often
plays in maintaining it, to enhance anti-bullying attitudes, and to provide safe strategies to
support and defend victimized peers. Ten age-appropriate double lessons are provided for the
classroom teachers to be delivered in grades 1 and 4. In addition, four separate themes are
planned to be worked through in grade 7, which, in Finland, is the first year in secondary
school. Furthermore, the program involves virtual learning environments targeting various age
groups and linked to the lessons (years 1, 4 and 7). By exploring the various tasks in the virtual
learning environments the students rehearse the knowledge and skills they have acquired
during the student lessons. The indicated actions come into play when a bullying case comes to
the attention of the school. A trained anti-bullying team, KiVa team, tackles such cases through
guidelines provided in the program manual. In addition, the classroom teacher always meets
with 2-3 classmates of the victimized child, encouraging them to support the peer who is
having a difficult time. Taken together, KiVa is not merely an abstract philosophy but is a very
concrete program deeply rooted in the research on aggression in peer group settings.
Effectiveness of KiVa
Recent studies conducted in Finland suggest that the KiVa antibullying program is effective in
reducing bullying and victimization in schools (Kärnä, Voeten, Little, Poskiparta, Alanen et. al.
2011; Kärnä, Voeten, Little, Poskiparta, Kaljonen et. al. 2011, Kärnä et. al. 2012). During the
first year of it’s implementation, the program produced strongest effects in grades 4 to 6 (ages
10–12 in the Finnish school system), and somewhat weaker effects in grades 1–3 (ages 7– 9)
and 7–9 (ages 13–15). Besides reducing bullying and victimization, the program has
demonstrated numerous positive “side-effects”, such as decreases in depression and social
anxiety (Williford et. al. 2012) and increases in school well-being and academic motivation
(Kärnä, Voeten, Little, Poskiparta, Kaljonen et. al. 2011; Salmivalli, Garandeau & Veenstra
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2012). We continue collecting annual data from schools implementing KiVa in Finland, both
from students and school personnel.
2. The challenges of cross-national dissemination of KiVa antibullying
program from the developers' point of view
Sanna Herkama and Christina Salmivalli, (University of Turku, Finland)
KiVa antibullying program is an example how commitment on the part of politicians,
researchers, and educators can work together in order to reduce bullying and improve school
well-being. After demonstrating that the program works in its country of origin, Finland
(Kärnä et al., 2011a, 2011b, 2012), a logical next question is whether it produces the desired
outcomes in other contexts as well.
Antibullying programs, as well as other school-based prevention and intervention programs,
that were proven to be effective in one context have often produced little or no effects in
international replication studies. The reasons for this may include different school systems,
cultures, and ethnic contexts. Finland, for instance, is a fairly homogenous country where
ethnic variability among students is small (about 97% being native Finns) and the
comprehensive school system provides equal education for all students in grades 1 to 9.
Between-school differences in educational outcomes are small and teacher education is of high
quality, a Master’s degree being the norm among teachers. All such factors may have
implications for the implementation process of school-based programs and consequently, for
the effects obtained. Besides such differences in populations and school systems, there are
numerous other aspects that need to be taken into consideration (and preferably assessed) in
international evaluation studies in order to understand the reasons for cross-national variation
in the effects that may be found. In the following paragraphs, we discuss some challenges
related to cross- national dissemination and evaluation of school- based programs in general,
and KiVa antibullying program in particular, from the perspective of program developers.
Testing an evidence-based program in a new context: General requirements
KiVa has generated a lot of international interest and consequently, several evaluation studies
have been initiated in countries outside of Finland. The program materials have so far been
(partly or completely) translated into English, Dutch, French, German, and Japanese; Estonian
and Welsh translations are underway. The ongoing international evaluations of KiVa include
randomized controlled trials in the Netherlands, Wales, and United States (see articles by
Veenstra, Hutchings, and Hubbard in this newsletter), and smaller scale pilot studies in two
Japanese schools and in the English, French, and German divisions of the European school in
Luxembourg. The aim of the latter two pilots is to explore the cultural
adaptability/acceptability of the program rather than testing its effects on bullying and
victimization.
From our viewpoint, it is important that there is real demand for a program in the new context
and, ideally, also support at the level of stakeholders and politicians. It is also necessary to
have collaborators who are, in addition to being competent, highly motivated and ready to put
effort into the implementation process and evaluation trial. The required expertise of
collaborators includes a good understanding of the theory of change on which the program is
based, ability to implement the program with high quality (including, but not limited to,
teacher training in the new context), skills to modify the program to the specific culture and
school system (when necessary) in collaboration with program developers and expertise in
conducting rigorous evaluation studies. Implementing a complex intervention program deeply
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rooted in theory but at the same time offering very concrete tools to tackle bullying necessitates
a lot of discussion, planning, and sharing of experiences between program developers and
collaborators in the new context.
Adaptation or fidelity: Deep structure, surface structure, and implementation model
We believe that whether (and to what extent) the contents of a school-based program such as
KiVa should be adapted to a new context (e.g., new country) or implemented with high fidelity
is an empirical question. Already having evidence that KiVa works in Finland, it is in our
interest to see the program first tested in fairly similar cultures with only minimal adaptation. It
is important to ensure that the deep structure, or key elements of the program that are assumed
to lead to intended outcomes, remain unchanged. Modifications to the surface structure, such
as language, photographs included in the materials, or stories used during the student lessons
(i.e., making them more culturally relevant) are, however, necessary (Resnikov et al., 2000;
Sundell et al., 2013).
Besides program content, the implementation model may need to be adapted to new contexts:
the way the program is delivered in one country might not be possible in another context. Also,
it is not self-evident that the concrete tools or
exercises that have been used in Finland are the ones that are most suitable (or even possible)
elsewhere. For instance, the KiVa program includes computer games that are connected to the
topics of the student lessons. The students play the games during the lessons, but also between
the lessons in their free time. The utilization of such games is dependent on the technical
facilities of the schools (and homes) in different countries.
Discussions with our collaborators in Osaka, Japan, have suggested that the some learning-bydoing activities included in the student lessons might be perceived as highly demanding, even
embarrassing by Japanese students, who are not used to talking about their experiences or
feelings in front of their peer group (e.g., in classroom). The small pilot in Japan will help us to
evaluate (together with the Japanese collaborators) the extent to which such exercises need to
be altered and how this could be done.
Another example concerns the indicated actions of KiVa, originally consisting of two
alternative approaches (confronting vs. non- confronting) that the KiVa teams may use in
discussion with students who have been bullying others. In Finland, the KiVa team of each
school chooses one of the two approaches. The majority of Finnish schools have chosen to use
the confronting approach, despite the fact that we have found no evidence for either of the two
approaches being more efficient than the other. Our Dutch collaborators, however, have chosen
to introduce only the non-confrontational approach to the KiVa teams, as this approach fits the
cultural context better and school personnel are already familiar and experienced with it. Based
on our discussion with Japanese collaborators, the same is likely to happen in the Japanese
pilot study as well.
Challenges in evaluation studies
In order to have findings that are comparable with those obtained in Finnish evaluations, the
measurement instruments as well as the timing of assessments should be the same, at least for
the core measures that we want to compare. Other issues that cannot be influenced (but can be
taken into account) are country-specific policies and current practices in bullying prevention
that result in differences in “treatment as usual” control conditions in each country.
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Intervention effects are likely to be weaker in countries where treatment as usual is more
effective, in other words, where schools are already doing more to prevent bullying and to
intervene in it.
Careful assessment of implementation fidelity, in the same way as it was done in Finland, is
informative. We also need to collect data on the “buy-in” on the part of school personnel (e.g.,
belief in the program and its basic premises) as well as students (e.g., responsiveness to student
lessons), and their experiences of the different components of KiVa. In addition, the general
societal attitude towards antibullying work (e.g. a public pressure or laws or policies requiring
schools to take action against bullying), overall school structure (e.g. pedagogical approach,
classroom size, the age of school entry, the length of the school day), and the way that bullying
is generally understood in each culture may help understand potential differences in the
implementation of the program as well as outcomes obtained.
The ongoing evaluations will offer us more detailed information on which further adaptations
can be done. At the moment we, as program developers, are at an exciting moment, finding out
how and under which conditions the KiVa program works in different cultural environments.
Overall, it is clear that research on the generalizability of evidence-based programs across
(culturally) diverse groups, countries, and contexts is still in its infancy, and we are proud to be
part of efforts to advance this field.
3. Wales leads the way in the UK in trialling the KiVa programme
Professor Judy Hutchings (Bangor University, Wales)
I was fortunate to hear Christina Salmivalli speak about KiVa at Cambridge University in June
2011. I had done a considerable amount of work in schools in Wales, including randomised
controlled trials of a classroom management programme and a social-emotional curriculum
with the focus on children aged 4 – 7. I knew, immediately, that there would be interest in
KiVa in Wales particularly since the programme was developed for children from the age of
seven and complemented the work that we were already doing with our younger school aged
populations in Wales. Furthermore bullying and its prevention had been acknowledged as
important by the Welsh Government and schools were discussing it as an issue that they
needed to address.
Two things enabled this project to move forward in Wales, first Christina came to Wales in
November 2011, between talks in Dublin and London, to speak at our Centre for Evidence
Based Early intervention and to meet with a number of school-based staff. Second, after a
presentation from myself to the Welsh Government, KiVa was added to a list of approved
programmes for a small pot of Welsh Government funding.
To our delight 14 schools in Wales, seven from north and seven from south Wales accessed the
funding and applied to take part in a pilot trial of KiVa. A further three schools from across the
border in Cheshire also signed up to be trained and to work with us on the pilot trial. Christina
and her colleague Virpi came to Wales in May 2012 and trained the class teachers and school
KiVa teams in both north and south Wales.
Our application for a KESS European funded Master’s project to evaluate the outcomes for
these early starter schools was successful and Suzy Clarkson was appointed in September
2012. After completing the on-line pupil survey the schools started delivering the unit 2
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programme in Autumn 2012 to their year 5 and/or year 6 children, aged between 9 and 11. At
that time this was the only material that had been translated into English.
Based on our previous work we knew that it was important to support the schools and, with
Suzy’s help, we arranged termly meetings in three centres across Wales to collect feedback
regarding problems and successes in delivering the programme. We also produced material
from the teacher manual, that was needed for some of the lessons, to make delivery even
easier. The support that we have been able to provide has included translating some materials
into Welsh and helping to resolve difficulties around undertaking the on-line survey and
enabling the children to access the KiVa games, which they can now play in school and at
home.
There have been other challenges along the way, firstly we did not realise that the on-line
survey was designed to support unit 2 and we asked our schools to use it with all pupils from
age 7 – 11. Secondly our schools have varied access to computers and, unlike in Finland, it is
often not possible for a whole class to work on computers at the same time, meaning that
completing the survey or playing the computer games requires splitting classes and doubling
up.
The very good news is that the teachers and pupils love the lessons. Teachers report extremely
positive responses from the children, although they are finding it hard to get through all of the
lesson material in a couple of hours a month. They are particularly pleased that the material
produces positive contributions from children that do not always contribute in class lessons.
The teachers also report that children have a much better understanding of what bullying is and
all schools are keen to continue with the programme next year and to make use of the newly
translated unit 1 material with their seven and eight year old pupils.
Suzy’s small pilot evaluation will report on the child survey data and on the teacher data on the
extent to which the schools have delivered the components of the programme. We are also
meeting with all of the pilot schools during the summer term to review ways in which the
programme can be made more user friendly for Wales by reviewing the survey, the lessons and
the online games.
In 2012 a successful joint bid with Dartington Social Research Unit was made to the Welsh
BIG Lottery Innovation Fund to further support the roll out of KiVa in Wales and a
randomised controlled trial evaluation of KiVa in 20 schools was funded. This grant comes on
stream in April 2013. In this trial we will be using both Units 1 and 2 with all four school years
of children from age 7 to 11. This project will benefit from all that we have learned from the
initial pilot trial. Christina visited in March 2013 to help to recruit the schools and it is clear
that we will have no problem in recruiting the 20 schools. This trial will run for two years with
ten schools randomly allocated to intervention and ten to control, with the control schools
receiving the training in year 2.
BIG lottery funding will enable further translation of materials into welsh and we are delighted
that Christina is allowing us to deliver the training and support in Wales, providing us with the
experience and resources that will hopefully enable us to move forward to larger scale roll out
of the programme.
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NEW VOICES
Together against bullying
Suzy Clarkson with the latest in our series for budding writers
(see www.bps.org.uk/newvoices for more information)
A
references
s a child and adolescent with ‘ginger’
hair, I was, like many other
redheads, subjected to regular bouts
of name-calling. I lacked the knowledge
and skills to handle it, and I began to
believe that this one observable trait
defined me and determined my selfworth. When I asked for help, I was
regularly told by adults to repeat the
adage ‘Sticks and stones will break my
bones, but names will never hurt me’.
This was not an effective tool to stop the
name-calling, nor was it a strategy that
equipped me to deal with the hurt. Now
as an adult, psychology student and
concerned parent, my interest and
research lies in how schools can reduce
and respond to bullying, and how social
psychological research on bullying can
contribute to proactive school practice.
Bullying is a universal phenomenon.
Approximately one in ten children
worldwide experience being bullied
(Currie et al., 2012). It has been defined
as the exposure ‘repeatedly and over-time,
to negative actions’ (Olweus, 2005, p.5)
or the ‘cruel and repeated oppression by
the powerful over the powerless’ (Rigby,
1996, p.11). In the last two decades, the
media have reported on the
predominantly unsuccessful efforts of
policy makers and educators to reduce the
bullying prevalence rates in the UK.
At the same time, international
government reports and academic
research have highlighted the
consequences of bullying. These are farreaching, affecting not only the well-being
550
Anderson, M., Kaufman, J., Simon, T.R. et
al. (2001). School associated violent
deaths in the United States
1994–1999. Journal of the American
Medical Association, 286(21),
2695–2702.
Currie, C., Zanotti, C., Morgan, A. &
Currie, D. (2012). Social determinants
of health and well-being among young
people. Geneva: World Health
Organization.
of the victim and perpetrator in the short
term, but also producing effects that can
persist into adulthood, impacting on
subsequent relationships, mental wellbeing and life opportunities. Victims of
bullying are significantly more likely to
suffer from psychiatric disorders,
including anxiety (Graham & Juvonen,
1998), and are twice as likely as nonvictims to be depressed in later life (Ttofi
& Farrington, 2012). A victim’s health
risk behaviour can also be heightened,
including substance abuse (Molcho et al.,
2004) and suicidal behaviour (Kim et al.,
2005; Klomek et al., 2007). News
headlines and government reports, in the
UK and beyond, suggest that bullying can
be a factor in homicide (e.g. Anderson et
al., 2001), and in both planned and actual
massacres (see tinyurl.com/m4ydtan and
tinyurl.com/q68bntv). For the perpetrator,
bullying behaviour is a strong indicator of
future delinquency, antisocial behaviour
(Merrell et al., 2008), and psychosocial
problems (Nansel et al., 2004).
Such links have focused public and
government attention on the moral
imperative to address school bullying. For
many years, social psychologists examined
bullying as a dyadic relationship, between
the perpetrator and victim, without
considering the social context. More
recently, they have recognised the
importance of social context and the
influence of peer clusters, school classes
and school climate. This triadic approach
explores bullying as a group process and
has produced insights into the
Graham, S. & Juvonen, J. (1998). Selfblame and peer victimization in
middle school. Developmental
Psychology, 34, 587–599.
Hutchings, J, & Clarkson, S. (in press).
Introducing and piloting the KiVa
bullying prevention programme in the
UK. Educational and Child Psychology.
Kärnä, A., Voeten, M., Little, T.D. et al.
(2011a). A large-scale evaluation of
the KiVa antibullying program: Grades
perpetrator’s motivation to bully and the
probability of persistence. The approach
has also highlighted the limited support
experienced by the victim.
Christina Salmivalli and her
colleagues (1996; interviewed in the April
2014 issue at tinyurl.com/kiva0414) were
the first group to systematically
investigate the influence of the bystander
on school bullying. A bystander is present
at an incident, acting as an observer or
witness. Salmivalli (2001) suggests that
bystanders are not neutral and that all
pupils present during a bullying incident
play a role. She identities two primary
roles, perpetrator and victim, and four
bystander roles: assistant of the bully,
reinforcer of the bully, outsider and
defender of the victim.
The prime motivation for the bully’s
behaviour is the pursuit or maintenance
of power and status within the group,
with ‘victim selection’ being based on
characteristics such as submissiveness,
low power, and low self-esteem
(Salmivalli & Isaacs, 2005). These
characteristics permit the perpetrator to
repeatedly demonstrate their power, with
a low probability of confrontation. For
the perpetrator’s power and status to be
renewed and established they require an
audience; pupil reports suggest that there
are other peers present in 85 per cent of
bullying incidents. Salmivalli et al. (1996)
found that the bystander’s reaction to the
bullying incident could positively or
negatively affect the perpetrator’s
behaviour. Therefore interventions that
involve influencing bystander behaviour
can contribute to reducing, or even
eliminating, the motivation to bully.
This research is the basis of KiVa, a
comprehensive school-based anti-bullying
programme developed and evaluated by
Professor Salmivalli and her team in
Turku University (see
www.kivaprogram.net/wales). KiVa was
commissioned in 2006 by the Finnish
government, due to their concern that
bullying rates had remained static over
the previous decade (despite a legal
requirement on schools to possess their
4–6. Child Development, 82(1),
311–330.
Kärnä, A., Voeten, M., Little, T.D. et al.
(2011b). Going to scale: A
nonrandomized nationwide trial of the
KiVa antibullying program for grades
1–9. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 79(6), 796–805.
Kim, Y.S., Koh, Y.J. & Leventhal, B.L.
(2005). School bullying and suicidal
risk in Korean middle school
students. Pediatrics, 115(2), 357–363.
Klomek, A.B., Marrocco, F., Kleinman, M.
et al. (2007). Bullying, depression, and
suicidality in adolescents. Journal of
American Academy of Child and
Adolescence Psychiatry, 46, 40–49.
Merrell, K.W., Gueldner, B.A., Ross, S.W.
& Isava, D.M. (2008). How effective
are school bullying intervention
programs? School Psychology
Quarterly, 23(1), 26–42.
vol 28 no 2
february 2015
new voices
own policy to safeguard their pupils from
bullying).
Kiva is the Finnish adjective for ‘nice’,
as well as an acronym for kiusaamista
vastaan, which means ‘against bullying’.
The KiVa programme offers concrete tools
for teachers and pupils to tackle bullying.
It has two core components: universal
and indicated actions.
Universal actions are proactive and
directed at the class and school level,
including three sets of developmentally
appropriate lessons covering the age
range 7–15 years. The lessons aim to
enhance the pupils’ awareness about the
role of the bystander in the bullying
process, and to increase the pupils’
empathetic understanding of the
victim’s plight. Lessons also provide
safe strategies to defend and support
victims. Various activities encourage
class and group discussions, to make
children reflect upon their feelings and
attitudes. An online game, linked to
the lesson content, reinforces the
behavioural skills of ‘I know, I can, I
do’. ‘I know’ repeats and tests what has
been learnt, ‘I can’ rehearses taking
learning in to action, whilst the ‘I do’
reflects on motivation and actions.
Other universal components include a
parent website, school assemblies, posters
and playground tabards for staff to
demonstrate the commitment and
coordination of the school.
Indicated actions are triggered in
response to confirmed incidents of
bullying. The strategies are scripted and
involve bullies committing to a plan to
support the victim. At the same time the
class teacher encourages prosocial
children to also support the victim.
The programme was first evaluated in
a randomised controlled trial with 28,000
pupils in Finland. Significant reductions
were found in self-reported bullying and
victimisation (Kärnä et al., 2011a).
Following this, a nationwide trial with
150,000 pupils found significant
reductions (Kärnä et al., 2011b), and the
programme is now implemented in over
90 per cent of schools in Finland.
Molcho, M., Harel, Y. & Lash, D. (2004).
The co-morbidity of substance use
and youth violence among Israeli
school children. International Journal
of Adolescent Medicine and Health,
16(3), 223–251.
Nansel, T.R., Craig, W., Overpeck, M.D. et
al. (2004). The Health Behavior in
School-aged Children Bullying
Analyses Working Group. Archives of
Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,
My interest in the KiVa programme
began whilst studying a social psychology
module on my undergraduate degree. I
was fascinated to learn about how
research findings from social psychology
had been employed to improve the lives
of so many people. I listened thoughtfully
to lectures that involved programmes that
improved children’s social skills and
behaviour (Incredible Years), eating habits
(Food Dudes), and reduced bullying
(KiVa). However, due to my personal
experiences, KiVa captured my attention.
When I discovered a vacancy for a
Masters of Science by Research
Scholarship with Professor Judy
Hutchings, to evaluate KiVa in Wales, I
didn’t think twice. On completion of my
master’s I applied to be a Research Project
Support Officer for a Wales-based RCT of
the programme. This position is giving
me with the opportunity to study for a
PhD and become one of only three
accredited trainers of the KiVa
programme in the UK.
My master’s evaluated the UK pilot
trial of KiVa, which included 14 primary
schools from Wales, funded by grants
from the Welsh Government, and three
from Cheshire (pupils aged 9–11 years).
The trial found KiVa to be effective in
reducing self-reported victimisation and
bullying, and acceptable and suitable for
teachers and pupils (Hutchings &
Clarkson, in press). Teachers reported
that KiVa had a positive impact on
children’s well-being and prosocial
158, 730–736.
Olweus, D. (2005). A useful evaluation
design, and effects of the Olweus
Bullying Prevention Program.
Psychology, Crime & Law, 11, 389–402.
Rigby, K. (1996). Bullying in schools.
London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Salmivalli, C. (2001). Group view on
victimization: Empirical findings and
their implications. In J. Juvonen & S.
Graham (Eds.) Peer harassment in
read discuss contribute at www.thepsychologist.org.uk
behaviour, and on the class and
playground atmosphere. These positive
results, however, should be interpreted
with caution, as the pilot trial did not
include any control schools: it was an
opportunistic study following the
inclusion of KiVa on a list of programmes
eligible for Welsh Government grants.
The results from this pilot trial have
informed the present RCT in Wales, run
as a partnership between the Dartington
Social Research Unit and Bangor
University. It targets all of Key Stage 2, 7to 11-year-olds, in 20 primary schools.
Phase 1 of the trial saw 11 schools
implement the programme with the other
nine schools on the control waiting list.
Phase 2 of the trial commenced in
September 2014, with all 20 schools
implementing the programme. The data
are currently being analysed.
On my academic and research journey
I have acquired many skills, learning
about the challenges of real-world
intervention trials, liaising with
international developers, media
companies, and schools. Throughout my
time, I have been supported by a diverse
range of people from Bangor and Turku
Universities, and from the Social Research
Unit at Dartington. Social psychology
forms the building blocks of KiVa, and it
is rewarding to see so many people
coming together to promote a more
proactive method for tackling bullying in
UK schools. The robust evidence from
Finland, alongside growing data from the
UK, could enable public finance resources
to be wisely invested on an evidencebased anti-bullying programme. I feel
extremely fortunate to work on such a
worthwhile and personally meaningful
project.
school the plight of the vulnerable and
victimized (pp.398–419). New York:
Guilford Press.
Salmivalli, C. & Isaacs, J. (2005).
Prospective relations among
victimization, rejection,
friendlessness, and children’s selfand peer-perceptions. Child
Development, 76, 1161–1171.
Salmivalli, C., Lagerspetz, K., Bjorkqvist,
K. & Osterman, K. (1996). Bullying as
Suzy Clarkson is KiVa
Research Project Support
Officer, Centre for Evidence
Based Early Intervention,
Bangor University
[email protected]
a group process: Participant roles
and their relations to social status
within the group. Aggressive Behavior,
22, 1–15.
Ttofi, M.M. & Farrington, D.P. (2012).
Bullying prevention programs: The
importance of peer intervention,
disciplinary methods and age
variations. Journal of Experimental
Criminology, 8, 443–462.
551
Introducing and piloting the KiVa bullying
prevention programme in the UK
Judy Hutchings & Susan Clarkson
The history of bullying research is summarised and the KiVa bullying prevention programme described.
KiVa is a whole-school programme with universal and indicated actions for children aged 7 to 15 years in
the Finnish comprehensive school system. It was developed at Turku University, Finland, by social
psychologist Christina Salmivalli and colleagues. It has demonstrated significant benefits in a large-scale
randomised controlled trial and a subsequent roll-out of the programme to 90 per cent of schools in the
Finnish comprehensive system (www.kivakoulu.fi/). KiVa is based on research showing the important role
played by bystanders in the bullying process. The universal and indicated actions within the programme
are described. The universal actions consist of class lessons, whole school actions and a parent website.
Evidence from the Finnish trials is summarised.
The paper describes the introduction of the programme to the UK in 2011 and the results from the first,
psychologist led, UK pilot trial of the programme are reported. Seventeen schools participated in the trial of
Unit 2, at the time the only material available in English (for children aged 9 to 11 years), and delivered
KiVa lessons to year 5 and/or year 6 pupils. Children completed the online KiVa survey prior to programme
commencement and at the end of the school year. Significant reductions were reported in bullying and
victimisation. Teachers reported high levels of pupil acceptance and engagement with lessons. The paper
concludes with reflections on the role that educational and other applied psychologists can play in further
disseminating this programme.
Keywords: Bullying; victimisation; intervention; schools; KiVa.
B
ULLYING is an international problem
(Olweus, 2010; Smith et al., 2004) with
one-in-10 children worldwide reporting
being bullied (Currie et al., 2012). For some
time bullying has received national and
international attention, with the publication
of news reports on bullying related suicides,
government reports and academic research
(Kim, Koh & Leventhal, 2005; Olweus,
1993a; Ttofi & Farrington, 2011). Addressing
bullying through school-wide interventions
is an area where psychologists have played
and can continue to play an important role
in promoting key educational objectives (for
example, Ttofi & Farrington, 2011).
Olweus was the first person to systematically research the anatomy of bullying in
Norway in the early 1970s (Olweus, 1973).
The most cited and internationally used definition proposed by Olweus defines bullying
as a repeated and intentional aggressive act,
which typically involves an imbalance of
Educational & Child Psychology Vol. 32 No. 1
© The British Psychological Society, 2015
power (Olweus, 2001, 2005). Bullying behaviour is classified into four main categories:
physical; verbal; relational; and cyber
bullying (Nishana, 2004). Olweus’ seminal
research into bullying behaviour has
prompted a global endeavour (Juvonen &
Graham, 2001).
Eleven per cent of UK and 10 per cent of
Welsh children report being regularly
bullied (Currie et al., 2012). During primary
school years, physical and verbal bullying
predominate (Bjorkqvist et al., 1992; Rivers
& Smith, 1994). Bullying has long-term
consequences for both bullies and victims. It
is a strong predictor of subsequent delinquency and anti-social behaviour (Merrel et
al., 2008; Olweus, 2011; O’Moore, 2000;
Ttofi et al., 2011) and these aggressive behaviour patterns can persist, increasing the likelihood of acting violently as an adult
(Farrington, 1993). Repeated exposure to
bulling undermines the health, and well49
being of more vulnerable pupils (Egan &
Perry 1998; Rigby, 1999) significantly
increasing the likelihood of psychiatric disorders in adulthood (Bond et al., 2001; Egan &
Perry, 1998; Peter et al., 2008; Ttofi, 2011).
The longer that victimisation persists, the
greater the risk of maladjustment (Kochenderfer-Ladd, 2004).
Research on gender differences is inconsistent. Olweus (2010) reports large gender
differences with girls reporting lower
frequencies of all types of bullying and
victims of both genders reporting that 83 per
cent were bullied primarily by one or more
boys and only 17 per cent by girls. Salmivalli
et al. (2005) corroborate these findings,
reporting that boys used all forms of aggression (physical, verbal and indirect) more
than girls. Other recent research reports
lower gender differences and that gender is
not a significant predictor of bullying
(Barboza et al., 2009; Reid et al., 2004;
Stassen Berger, 2007).
School-based bullying
Many children regularly witness bullying at
school (Eslea et al., 2003). It is widespread
and frequent in most school settings (Pellegrini, 2002) and most bullying research has
been conducted in schools (Olweus, 1978;
Salmivalli et al., 1996). Salmivalli and
colleagues were the first to explore the role
of bystander in the bullying process.
Bystanders influence bullying, by intervening and helping the victim, supporting
the bully or choosing to ignore the situation
(Salmivalli et al., 1996). Four participant
bystander roles have been identified – ‘assistant’ of the bully, ‘reinforcer’ of the bully,
‘outsider’ and ‘defender’ of the victim
(Salmivalli et al., 1996). However, from the
perspective of the victim, outsiders, who walk
away and fail to intervene, are viewed as
supporting the bully by demonstrating silent
complicity (Jeffrey et al., 2001).
Pupils report bullying as occuring more
frequently than do teachers (Low et al.,
2011). The likelihood of reporting bullying
incidents, and the success with which they
50
are dealt, is dependent on the teacher and
school context (Kochender & Ladd, 1997).
In one third of cases, pupils report that when
teachers do intervene, either they do not
alter the situation (Fekkes et al., 2005), or
make the situation worse (Rigby & Bagshaw,
2003). The large discrepancy between
teachers’ and pupils’ views on the severity
and frequency of bullying (Low et al., 2011;
Newman & Murray, 2005) highlights the
need for staff training in awareness and for
effective responses. The school context
affects rates of bullying with frequency
varying as much as four to six times across
schools (Mellor, 1999; Olweus, 1993b; Rigby,
2002).
Bullying interventions
In 1982, following the suicide of three
Norwegian boys, Olweus was commissioned
by the Ministry of Education, to design and
evaluate an intervention to prevent bullying,
the ‘Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme’. The programme targets the school
culture, providing a sense of community and
reducing opportunities for bullying behaviour. Pupils reported a 50 per cent reduction
in bullying and victimisation (Olweus, 1991;
Olweus et al., 1999) and significant reductions in self-reported anti-social behaviour,
including truancy, alcohol use, theft, and
vandalism (Olweus, 2005). The programme
has since been implemented in many countries and has mostly demonstrated positive
although more modest effects than the
original study (Olweus et al., 1999; Smith et
al., 2004). Elliot (1999) highlights the
scarcity of evidence-based programmes to
prevent or reduce bullying in the US.
However, school-based bullying interventions, that incorporate a whole-school
approach, appear to be the most effective
and can reduce bullying behaviour significantly (Vreeman & Carroll, 2007).
Age has an impact on the effectiveness of
bullying interventions, with the greatest
effects being achieved at age 10 to 12 years
(Menesini et al., 2003; Salmivalli et al.,
2004).
Introducing and piloting the KiVa bullying prevention programme in the UK
KiVa
Despite excellent academic outcomes
(Sahlberg 2011), the Finnish Government
decided that a concerted effort would also
be made to enhance child well-being. For
many years the government relied upon
legislative changes that placed obligations
on schools to design their own action plans
and required commitment from school staff
to intervene immediately in bullying situations (the ‘zero tolerance’ method).
However, this legislation did not impact on
the prevalence figures. Recognising the work
of Salmivalli and colleagues at Turku University on the architecture of bullying and the
role of bystanders, the Finnish Ministry of
Education and Culture contracted with the
University to develop and evaluate a schoolbased bullying programme for schools
within the Finnish comprehensive system
(grades one to nine, children aged 7 to 15
years). The programme includes universal
actions, directed at class and school level,
and indicated actions, for addressing
confirmed cases of bullying. The universal
curriculum contains three lesson units suitable for ages 7 to 9, 10 to 12, and 13 to 15
respectively.
KiVa is an acronym for ‘Kiusaamista
Vastaan’ which, translated, means ‘against
bullying’ and also ‘kiva’ is a Finnish adjective
for nice (Salmivalli, 2010). KiVa is based on
robust research, which suggests that the reactions of bystanders maintain or decrease
bullying behaviours (Salmivalli et al., 1996).
The KiVa programme provides training,
resources, class lessons, online activities, and
parental advice and support. It aims to affect
norms and skills, behaviour, attitudes and
the classroom and school climate.
The universal actions in Units 1 and 2
each consist of 10 structured lessons, each
lasting approximately an hour-and-a-half.
Typically, the lessons are split into two
45-minute lessons a month. Lessons cover
being part of a team, learning about
emotions, group interaction processes and
group pressure. They also provide explanations about types of bullying, how it is influEducational & Child Psychology Vol. 32 No. 1
enced by the bystander, its consequences
and how both individuals and the class as a
group can reduce bullying. The lessons
include: discussions (class and small
groups), role-play, videos of people talking
about having been bullied, group work and
whole class activities. Both Units 1 and 2
have online games linked with lesson topics
that teach pupils through a paradigm of
‘I know, I can, I do’. The games can be
played at school or at home. KiVa posters are
displayed throughout the school and yellow,
high visibility, KiVa vests are worn by staff at
break and lunchtimes to remind both pupils
and staff that they are in a KiVa school.
Parent involvement and support is encouraged and KiVa provides a public access
website for parents and others interested to
learn more about KiVa, bullying and how to
support children to speak up about or stand
against bullying.
The programme promotes social skills,
such as making friends, to support and
protect a child from victimisation (Hanish et
al., 2005). Providing bullied pupils with
friendship skills reduces their risk of being
bullied and increases the likelihood of their
being accepted, and for other children it
increases their empathy for their bullied
peers (Pelegrini, 2002). Empathy provides
children with the foundations for friendships, conflict resolutions and social responsibility. Pupils possessing higher levels of
empathy are typically more socially skilled,
liked by their peers, and less aggressive
(Arsenio et al., 2000; Denham, 2006).
The programme includes detailed indicated actions undertaken by a KiVa team and
the class teacher when a bullying incident is
identified. The KiVa team can include
teachers, members of school staff, educational psychologists, governors and others.
Incidents that are brought to staff attention
are screened against the KiVa definition of
bullying. Cases that meet the criteria (the
behaviour of a more powerful or high status
child towards a lower status child and an
intentional and repeated act) are dealt with
by the KiVa team. In the Finnish randomised
51
controlled trial (RCT) approximately 60 per
cent of referred cases were accepted by the
KiVa team, on average nine cases per school
per year.
Indicated actions are scripted and discussions are short and solution focused.
A member of the KiVa team first meets the
victim, to gain an understanding of the situation and offer support. The team then meet
with the bully/bullies. In this meeting the
bully is asked to commit to actions to help the
victim. Follow-up meetings are arranged with
both parties. The class teacher also arranges
for one or two high status peers, whom the
victim has identified as not having been
involved in the bullying, to support the victim.
This process encourages continued positive
behaviour (Rigby, 1996). Pupils complete an
annual survey at the end of the school year
reporting on whether they have been
victimised or have bullied others. The results
are fed back to the school so that progress in
reducing bullying can be evaluated.
Research on KiVa
The programme was developed, piloted and
evaluated between 2006 and 2009, in an RCT
involving 28,000 pupils in 234 schools (117
intervention and 117 control). Pupils
completed a wide variety of assessments that
included self-reports, peer reports and
dyadic questions. Teachers also completed
assessments concerning their attitudes
towards, and effectiveness and effort in,
dealing with bullying incidents (Salmivalli,
2010). After one year of implementation,
KiVa was found to reduce both bullying and
victimisation significantly for 7- to 11-yearold children. Results for children aged 12 to
15 years varied according to gender, with
larger effects for boys than girls. The results
also varied according to gender split of the
class, with larger effect when there was a
higher proportion of boys in the class (Kärnä
et al., 2011a). Outcomes from the KiVa team
actions demonstrated a 98 per cent improvement in the victims’ situation and that the
bullying ceased in 86 per cent of reported
incidents (Kärnä et al., 2011a). Other posi52
tive results included improvements in
academic engagement and school liking
(Salmivalli et al., 2012) and increased
empathy towards victims and commitment to
defend victims (Kärnä, 2011b) as well as
reduced internalising problems and negative
peer perceptions (Williford et al., 2012).
Following the successful RCT results, the
Finnish national roll out of KiVa began in
autumn 2009, initially with 1450 schools.
Since then the programme has been disseminated to many more schools and is now
delivered in over 90 per cent of comprehensive schools in Finland (approximately 2700
schools). It is showing year on year reductions in bullying.
KiVa in the UK
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland,
schools are required by law to have a policy
for dealing with bullying. However, like the
situation in Finland prior to the development of KiVa, the law only provides guidance
on what is required and the content and
quality of work done varies considerably
between schools (Smith et al., 2008). A wide
range of interventions to reduce bullying are
in use across the UK, including peer support
programmes and the Safe to Learn initiative
(Department for Children, Schools and
Families, 2008). To date there has been relatively little systematic evaluation of antibullying interventions in the UK. Of the 44
studies identified in the Ttofi and Farrington
review (2011) only three were conducted in
the UK. One, the Short Video Intervention,
was a secondary school intervention and
one, the Social Skills Training Programme,
was an intervention for bullies and victims.
Only one intervention, the Sheffield Antibullying Project, evaluated a whole school
approach that had some similarities to KiVa,
in both primary and secondary schools. The
project involved a Core Intervention, the
whole school policy on bullying, and
optional self-selected interventions from
three categories, curriculum-based strategies, direct work with children and playground strategies. It was assessed using an
age cohort design. The project demonstrated positive impact, but this varied
between schools, however, the project also
revealed a significant relationship between
the Input (effort and time) and the Output
(improvements; Whitney et al., 1994).
In 2011 Professor Salmivalli spoke about
KiVa at Cambridge University and the first
author then presented the programme at a
Welsh Government meeting for school
improvement officers. In July 2011 the Welsh
Government invited Directors of Education
to apply for a ‘Training in Behaviour Management Grant’. This funding was provide for
training in ‘well evaluated’ approaches and
KiVa was included on the list.
The Welsh Pilot Trial
Methods
Fourteen Welsh schools were recruited from
across North and South Wales and three
schools from the county of Cheshire (on the
Welsh border) also signed up for training for
delivery in the 2012–13 school year. The
programme was offered to mainstream
primary school Years 5 (age 9 to 10 years)
and/or Year 6 (age 10 to 11 years) pupils.
This was because, at commencement of the
study, only Unit 2 (for children aged 9 to 11
years) of the KiVa programme had been
translated into English. This was the first
unit to be translated because, in the KiVa
trials in Finland, this was the age at which the
best results were obtained (Kärnä et al.,
2011a).
Professor Salmivalli and a colleague came
to Wales in May 2012 to train staff from the
17 schools. Training was delivered in both
North and South Wales. This was a one-day
training course with separate teaching
sessions for any class teachers who would be
delivering the lessons and for the personnel
who would be the KiVa team lead and take
responsibility for implementing the targeted
actions when bullying was identified.
A number of schools had recruited an educational psychologist to support the KiVa team.
The authors supported the programme
throughout the school year with telephone
and email contact and with termly meetings
for school representatives at three locations
across Wales. Support covered responses to
queries on the programme, implementation
and data collection. The meetings were also
used to gain feedback.
All school registration details were
processed through Bangor University and
funding from the training enabled the
appointment of a part-time KiVa adminstrator. Training covered how to register and
launch KiVa in the school, how to set up and
undertake the pupil survey, introduction to
lesson content, materials and the KiVa rules
that are generated from the lessons and how
to access the various online resources
including the KiVa games. In the parallel
session KiVa team members were introduced
to the scripted process delineating how to
deal with confirmed bullying incidents.
A
European
funded
Knowledge
Economy Skills Scholarship was obtained to
support evaluation of this pilot trial by the
second author in a partnership between
Bangor University and Early Intervention
Wales Training Ltd.
Measures and procedures
The pupil measure used in the evaluation was
pupil report on the annual KiVa online
internet-based survey. This incorporates two
global variables from the Revised Olweus
Bully/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ; Olweus,
1996) that record whether pupils self-identify
as victims, non-victims, bullies or non-bullies.
The revised OBVQ has been used by
hundreds of researchers world-wide, including in some large-scale studies (Currie et al.,
2012), to measure the prevalence of bullying
and victimisation. An analysis of this instrument by Kyriakides et al. (2006) indicates
that is has satisfactory psychometric properties in terms of construct validity and reliability
Pupils responded to the revised OBVQ
items on a five-point frequency scale
(1=’I have not been bullied during last
couple of months’, 2=’Once or twice in the
last couple of months’, 3=’2 or 3 times a
53
month’, 4=’About once a week’, 5=’Several
times a week’. (A number of researchers
code from 0 to 4, rather than 1 to 5.) The
cut-off point, for identification of bully and
victim, were based on the recommendations
of Solberg and Olweus (2003) of two to three
times a month.
The independent variable was the KiVa
Programme, assessed as a within groups
factor at pre- and post-test. There were two
dependent variables, victimisation and
bullying. Pupil online self-report scores for
the global revised OBVQ items was
employed as the measure of victimisation
and bullying. The aggregated means for the
participating schools pre- and post-test for
both variables were compared for differences with a repeated measures t-test.
The pupil survey took approximately ten
minutes to complete. Teachers or classroom
assistants administered the survey. Staff
administering the survey were advised not to
move around the classroom whilst the survey
was completed, so that pupils did not feel
pressurised to make particular responses.
Staff were also informed to group children
with low reading ability, so that they could
offer additional reading help where
required. Staff were requested to keep explanations to a minimum, if pupils requested
information. Pupils were informed that all of
their responses were confidential. They
logged on to the survey with school-specific
user names and passwords. The time and
date of survey completion and the school’s
identity were automatically saved to the data
set when each pupil logged on. Pupils were
requested to provide their gender and year
group from alternatives offered on the
screen, followed by the OBVQ items. All of
the instructions for survey completion,
including the definition of bullying, were
supplied and items appeared on the pupil’s
computer screen. The term bullying was
defined prior to pupils completing the
survey.
54
The Revised Olweus’ Bully/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ) definition was employed:
‘It is bullying when one or more children
deliberately and repeatedly make another child
feel bad. The bully usually has power over the
victim and the victim of bullying is usually
unable to defend himself or herself against the
bully. A child is being bullied when one or more
children say mean or unkind things about him
or her, make fun of him or her, or call him or
her mean and unkind names, completely
ignore him or her, leave him or her out of their
group of friends, or leave him or her outside on
purpose, hit, kick, push or order him or her
around or, for example, lock him or her in a
room try to make other children dislike him or
her by spreading lies about him or her, or by
sending mean notes or doing other unkind
things than the ones mentioned above. Also, it
is bullying when a child is teased repeatedly in
a mean and unkind way. Friendly and playful
teasing is not bullying. It is also not bullying
when children willingly argue or fight.’
A concise version of the definition was additionally supplied before each item to remind
the pupils of the nature of bullying within
this study and the components of the definition, the requirement of repetition and
power imbalance between the victim and the
bully.
Schools were asked to participate in the
study by allowing the aggregated OBVQ data
to be reported and all parents were
informed by letter and/or email of the
school’s decision to deliver the KiVa
programme as part of their Personal Social
Emotional (PSHE in England) curriculum.
The programme was mapped on to these
curricula and shown to cover over half of the
curriculum for the relevant age group.
Pupils and parents were informed that the
pupil survey data, the revised OVBQ, was
anonymous, and that full confidentiality was
guaranteed. The study was approved by
Bangor University, School of Psychology,
Research
Ethics
and
Governance
Committee, to ensure that all the British
Psychological Society’s guidelines were
adhered to (Ethics code 2012_7522).
Owing to the late recruitment of some
schools the survey was completed at the
beginning of the 2012–2013 school year,
prior to implementation of the programme.
On the basis of the aims of the intervention in terms of reducing victimisation and
bullying, and of the reductions in these
measures already reported in the Finnish
RCT, it was hypothesised that self-reported
measures of both victimisation and bullying
on the revised OBVQ would reduce from
pre-test to post-test.
The online annual pupil survey that is
part of the KiVa programme is anonymous
and only linkable to school and year group.
As this was an opportunistic and small-scale
pilot study that was undertaken after schools
had registered with KiVa Finland it was not
possible to link individual pupil pre- and
post-test data. For the purposes of pre- to
post-test analyses, only the 13 schools that
provided adequate pre-test and post-test
measurements were included in the final
sample. Four schools were excluded: two did
not provide post-test data and two others
provided post-test data for only 50 per cent
and 10 per cent of pupils respectively. The
pre-test response from the 13 schools was
473 and the post-test response was 472,
representing 82 per cent of the pupils in the
intervention classes.
Table 1 shows the total percentage of
victims and bullies for each of the 13 schools
at pre-test and post-test, and Table 2 shows
these figures broken down by gender.
Results
The programme was delivered in 17 schools,
14 from across Wales and three from
Cheshire. Four schools delivered the
programme to Year 5 pupils, eight to Year 6
pupils and five to pupils in Years 5 and 6. Key
Stage 2 pupil numbers ranged from 72 to
290 (M=138); 748 pupils received the
programme.
Table 1: Victimisation and bullying on the Revised OBVQ (percentage by school).
School
code
Pre-test (N=473)
Post-test (N=472)
Victim
Victim
1
20
5
3
3
2
35
16
18
3
3
8
0
0
0
4
8
4
8
0
5
4
16
8
0
6
8
4
0
4
7
25
9
13
4
Bully
Bully
8
8
7
0
0
9
22
10
3
5
11
31
19
8
0
12
17
18
6
0
13
6
10
0
0
15
11
14
11
2
55
Table 2: Victimisation and bullying by gender on the Revised OBVQ
(percentage by school).
School
code
Girls
Boys
Pre-test (N=228)
Post-test (N=225)
Pre-test (N=245)
Post-test (N=247)
Victim
Bully
Victim
Bully
Victim
Bully
Victim
Bully
1
25
0
4
3
16
9
3
3
2
41
17
23
4
25
14
8
0
3
11
0
0
0
5
0
0
0
4
11
11
0
0
6
0
12
0
5
8
23
8
0
0
8
38
0
6
11
0
0
0
6
5
0
5
7
22
22
0
0
27
0
20
7
8
8
8
0
0
8
7
0
0
9
14
8
0
0
33
12
7
12
11
50
27
14
0
8
9
0
0
12
18
22
7
0
17
14
6
0
13
13
6
0
0
0
14
0
0
15
11
14
11
0
12
15
12
4
A comparison of pre-/post-test results for
the total sample showed significant reductions both in victimisation (t[12]=2.147,
p[one-tailed]=0.027) and in bullying
(t[12]=2.791, p[one-tailed]=0.008). Similarly, a comparison of pre-/post-test results
broken down by gender showed significant
reductions for girls both in victimisation
(t[12]=1.951, p[one-tailed]=0.038) and in
bullying (t[12]=2.540, p[one-tailed]=0.013).
For boys, a significant reduction was
found for bullying (t[12]=1.837, p[onetailed]=0.046) but not for victimisation
(t[12]=1.417, p[one-tailed]=0.046). Teachers
reported on the experience of delivering the
programme in an online survey. Delivery of
the lessons was reported to be ‘Easy’ by 73.3
per cent of respondents and they rated 75 to
100 per cent of pupils as engaged with, and
enthusiastic about, the lessons. The suitability of lessons for reducing bullying was
rated by teachers on a five-point scale:
1=Extremely unsuitable to 5=Extremely suit56
able. The mean response of 4.47 indicated
that lessons were deemed very suitable for
the purpose of reducing bullying. Teachers
also gave very positive feedback about the
level of discussion generated by the
programme lessons and reported that pupils
who were not so forthcoming in other
lessons enjoyed contributing in KiVa lessons.
A recent ‘Action on Bullying’ report by
the Welsh school inspection service, ESTYN
(Her Majesty’s Inspectorate for Education
and Training in Wales, 2014), includes a case
study on Marlborough School, Cardiff, one
of the Welsh KiVa schools, as an example of
good practice in addressing bullying
(pp.19–20).
Discussion
It is clear that there is a need to support
schools to address bullying in both Wales
and the rest of the UK. Effective interventions draw on psychological research into
the nature of bullying and teachers need
these tools to do this effectively. The UK is
currently in the situation that Finland was
prior to the Finnish Government funding
the development and evaluation of KiVa.
Our schools are required to address bullying
but have not been given tools that have
demonstrated effectiveness to achieve this.
To date no RCTs of anti-bullying programmes have been completed in the UK
and only a limited number of RCTs on an
international basis with minimal success.
According to the Ttofi and Farrington review
(2011) only one of the nine randomised
experiments (Fonagy et al., 2009) found a
significant effect of the programme on
bullying, although one other evaluation
(Hunt 2007) reported a near-significant
effect. Overall, the nine randomised experiments yielded a weighted mean OR of 1.10,
indicating a non-significant effect of these
programmes on bullying. KiVa was selected
for the trial in Wales owing to its strong
evidence in the many trials by the programme developers from both a large-scale
RCT and in evaluation of the broader roll
out of the programme across Finland.
There are a number of limitations to the
study. Firstly, due to its opportunistic nature,
the design was limited and lacked a control
condition making a cause-effect conclusion
tentative. However, there are no fundamental reasons to expect that bullying levels
would have reduced over the period of the
study in this age group, so the intervention is
likely to have contributed to the reported
reductions.
Secondly, the study reports only on the
subjective experience of bullying. However,
subjectivity is important in its own right, as in
some circumstances, bullying behaviour may
be so subtle that only the victim is aware of it
(Huitsing et al., 2010). Self-report questionnaires are the most widely used method of
assessing the prevalence of bullying and peer
victimisation, as they yield information efficiently and with minimal cost (time and
financial), when compared with other independent measures where evidence can be
difficult to obtain and costly.
Thirdly, as the pupil survey data were not
matched it prevented analysis at pupil and
class level that could have contributed to
greater understanding of the effects of the
programme. Future studies should aim to
match data so that a multi-level modelling
analysis can be used, such as hierarchical
linear modelling, whereby units within other
units are analysed (Bryk & Raudenbush,
1992). Schools are an excellent fit for the
nesting criteria (school, class, pupil) and this
would clarify where, and for whom, any
benefits primarily accrue.
Fourthly, this study reports data collected
over one academic year. For a more comprehensive understanding of bullying and to
measure the effectiveness of interventions,
longer-term follow-up is needed, ideally over
a three-year period (Ryan & Smith, 2009).
In this first pilot trial of KiVa Unit 2 in the
UK significant reductions were reported in
the anonymous pupil self-report survey of
both bullying and victimisation. Teachers
also reported the acceptability of the materials from both their own and their pupils’
standpoints indicating the acceptability of
the programme. The tentative findings of
this pilot trial justify further more rigorous
evaluation of KiVa to establish the short-term
effectiveness and any possible longer-term
benefits of the programme.
The positive findings during this first
pilot trial year contributed to a decision to
seek and obtain funding from the BIG
Lottery innovation fund for Wales for a small
RCT of the KiVa programme. This is being
undertaken by a partnership between the
Dartington Social Research Unit and Bangor
University. In the meantime the translation
into English of Unit 1 had been completed
and this has enabled the RCT to target all
Key Stage 2 pupils, Years 3 to 6 in the schools
that were recruited. Twenty-two schools from
across Wales were recruited and randomly
allocated to intervention in 2013–2014 or a
wait list control condition commencing in
2014–2015 (Axford et al., 2014).
57
The successful pilot data raise the issue of
dissemination and how to provide support for
effective roll out of the programme needs.
First, a KiVa school lead needs to be trained
and supported to take charge of the project
within the school to launch the Kiva
programme and ensure that teachers and all
school staff are trained and resourced to
deliver the universal aspects of the
programme effectively. This person needs to
ensure that parents are informed, that KiVa
posters are displayed and that KiVa vests are
worn by playground supervisors. Second,
training is needed in terms of the administration of the online KiVa pupil survey and access
to online resources for teachers, parents and
children. This requires back-up support and
was provided in the pilot trial by the authors,
both psychologists. Third, KiVa team members
require training in the strategies to address
confirmed incidents of bullying.
As with any evidence-based programme
the challenge is to implement it with fidelity
in everyday service settings in order to ensure
that results from RCTs are replicated. To do
this requires a system that can support groups
of schools in a locality. In the Welsh trials with
small numbers this has been achieved
through support directly from Finland and
58
subsequently from the Bangor team.
However, for KiVa to achieve widescale roll
out, creating the possibility of further evaluation in the UK, local trainers need to be identified and trained to support the schools in
their area. In Powys, a rural county in Wales,
this has been done by resourcing an educational psychologist to train and support
school staff. The goal now is to identify and
train local staff with a remit to support schools
in their locality. Training for trainers is now
available in the UK and this is a very suitable
role for educational and other applied
psychologists whose work increasingly
involves working with whole school populations in achieving school-wide benefits.
Address for correspondence
Dr Judy Hutchings
Professor of Clinical Psychology,
Director, Centre for Evidence Based
Early Intervention,
School of Psychology,
College of Health and Behavioural
Sciences,
Nantlle Building, Normal Site,
Bangor University,
Gwynedd, LL57 2PX.
Email: [email protected].
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61
Involving parents in school-based
programmes to prevent and reduce
bullying: what effect does it have?
Downloaded by Doctor Nick Axford At 08:00 02 December 2015 (PT)
Nick Axford, David P. Farrington, Suzy Clarkson, Gretchen J. Bjornstad, Zoe Wrigley and
Judy Hutchings
Nick Axford is based at The Social
Research Unit, Dartington, UK.
Professor David P. Farrington is
based at Institute of Criminology,
University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK.
Suzy Clarkson is based at Centre
of Evidence Based Early
Interventions, Bangor University,
Bangor, UK.
Dr Gretchen J. Bjornstad and Zoe
Wrigley, both based at The Social
Research Unit, Dartington, UK.
Professor Judy Hutchings is
based at School of Psychology,
Bangor University, Bangor, UK.
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how and why school-based programmes to prevent
or reduce bullying involve parents, and what impact involving parents has on bullying.
Design/methodology/approach – A review of relevant literature, in particular systematic reviews and
meta-analyses.
Findings – The logic of involving parents in school-based bullying prevention programmes is that this
increases the likelihood of parents first, telling schools that their child is being bullied, which in turn enables the
school to act appropriately, and second, being able to address bullying-related issues effectively at home.
Parent involvement is associated with a reduction in bullying but further research is needed to determine if it is
a causal factor. Programmes tend not to include a parenting education and support element, despite
negative parenting behaviour being associated with children being a victim or a bully/victim.
Practical implications – There is good reason to involve parents in school-based bullying prevention.
Given the parenting risk factors for bullying perpetration and victimisation, bullying prevention programmes
could also usefully offer parenting education and support.
Originality/value – The paper focuses exclusively on the role of parents in school-based bullying prevention
programmes. It articulates the logic of involving parents and summarises the impact of parent involvement.
Keywords Children, Prevention, School, Parents, Bullying, KiVa
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The value of involving parents in their children’s education is widely recognised. There is robust
evidence that parental involvement has a modest and positive impact on pupil attainment
(Castro et al., 2015), although there is no high-quality evidence that parental involvement
interventions result in improved educational outcomes (Gorard and See, 2013). The value of
involving families in school-based activities to promote healthy behaviours in children is also
increasingly acknowledged, for example in relation to physical activity, drug and alcohol use,
sexual health, and, critically for this paper, bullying (Langford et al., 2014).
Received 7 April 2015
Revised 22 May 2015
Accepted 16 June 2015
PAGE 242
j
Schools are viewed as an important site for activity to promote positive health behaviours
because children spend a large proportion of their time in school and their health and their
capacity to learn are strongly linked. There is little evidence that traditional curriculum-based
health education activities lead to sustained long-term behavioural change, so a more holistic
approach combines: first, a formal curriculum designed to give pupils the knowledge, attitudes
JOURNAL OF CHILDREN'S SERVICES
j
VOL. 10 NO. 3 2015, pp. 242-251, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1746-6660
DOI 10.1108/JCS-05-2015-0019
and skills needed for healthy choices; second, a school ethos and environment that promotes
positive choices; and third, engagement with families, agencies and the wider community
because they influence children’s attitudes and behaviours (Langford et al., 2014).
Some of the school-based interventions that display these features seek to prevent or reduce
bullying. Bullying is an entrenched problem in the UK and contributes to a range of adverse
effects for children and their families. As this paper demonstrates, there are now numerous
school-based bullying prevention programmes, many of which involve parents. This paper
describes how and why school-based programmes to prevent or reduce bullying involve parents,
and draws on the most important systematic reviews in the area to examine what impact efforts
to involve parents have on bullying.
Bullying in schools
Bullying may be defined as direct (e.g. physical aggression) or indirect (e.g. social exclusion)
verbal, physical or psychological behaviours that are repeated over time, are intended to cause
the victim harm or distress, and involve a power differential between the bully and the victim
(Evans et al., 2014; Farrington and Ttofi, 2009; Juvonen and Graham, 2014). It is widely
acknowledged that bullying is a widespread social problem. A survey of 581,838 children aged
11, 13 and 15 years from 33 countries (31 European and two North American) found that
29 per cent of children reported being bullied at school in the past couple of months (“occasional
victimization”) in 2009-2010 (Chester et al., 2015). The rate of “chronic victimization”
(being bullied at least two or three times in the past couple of months) was 11 per cent.
Numerous theories have been suggested to explain the phenomenon of bullying, including group
socialisation theory (Harris, 2009), social identity theory (in-group and out-group dynamics;
Tajfel, 1974), social learning theory (Bandura, 1977), the participant role approach (Salmivalli
et al., 1996) and a social ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Theories that consider
the social context of bullying behaviour focus on the fact that peers are present in the majority
(85-88 per cent) of bullying incidents (Hawkins et al., 2001). For example, group socialisation
theory describes groups and norms, providing an insight into why children do not behave
in accordance with their negative attitudes towards bullying (Gini et al., 2008). In line with such
theories, Pozzoli and Gini (2010) report that pupils are more likely to intervene/defend the victim if
this is their class/school norm. Other approaches, such as the participant role approach, suggest
that the bystander plays a significant role in reinforcing and maintaining the bullying behaviour
(Salmivalli et al., 1996). Altering the behaviour of the bystander can influence the social rewards
gained by the bully, and decrease or eliminate their motivation to bully.
Various risk factors are associated with being bullied. Differences from the group norm, such
as disability or sexual orientation, can increase the risk of bullying victimisation (Juvonen and
Graham, 2014). Peer group dynamics often reinforce or reward bullying behaviour, influencing
the motivation of a child to bully others (Salmivalli, 2010) and consequently helping to maintain
bullying behaviours (Juvonen and Graham, 2014). Farrington and Baldry (2010) found that the
most important individual risk factors for bullying perpetration are hyperactivity-impulsiveness and
low empathy.
Parenting also plays an important role in both victimisation and perpetration. A systematic review
(Lereya et al., 2013) involving 70 studies concluded that both victims and bully/victims (bullies
who are also victims of bullying) are more likely to be exposed to negative parenting behaviour,
including abuse and neglect and maladaptive parenting. Effects were small to moderate for
victims ( g ¼ 0.10-0.31) but moderate for bully/victims ( g ¼ 0.13-0.68). The authors suggested
that since children learn about relationships in their experiences with primary caregivers, those
exposed to harsh parenting and maltreatment may display heightened aggression that inclines
them towards bullying; equally, maltreated children may become submissive and have less
self-confidence, making them easy targets for bullying. Positive parenting behaviour was
protective against peer victimisation, and includes good communication between parents and
the child, warm and affectionate relationships, parental involvement and support, and parental
supervision. These protective effects were small to moderate for both victims ( g ¼ −0.12
to −0.22) and bully/victims ( g ¼ −0.17 to −0.42).
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Bullying has a substantial adverse impact on the psychosocial adjustment of the children involved
(Juvonen and Graham, 2014; Ttofi and Farrington, 2008). A review of the effects of bullying
identified links between bullying victimisation and anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation
(Ttofi et al., 2011a). Victimisation is also associated with lower academic achievement (Glew et al.,
2005) and lower school attendance (Brown et al., 2011). Further, data from the Longitudinal
Survey of Young People in England show that, at age 16, young people who reported being
bullied at any point between the ages of 14 and 16 years are disproportionately likely not to be in
education, employment or training (NEET) (Green et al., 2010). Meanwhile, a meta-analysis of
28 studies found a link between the perpetration of bullying and offending behaviour in later life
(Ttofi et al., 2011b).
School-based programmes to reduce bullying
School-based interventions to reduce bullying are wide-ranging in their approach, structure,
method and content. In recent years, the focus has evolved from a primary emphasis on the
individual level of the bully or the victim to a triadic approach involving the relationships between
the bully, the victim and the peer group. Interventions that consider bullying and victimisation at an
individual level have had little success (Vreeman and Carroll, 2007; Rigby, 2010) and tend to be
reactive rather than proactive (Bacchini et al., 2009).
Other intervention strategies include peer support schemes. These are common in the UK, with
62 per cent of schools reporting that they employ this approach (Houlston et al., 2009). There is
no evidence that such interventions on their own reduce bullying, although Ttofi and Farrington
(2012) report that peer schemes are useful when carefully implemented as part of a larger and
more structured programme, although the peer element was generally associated with
undesirable outcomes (see below).
Whole-school approaches operate at multiple levels, targeting the individual, class, school
and/or the community. Individual level activity can include strategies to improve the victim’s
assertiveness, sanctions for the bully, and social-emotional skill building for both victim and bully.
Class level activity varies from curriculum approaches (e.g. role-play) and developing class
rules to management strategies (techniques in detecting and dealing with bullying behaviour).
At the school level there may be increased playground supervision, teacher training and/or the
provision of information to increase a shared understanding of school bullying policy and the
consequences of being involved in bullying. Finally, community level interventions may encourage
teacher-parent relationships using strategies that include the sharing of information with parents
on bullying policy and incident procedures, and training/advice for parents. This represents the
Health Promoting School model described by Langford et al. (2014).
A systematic review by Farrington and Ttofi (2009) (see also Ttofi and Farrington, 2011)
examined 44 evaluations of school-based programmes to reduce bullying. It found that “[m]any
programmes seem to have been based upon commonsense ideas about what might reduce
bullying rather than on empirically supported theories of why children bully, why children become
victims, or why bullying events occur” (p. 10). Similarly, Hawley and Williford (2015) argue that
many bullying programmes lack a “clearly articulated, comprehensive, and coherent theoretical
grounding” (p. 2).
Involving parents in school-based programmes to prevent or reduce bullying
The two primary means of involving parents in school-based programmes to reduce bullying are
first, providing information to parents in various formats such as newsletters or booklets, and
second, holding parent-teacher meetings (Farrington and Ttofi, 2009). Both strategies provide
parents with information about the school’s methods for preventing and responding to bullying,
and in some cases they also offer parents guidance on how to help their children deal with
bullying. The logic of doing this can be articulated in relation to findings that emerged from a study
involving 2,766 children from 32 elementary schools in the Netherlands (Fekkes et al., 2005).
First, adults often do not know that children are being bullied, but children are more likely to tell
parents than teachers. Parents may therefore be the only adults aware of a bullying problem.
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Although 75 per cent of children who had been bullied in the Fekkes et al. (2005) study told at
least one adult (parent, teacher or both), many did not report bullying; indeed, a substantial
number of both teachers (35 per cent) and parents (39 per cent) were unaware that the child was
being bullied. Children who were regularly bullied reported that bullying had taken place to their
parents more often (67 per cent) than to their teachers (53 per cent). Second, even when adults
are aware of bullying, they may not intervene, and parents intervene less than teachers. Children
reported that of those adults who were aware of them being victimised, the majority tried to stop
the bullying but teachers tried to stop the bullying more often (88 per cent) than their parents
(60 per cent). Children who bullied other children reported that their teachers were more likely to
talk to them about their behaviour (52 per cent) than were their parents (33 per cent), although
many indicated that neither adult talked with them about their behaviour. Third, when adults
do intervene it is not necessarily effective. In only about half of cases did parents (46 per cent) or
teachers (49 per cent) stop the bullying (according to the children being bullied). These data
were collected before anti-bullying interventions were implemented in the schools participating
in the study.
These results suggest that parents are in an important position for responding to bullying
incidents, whether their child is the victim or the perpetrator. They need to be encouraged to
speak to teachers if their child has reported being bullied. This is more likely if they know what
bullying is and how the school will respond. They also need effective strategies to respond at
home to their child being bullied. Further, bullies should learn in their home environment that their
behaviour is inappropriate. These insights point to the value of, first, schools providing parents
with information about what bullying is, the school bullying policy, and what parents should do in
terms of telling teachers and intervening at home, and, second, teachers involving the parents of
active bullies when solving a bullying problem. Together, these strategies should help to establish
consistent ways to respond to bullying incidents across school and home settings and, in turn,
increase the likelihood of bullying being detected and addressed effectively. Hawley and Williford
(2015) also stress the importance of involving parents to help establish norms of what is
appropriate behaviour.
Three examples of how school-based bullying prevention programmes seek to involve parents
follow by way of illustration (each originating and tested in a different country). In the first, Steps
to Respect (USA) (Frey et al., 2005), administrators inform parents about the programme
and the school’s anti-bullying policy and procedures. Parents receive newsletters describing
whole-school anti-bullying activities, while take-home letters for parents summarise key concepts
and skills covered by the pupil curriculum and describe activities to support their use at home.
In the second, the Friendly Schools programme (Australia) (Cross et al., 2011), there is a parent
representative on the Friendly Schools committee which co-ordinates the anti-bullying initiative
and home activities (nine 10-15 minute activities) linked to each classroom-learning activity.
Parents receive 16 skills-based newsletter items (eight per year) that provide research information
on bullying and advice on what parents should do if their child is a perpetrator or victim of bullying.
Parents are also invited to help develop and disseminate the school bullying policy. The family
involvement element of this programme was extended in Friendly Schools, Friendly Families (also
Australia) (Cross et al., 2012). Schools raise awareness with parents via 25 newsletters and a
parent booklet. The project team receives three hours of training on parent engagement, and a
two-hour parent workshop is held. There are four parent-child communication sheets and six
classroom-home activities.
In the third programme, KiVa (Finland) (Kärnä et al., 2011, 2013), a parent guide sent to the home
(it can also be accessed online) includes information about bullying, what is being done to
address it at school, and what parents can do about it at home. The guide provides the KiVa
definition of bullying, namely when the same pupil is repeatedly and deliberately harmed
and the perpetrator is someone against whom the victim finds it difficult to defend themself.
Helping parents to appreciate that some incidents that might be considered to be bullying are not
bullying reduces conflict between parents and schools. The guide also helps parents to
understand what is taught in the KiVa curriculum, namely that bullying is always a serious violation
of a person’s rights and degrades their human worth and dignity. It describes the different forms
of visible or hidden bullying, and explains that bullies seldom act alone but rather usually have
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assistants and reinforcers. As parents know their child and how they express distress, they are
encouraged to look for change in the child’s behaviour, for example if a child who previously liked
going to school no longer wants to go.
The KiVa parent guide also describes the school-level goals and components of KiVa, including
the universal curriculum, which educates pupils so that instead of silently approving of bullying or
encouraging bullies they start supporting the victim, and the KiVa team, which deals with cases
of bullying once they have been identified. The latter helps parents to see that the school has a
structured approach to dealing with confirmed bullying incidents. Parents are encouraged to
contact the KiVa team to discuss any concerns. Finally, the guide gives advice to parents who
think their child is taking part in bullying, encouraging them to remain calm and to make it clear
that they do not condone bullying. They are prompted to talk about different methods children
can use to control anger and deal with disappointment and to help their child to think about what
they could do to support the victim. There are also information nights for parents at which KiVa is
explained in more detail. Children can play the online KiVa games at home, providing parents
with an opportunity to learn about the programme philosophy of replacing bullying with
pro-social responses.
The impact of involving parents in school-based bullying prevention
There are two key systematic reviews that provide evidence of the impact of bullying prevention
programmes that involve parents. The first (Langford et al., 2014) covered health promoting
school interventions that address a wide range of healthy behaviours, including seven cluster
randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of anti-bullying programmes. Three of the studies concerned
the programmes described above: steps to respect (USA, Frey et al., 2005); Friendly Schools
(Australia; Cross et al., 2011, 2012); and KiVa (Finland; Kärnä et al., 2011, 2013). The others were
of programmes originating in Belgium (Stevens et al., 2000) and The Netherlands (Fekkes et al.,
2006), respectively, both of which involved informing parents about the initiative and holding
information sessions. A meta-analysis showed an average reduction of 17 per cent in the odds of
reports of being bullied (OR 0.83, 95 per cent CI 0.72-0.96, I² ¼ 61 per cent; six trials, 26,256
participants), relative to control schools. However, there was no evidence of effect for bullying
others (OR 0.90, 95 per cent CI 0.78-1.04, I² ¼ 67 per cent; six trials, 26,176 participants),
although the two largest studies – both of KiVa (Kärnä et al., 2011, 2013) – showed strong
evidence of an effect (although not of the specific benefits of involving parents).
In the second review, Farrington and Ttofi (2009) completed an extensive systematic review
and meta-analysis of evaluations of bullying prevention programmes from 1983 to May 2009 for
the Campbell collaboration. They searched 18 electronic databases, hand-searched 35 journals
and contacted at least 56 leading researchers to obtain information about research on bullying
prevention. They only included evaluations of programmes that specifically targeted bullying, that
had outcome measures of bullying and/or victimisation, and where there was a comparison
between an intervention condition and a comparable control condition.
Farrington and Ttofi (2009) found 89 reports (of 53 evaluations) that were eligible for inclusion in
their Campbell review. Four of the studies in the Langford et al. (2014) analysis were included.
They converted all effect sizes to odds ratios but could only calculate an effect size for
44 evaluations. After converting weighted mean odds ratios to percentage differences, they
concluded that, taken together, these evaluations showed that anti-bullying programmes
caused a 17-20 per cent decrease in bullying perpetration and a 20-23 per cent decrease in
bullying victimisation.
An unusual feature of Farrington and Ttofi’s (2009) systematic review was that they coded each
bullying prevention programme on 20 intervention elements and correlated the presence or
absence of these with effect sizes. In doing this, they managed to obtain verifying responses from
the authors of 40 of the 44 evaluations. One element that was coded was “parent training
or meetings”, which referred to the school providing information for parents or organising
presentations for parents or parent-teacher meetings. They found that parent training or
meetings, improved playground supervision, and the intensity and duration of the programme
(in that order) were the most strongly correlated with large effect sizes for reducing bullying
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perpetration. Work with peers (negatively), firm disciplinary methods and parent training or meetings
(in that order) were the most strongly correlated with effect sizes for reducing bullying victimisation.
The two most important anti-bullying programmes that were effective and that included a parenting
element were the Olweus bullying prevention programme in Norway (e.g. Olweus, 2004) and
KiVa in Finland. The Olweus programme included information for parents, parent-teacher
meetings, talks with bullies and parents, and talks with victims and parents. The KiVa programme is
described above.
While programmes that included a parenting element tended to be effective in reducing bullying,
it is not possible to conclude with certainty that the parenting element itself caused a decrease in
bullying. This is because only correlations are reported, not causes. While the parenting element
was related to decreases in bullying perpetration independently of all other elements in regression
analyses, it was not easy to isolate the effects of the parenting intervention from the effects of
other elements of a programme.
The most important review since 2009 of school-based bullying prevention programmes sought
to extend the Campbell review (Farrington and Ttofi, 2009) by assessing controlled trials of
interventions published from June 2009 to April 2013. Evans et al. (2014) found 32 reports of
24 evaluations. However, they did not carry out any meta-analyses. Instead, they used the
widely discredited vote-counting method. They reported that, of 22 evaluations of effects on
bullying, 11 found significant and desirable effects, and that of 27 evaluations of effects
on victimisation, 18 found significant and desirable effects. Based on information from 15 out of
24 researchers, they coded some intervention elements (including parent involvement), and said
that they did not find any elements that were related to successful or unsuccessful programmes.
However, they did not test this systematically by relating the presence or absence of elements to
effect sizes. Indeed, there is no mention of effect sizes in their article.
There are many differences between the review by Evans et al. (2014) and the Campbell
systematic review. Evans et al. searched 12 electronic databases; the Campbell review searched
ten of these and eight others. Evans et al. only included reports in English, and only included
studies in elementary or middle schools, not in high schools. Evans et al. did not hand-search any
journals, and they contacted only 15 experts (not including the Campbell review authors).
Most importantly, although Evans et al. focused on school-based bullying prevention programmes,
reducing bullying did not have to be the primary focus of interventions; they included programmes
designed to decrease aggression or increase socio-emotional skills. Also, their measures were
not specifically focused on bullying or victimisation; 11 of their 32 included reports used aggression
or peer relationship measures without including the word bullying or providing a definition of
bullying. Therefore, several of the evaluations in Evans et al. (2014) would probably not meet the
Campbell review inclusion criteria. In conclusion, the best evidence from systematic reviews and
meta-analyses about the value of including parents in anti-bullying programmes can be found in the
Campbell review (for further support of this conclusion see Ttofi et al., 2014).
Discussion and conclusions
It is increasingly common to involve parents in school-based programmes, not only to boost
children’s academic attainment but also to help foster healthy behaviours. This applies
to interventions designed to prevent or reduce bullying as much as it does to interventions
concerned with other aspects of health. This paper summarises the rationale for, and evidence of,
the value of involving parents in bullying prevention but is unable to answer fully the question it
poses about the effectiveness of involving parents because of the limitations of research to date.
The two main ways of involving parents in bullying prevention have been identified as first,
providing information to parents in various formats such as newsletters or booklets, and second,
holding parent-teacher meetings. The logic of including these elements is not always articulated,
but broadly it is that they increase the likelihood of parents first, telling schools that their child is
being bullied, which in turn enables the school to act appropriately, and second, being able to
address bullying-related issues effectively at home. This chimes with the logic of involving families
in health promoting schools, namely, that it first, increases parental monitoring and, in turn,
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communication with the school, and second, helps to reinforce at home messages conveyed at
school, in part by shaping family norms (Langford et al., 2014).
Empirical evidence was provided above to support the logic of involving parents in school-based
bullying prevention programmes. A recent systematic review of studies of parents’ perceptions of
and experiences with bullying reinforces the need for greater awareness and understanding
of bullying among parents as well as the importance of shared responsibility between parents and
schools to address it (Harcourt et al., 2014). However, bullying prevention programmes do
appear to have a blind spot as regards parental involvement. Specifically, they tend not to include
parenting education and support, even though negative parenting behaviour is associated with
an increased risk of a child being a victim or bully/victim, and positive parenting behaviour is
protective against victimisation.
Data from two meta-analyses were presented to examine the effectiveness of school-based
bullying prevention programmes that involve parents. The first (Langford et al., 2014) found that
anti-bullying interventions that include curriculum, whole school and family engagement elements
produced a 17 per cent reduction in the odds of bullying victimisation but had no effect on
perpetration (with the exception of the KiVa programme). The second study (Farrington and Ttofi,
2009), which provides the strongest evidence, found that the inclusion of parent training or
meetings was the element (out of 20) that was most strongly correlated with reductions in
bullying, and that it was the third strongest correlate of the 20-23 per cent reduction in
victimisation.
It can be concluded that there is a reasonable logic for involving parents in bullying
prevention interventions, and that parent involvement is associated with, if not yet identified as a
causal factor in, reducing bullying. The implications for practice are that: there is good reason to
involve parents in bullying prevention; consideration should be given to programmes including
a parenting support and education component; and this element should be amplified in
cases of chronic involvement in bullying. Thus, schools should inform parents about the
school’s agreed definition of bullying and how the school deals with it, involve parents of bullies
and victims in dealing with bullying incidents, keep them informed of progress, and support
parents of bullies and victims. Further, bullying prevention is not just the responsibility of the
school: given the association between negative parenting and bullying and victimisation,
interventions that target parenting are also likely to play an important role (Lereya et al., 2013).
Of course, engaging such parents is likely to prove challenging and required concerted effort
(Axford et al., 2012).
In terms of research implications, future studies should: investigate the extent to which
parents are involved by schools in bullying prevention, and how; explore what works best in
terms of engaging parents in such interventions, especially those who might be deemed
“hard-to-reach”; use experimental designs (RCTs) to compare the effectiveness of bullying
prevention programmes with and without a parent involvement component against a
services-as-usual control group; develop and test the effectiveness of interventions that
include a parenting support and education component; and repeat the Farrington and Ttofi
(2009) meta-analysis with newer studies included.
Implications for policy and practice
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■
There is good reason to involve parents in bullying prevention.
■
Consideration should be given to programmes including a parenting support and education
component. This element should be amplified in cases of chronic involvement in bullying.
■
Bullying prevention is not just the responsibility of the school; given the association between
negative parenting and bullying and victimisation, interventions that target parenting are also likely
to play an important role. Engaging such parents is likely to prove challenging and required
concerted effort.
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Acknowledgements
Nick Axford, Suzy Clarkson, Gretchen Bjornstad, Zoe Wrigley and Judy Hutchings wish to
acknowledge the support of the Big Lottery Innovation Fund in Wales for funding the
implementation and evaluation by RCT of the KiVa programme in Wales.
Declaration of potential conflict of interest: Suzy Clarkson and Judy Hutchings were trained by the
University of Turku in Finland (home to the KiVa programme) to train school staff in the KiVa
programme for the purposes of the RCT in Wales (www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN23999021), and
have since been licensed to train other schools as well. As Nick Axford is Co-Editor of the Journal
of Children's Services, the Guest Editor, Tracey Bywater, dealt with all aspects of the peer review
process for this article, thereby ensuring that it remained double-blind.
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About the authors
Nick Axford PhD is a Senior Researcher at the Dartington Social Research Unit. He specialises in
research on prevention and early intervention in children’s services. He is currently Principal
Investigator on RCTs in the areas of bullying prevention and youth mentoring and recently
completed two reviews of the evidence on “what works” in the early years. He is a Member of the
Early Intervention Foundation Evidence Panel and an Advisor to the board of the European
Society for Prevention Research. Nick Axford is the corresponding author and can be contacted
at: [email protected]
David P. Farrington is an Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology in the Institute of
Criminology, Cambridge University. He received the Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2013. He is the
Chair of the American Society of Criminology Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology.
His major research interest is in developmental criminology, and he is the Director of the Cambridge
Study in Delinquent Development, a prospective longitudinal survey of over 400 London males from
age 8 to age 56. In addition to over 650 published journal articles and book chapters on criminological
and psychological topics, he has published nearly 100 books, monographs and government reports.
Suzy Clarkson completed an MScRes at the Bangor University on the Welsh KiVa pilot trial. She is
currently working as a Research Officer on the BIG Lottery funded randomised controlled trial of
KiVa in Wales, and undertaking a PhD on its impact on academic attainment.
Gretchen J. Bjornstad is a Research Fellow at the Dartington Social Research Unit, currently
working as part of a team conducting an RCT of the KiVa bullying prevention programme as well
as a stream of work focusing on evaluating research evidence and the benefits and costs of
interventions for children. Previously, Gretchen worked at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s
College London. She completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2009.
Zoe Wrigley MSc is a Researcher at the Dartington Social Research Unit. She works on the
Communities that Care in Europe, Investing in Children, Family Nurse Partnership and KiVa projects
(the latter an RCT in Wales), and has contributed to two reviews for Public Health England and the
Early Intervention Foundation respectively of the evidence on “what works” in the early years. Prior to
working at the DSRU, Zoe worked at Public Health England/the Health Protection Agency.
Professor Judy Hutchings has worked in North Wales since 1973 and is the Director of the
Bangor University Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention. She has published extensively,
advised UK and Welsh Governments, lectured and taught internationally and in 2011 received an
OBE for services to children and families. She has worked on evaluations of parenting
programmes in several countries and works with the World Health Organisation, Oxford and
Cape Town Universities, developing and evaluating evidence-informed parenting programmes
for low-and middle-income countries. Current research includes an RCT of the Finnish KiVa
bullying prevention programme with Dartington Social Research Unit.
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RESEARCH IN SCHOOLS
Spreading the word
Rolling out evidence-based
programmes in schools
Judy Hutchings and Suzy Clarkson consider the lessons learned from rolling out
and evaluating KiVa, an anti-bullying programme, in the UK
THERE ARE CHALLENGES to implementing
and evaluating any evidence-based
programme under real-world conditions.
Without attention to fidelity it is unlikely that
the outcomes from coal-face replications
(effectiveness trials) will match those of the
research trials (efficacy trials). This is the
main challenge of our work at the Centre for
Evidence Based Early Intervention (CEBEI)
and the focus of much attention across the
field of psychosocial interventions.
KiVA, a school-based anti-bullying
programme, originated in Finland. There,
even with government funding, the results
from the large-scale roll-out, although still
very positive, were not as good as those from
the original randomised controlled trial (RCT)
(www.kivaprogram.net). The question with
any multi-component intervention is “what
needs to be done to achieve results that
match those of the efficacy trials?” When the
task is taking an evidence-based intervention
and delivering it in another country/cultural
context there are added challenges.
Our first potential barrier in bringing the
programme to Wales was easily overcome.
A brief presentation at a Welsh Government
meeting of school improvement officers
resulted in the inclusion of KiVa on a list of
eligible evidence-based programmes for a
Welsh Government School Improvement
Grant.
The School Improvement Grant funded
training and resources for 14 pilot schools
in Wales and a visit by Prof Salmivalli, the
KiVa programme developer, to deliver the
initial training. At the same time, CEBEI staff
were trained to support implementation and
subsequently trained in Finland to be trainers.
We next obtained European Knowledge
Economy Skills Scholarship (KESS) funding
for a Master’s project to evaluate the pilot
trial in Wales. Survey results from this project
were good, showing significant reductions in
both bullying and victimisation, and teacher
feedback was extremely positive, reporting
that the lesson plans were easy to use and
had a positive impact on child well-being and
20
What we know
● When rolling out an evidence-based
programme, there are challenges
for schools, implementers, and
researchers.
● Time, communication, and technology
are common themes.
● Overcoming these challenges is a
continuing process.
behaviour. A follow-up KESS-funded Master’s
project reported that the reduced bullying
and victimisation of children after one year
had been maintained for those children who
had received the programme for two years.
The results of the pilot trial led to the
BIG Lottery Fund supporting an on-going
small effectiveness RCT in 20 schools. This
project funded participating schools for
two years with all training, resources and
registration costs. In addition, it overcame
another implementation barrier for Wales by
paying for all child and parent material to be
translated into Welsh.
Despite the funding that enabled the initial
introduction of KiVa into Wales, there have
been a number of challenges for schools and
for us at CEBEI, as both implementers and
researchers.
Challenges for schools
● The main challenge for schools has been
cost. This was not a problem for the pilot
trial and RCT, where the costs were grant
funded. However, once these trials had
ended and schools had to pay the annual
registration fee of £2.50 per child per
year, several opted out. All declared their
intention to continue with lessons, but they
are deprived of ongoing support and access
to material, such as annual survey feedback
and online games for children that can be
played at home.
● Turnover of staff. Schools must identify and
train a school lead and a KiVa team lead.
The role of the school lead is to support
Better: Evidence-based Education autumn 2015
staff in all aspects of the programme,
ensuring that teachers are trained, that
resources are available, and that the
annual online child survey is completed.
Significant changes in staff in primary
schools have meant that some schools
have lost their KiVa leads and/or the lead
has had too many other responsibilities.
● Creating a consistent understanding of
bullying across the parents/community.
● IT challenges. Most primary schools in
Wales do not have the IT resources to sit
a whole class at the computer to take the
annual on-line survey. It takes time and
planning to implement this.
● Other IT challenges. Teachers have made
errors when logging in to the KiVa site and/
or losing passwords.
Solutions for schools
Our support and feedback meetings have
identified the following tips on successful
implementation:
● It must be a whole-school approach and be
reviewed regularly in staff meetings.
● It must have the full commitment of the
school head teacher, although it is best if
the head is not the KiVa school lead.
● The KiVa school lead must have time to
take on this role and oversee the IT issues,
or work with a designated IT person.
● The forms in the teacher manual to screen
potential bullying incidents are very helpful.
This also aids record keeping and several
schools have found this to be helpful in
school inspections and as a record when
faced with challenging parents.
● Creating a link to the KiVa website and
resources through the school website
enables parents and children to access
material. Several schools report having
found it very helpful to be able to direct
parents to the KiVa parent website and
to explain the KiVa definition of bullying,
process and approach to bullying.
● The KiVa school lead must ensure that
teachers deliver lessons and complete
lesson evaluations as soon after the lesson
RESEARCH IN SCHOOLS
Spreading the word
as possible. Some schools have designated
a specific time on the timetable when
every Key Stage 2 (age 7-11) class will be
receiving a KiVa lesson.
● Some schools have trained one staff
member, often a support staff member,
to take the survey with the whole of Key
Stage 2 (age 7-11) and this has ensured
consistency and been time effective.
Challenges for implementers
● Communication. Schools receive so much
spam, and both emails and letters can be
overlooked.
● Funding for local authorities has been
reduced. We have to target schools directly
and school staff are not always familiar
with evidence and how to interpret it.
There are a lot of non-evidence-based
programmes available to schools.
● School inspectors in Wales will not
identify individual programmes so, even
when they give a glowing report on the
implementation of KiVa in a school, the
programme itself is not identified.
● There can be a high turnover of primary
school staff.
● Some schools do not recognise a bullying
Challenges for researchers
problem; there is still a significant
mismatch between child-reported and
school-identified levels of bullying.
● It can be hard to ensure the availability of
training, resources, and staff to be able to
follow up expressions of interest.
Some challenges have arisen from our
determination to establish an evidence base
for KiVa in the UK. They include:
● Asking for additional data from schools.
● A lack of understanding of RCTs,
particularly for control schools,
which despite clear contracts, failed
to understand the data collection
requirements because schools did not
pass on emails.
● Challenges in obtaining ethical approval/
parental consent for access to child data.
● Not all school staff have received the
training that the KiVa lead should deliver
within the school, making it hard to ensure
the quality of lesson delivery and to collect
evidence on implementation quality. This
is very dependent on the enthusiasm of
the KiVa lead and/or head teacher.
Solutions for implementers
● Support existing schools in disseminating
information on their successes to other
schools.
● Include presentations at conferences.
● Write in professional journals and target
newspaper and television coverage.
● Place information on key websites.
● Provide support. We have continued to
provide termly support meetings in North
and South Wales, and advice and support
on-line from CEBEI.
● Provide local support. For successful
implementation, KiVa needs to be
supported by a local trainer. CEBEI is the
approved training centre for the UK, but our
goal is to train and support a network of
trainers across the UK.
Solutions for researchers
● Continue to seek funds for both RCTs and
other kinds of evaluations. KESS European
funding has enabled two years of followup in the pilot schools.
● Continue to support schools in dealing
with IT issues through termly consultation
days and email and phone support.
Conclusion
Children deserve evidence-based education
and, with the support of schools, we
are working to overcome barriers to the
evaluation and dissemination of KiVa across
the UK, hopefully in ways that will ensure
effective delivery.
About the author
Judy Hutchings leads the Bangor University
Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention.
She has undertaken trials and published
results from more than 30 years of
research into parenting and school-based
programmes to prevent and reduce violence.
Judy led the pilot KiVa trial.
Suzy Clarkson is a research project support
officer for the KiVa RCT.
Further reading
Hutchings J, Bywater T, and Daley D
(2007), Early Prevention of Conduct
Disorder: How and Why Did the North
and Mid Wales Sure Start Study Work?
Journal of Children’s Services, 2(2), 4–14.
doi:10.1108/ 17466660200700012.
Hutchings J (2012), Introducing,
Researching and Disseminating the
Incredible Years Programmes in Wales.
International Journal of Conflict and
Violence, 6(2), 225–233.
autumn 2015 Better: Evidence-based Education
21
Clarkson et al. BMC Public Health (2016) 16:104
DOI 10.1186/s12889-016-2746-1
STUDY PROTOCOL
Open Access
Effectiveness and micro-costing of the
KiVa school-based bullying prevention
programme in Wales: study protocol for
a pragmatic definitive parallel group
cluster randomised controlled trial
Suzy Clarkson1* , Nick Axford2, Vashti Berry3, Rhiannon Tudor Edwards4, Gretchen Bjornstad2, Zoe Wrigley2,
Joanna Charles4, Zoe Hoare5, Obioha C. Ukoumunne3, Justin Matthews3 and Judy Hutchings1
Abstract
Background: Bullying refers to verbal, physical or psychological aggression repeated over time that is intended to
cause harm or distress to the victims who are unable to defend themselves. It is a key public health priority owing
to its widespread prevalence in schools and harmful short- and long-term effects on victims’ well-being. There is a
need to strengthen the evidence base by testing innovative approaches to preventing bullying. KiVa is a school-based
bullying prevention programme with universal and indicated elements and an emphasis on changing bystander
behaviour. It achieved promising results in a large trial in Finland, and now requires testing in other countries. This
paper describes the protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial (RCT) of KiVa in Wales.
Methods/Design: The study uses a two-arm waitlist control pragmatic definitive parallel group cluster RCT design with
an embedded process evaluation and calculation of unit cost. Participating schools will be randomised a using a 1:1
ratio to KiVa plus usual provision (intervention group) or usual provision only (control group). The trial has one primary
outcome, child self-reported victimisation from bullying, dichotomised as ‘victimised’ (bullied at least twice a month in
the last couple of months) versus ‘not victimised’. Secondary outcomes are: bullying perpetration; aspects of child social
and emotional well-being (including emotional problems, conduct, peer relations, prosocial behaviour); and school
attendance. Follow-up is at 12 months post-baseline. Implementation fidelity is measured through teacher-completed
lesson records and independent school-wide observation. A micro-costing analysis will determine the costs of
implementing KiVa, including recurrent and non-recurrent unit costs. Factors related to the scalability of the
programme will be examined in interviews with head teachers and focus groups with key stakeholders in the
implementation of school-based bullying interventions.
Discussion: The results from this trial will provide evidence on whether the KiVa programme is transportable
from Finland to Wales in terms of effectiveness and implementation. It will provide information about the
costs of delivery and generate insights into factors related to the scalability of the programme.
Trial registration: Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN23999021 Date 10-6-13
Keywords: Bullying, Victimisation, Emotional well-being, Absenteeism, School-based, Intervention, Microcosting, Randomised, KiVa, Prevention
* Correspondence: [email protected]
1
Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention, School of Psychology, College
of Health and Behavioural Sciences, Bangor University, Nantlle Building,
Normal Site, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2PX, Wales, United Kingdom
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
© 2016 Clarkson et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to
the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver
(http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Background
There is now general consensus among researchers that
bullying is defined as verbal, physical or psychological
aggression repeated over time that is intended to cause
harm or distress to the victims who are unable to defend
themselves [1]. Bullying is a major international social,
physical and mental health concern owing to its effects
and prevalence [2, 3].
Victimisation, or being bullied, carries numerous detrimental and long-term consequences, including depression
[4, 5], psychological maladjustment [4, 6–8], high-risk
health behaviours, such as drinking, smoking and
substance abuse [9–11] and suicidal ideation and suicide [4, 12]. Victimisation has also been associated
with increased school absence [13], poorer educational
attainment [14, 15] and lower lifetime earnings [16, 17].
Bullying is widespread and occurs regularly in most
school settings [18], with many children frequently observing some form of bullying at school [19, 20]. A
World Health Organization study, involving over
200,000 children aged 11 to 15 years from 39 countries,
reported that one in 10 children worldwide say that they
are bullied (bullied at least two or three times in the past
couple of months [21]. A more recent survey, involving
over 580,000 children aged 11, 13 and 15 years from 33
countries (31 European and two North American), reported that 29 % of children were ‘occasional victims’
(bullied at school once in the past couple of months)
and 11 % were ‘chronic victims’ (bullied at least two or
three times in the past couple of months) [22]. In at
least 85 % of bullying incidents, peers are reported to be
present [23]. Teachers report bullying incidents far less
frequently than pupils [24] and also often perceive the
incidents to be less severe [24, 25], emphasising the need
for teacher awareness training and a clear school definition of bullying.
The focus of anti-bullying interventions in schools
has altered over the last two decades. Earlier interventions were typically focused on the individual or a
small target group, and involved providing therapy
and counselling and seeking to enhance children’s
social competence [26, 27]. More recently, a more
encompassing multi-faceted approach has been developed that involves not only the bully and the victim
but also seeks to change the social dynamics within
the peer group and the wider school community. Targeted interventions concentrated solely at the level of
the bully and/or the victim have had little success in reducing bullying [27, 28] whereas multiple level whole-school
approaches have demonstrated significant effectiveness in
reducing bullying behaviour [27, 29]. An extensive systematic review of school-based bullying prevention programmes identified 53 evaluations (reported on in 89
publications) [29]. Of these, 44 contained sufficient detail
Page 2 of 11
to calculate effect sizes and were included in metaanalyses, which found that, on average, bullying decreased in relative terms by between 20 % and 23 % and
victimisation by between 17 % and 20 %. The individual
components of each programme were identified based
on published papers and private communications with
programme evaluators. The analysis identified that, in
order of importance, the three most important programme
elements associated with a decrease in bullying perpetration were parent training/meetings, improved supervision in playgrounds, and (higher) programme intensity
for children (measured in terms of number of hours).
The three most important elements associated with reduced victimisation were the formal engagement of
peers in tackling bullying, firm (‘punitive’) disciplinary
methods and parent training/meetings. The duration
and intensity of the programme for both teachers and
children were significantly associated with a decrease in
both victimsation and bullying. There is little information available about the costs or cost-effectiveness of
anti-bullying programmes [17, 30].
This paper describes the protocol for a pragmatic cluster RCT of the KiVa bullying prevention programme in
Wales. KiVa is an acronym for ‘Kiusaamista Vastaan’
which, translated, means ‘against bullying’ and also ‘kiva’
is a Finnish adjective for ‘nice’. KiVa is an evidencebased programme developed in Finland for children
aged 7 to 15 years. In 2006, the Finnish Ministry of
Education and Culture contracted Professor Salmivalli
at Turku University to develop and evaluate a school
based anti-bullying programme. This was in recognition that legislative requirements in Finland over the
decade prior to 2006 that schools should have a
bullying prevention policy had resulted in no change
to bullying prevalence figures.
The KiVa programme includes universal actions, directed at the class and school level, and indicated actions,
for addressing incidents of bullying. It offers an innovative
approach to bullying in that it focuses on the role of
bystanders (fellow pupils who witness bullying events).
Through class lessons, it teaches children to recognise
what is, and is not, bullying and how to respond when
they see bullying. Lessons are grouped into three units
aimed at children aged 6–9, 10–12 and 13–14 respectively. This approach is based on extensive research [31]
showing that victims report distress when others do
nothing to help and that bullies tend to behave aggressively to attain higher status and are reinforced
by onlookers’ apathy or encouragement. In addition,
this research found that when bystanders do intervene, the bullying tends to stop.
A RCT of KiVa in Finland involving more than 8,000
children aged 10–12 years in 78 schools found that it
was effective for reducing self-reported victimisation
(effect size (Cohen’s d) = 0.17) and bullying perpetration
(d = 0.10) [32]. The effects were seen across all types of
bullying, including verbal, physical, racist, sexual and
cyber-bullying [33]. Following the success of this trial,
the Finnish government supported a national roll-out of
KiVa and it is now delivered in over 90 % of schools in
Finland (pupils aged 7 to 15 years; approximately 2,700
schools). A non-randomised evaluation of this roll-out
has also demonstrated positive effects, albeit smaller in
size than in the trial [34].
This trial in Wales is one of several evaluations of
KiVa currently being undertaken in Europe (others are
taking place in Estonia, Italy and the Netherlands). The
Welsh education system today is in a similar position to
that of the Finnish education system prior to 2006 in
that the Welsh Government has relied on legislative
change and guidance issued to schools to reduce bullying. Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 [35] places a
duty on local education authorities (LEAs) and governing bodies of maintained schools to safeguard and promote the wellbeing of all pupils, which includes a
responsibility to tackle bullying in all forms [36]. Schools
are required to have an anti-bullying policy that sets out
procedures for recording bullying incidents, investigating
and dealing with incidents, supporting victims and disciplining bullies [37]. According to the first comprehensive national survey in Wales of the prevalence and
incidence of school bullying, conducted in 2010, approximately 32 % of Year 6 pupils (aged 10–11) reported
that they had been bullied in the last two months, rising
to 47 % in the last year [38].
A small opportunistic pre-post pilot study of KiVa was
conducted in Wales in the academic year 2012–2013,
with 17 schools using Unit 2 of the programme (the first
to be translated into English) [39]. The pilot measured
levels of self-reported victimisation and bullying before
and after nine months (one academic year) of implementation of KiVa. It found statistically significant reductions
in self-reported victimisation (16 % to 9 %) and bullying
(6 % to 2 %) [40].
The cluster RCT described in this paper will be conducted throughout Key Stage 2, with pupils aged 7 to
11 years, and using Units 1 and 2 (Unit 1 has been
translated into English since the pilot study was conducted). The study aims to test the effectiveness of KiVa
in Wales, measure the fidelity of its implementation, and
examine factors predicted to affect the scalability of the
programme. The results will indicate the extent to which
the programme is ‘transportable’, that is, whether it is
as effective in Wales as in Finland. The results of the
trial will be of interest to the international child behaviour policy and practice community, and also to
policy makers and commissioners in Wales where the
education inspection service has identified tackling
Page 3 of 11
bullying in schools as a priority [36]. Should the results be promising, the insights gained through implementing KiVa will be used to develop plans for a
model of the programme that could be scaled up to
all primary schools in Wales.
Methods/design
Design
The study is a two-arm waitlist control pragmatic definitive parallel group cluster randomised controlled trial
with a 1:1 allocation ratio. Participants will be recruited
at the end of the 2012/13 academic year, with outcomes
measured at the end of the 2013/14 academic year.
Study setting
The setting is mainstream state-maintained primary and
junior schools in Wales. Primary schools serve children
aged 4 to 11 years and junior schools serve children
aged 7 to 11 years.
Participants
The study will recruit pupils in Years 2, 3, 4 and 5 in
the participating schools at the end of the 2012/13
academic year.
Headteachers and teachers in participating schools will
be able to review the questionnaires for children and determine whether they are suitable for children with
learning difficulties. Schools that cater exclusively for
children with special needs will not be invited to participate. This is because at the time of designing the study
there was no evidence from Finland of the effectiveness
of the programme with pupils in such settings.
Recruitment and retention
The study will recruit schools through two half-day conferences in South Wales and North Wales respectively
(March 2013). The conferences will provide information
on: the KiVa programme and prior research on its effectiveness; the training, implementation and support that
will be provided; and the nature of the proposed evaluation. Participation will be offered on a first-come-firstserved basis to those schools that confirm, in writing,
their commitment to (a) delivering the curriculum to all
Key Stage 2 pupils and (b) participating in the evaluation. School recruitment will be completed by the end
of April 2013.
The incentives for school participation are free school
materials and training and KiVa registration for two
years (the intervention schools will be able to implement
KiVa for a further year beyond the trial and the wait list
control schools will also get to implement KiVa for two
years post trial). There are no adverse consequences
(e.g., loss of resources or money, or negative publicity)
for schools of discontinuing the intervention or
deviating from the protocol. The proportion of children
leaving schools or being absent at the time of the followup assessment is unlikely to be more than 10 %.
Sample size
We will randomise 10 schools (clusters) to each of the
intervention and control arms (20 schools altogether)
and recruit all children from Years 2 to 5, following
them up when in Years 3 to 6. Assuming there are 1.25
classes in each year group, and 25 children per class on
average, there should be 125 potentially eligible children
in each school. Based on a consent rate of 95 % and a
drop-out rate of 10 % we anticipate that 1070 children
will provide follow-up data in each trial arm at
12 months post-baseline (2140 children altogether). The
percentage of victimised children, the primary outcome,
is estimated to be 16 % [40]. Taking into account an
assumed intra-cluster (intra-school) correlation coefficient of 0.025 [29], our sample size will be large enough
to detect a halving from 16 % to 8 % in the percentage
of victimised children with just over 80 % power
(81.6 %) at the 5 % (2-sided) level of significance.
Randomisation
As KiVa is a whole school intervention, the 20 schools
(clusters) will be randomly allocated on a 1:1 basis to
intervention and control conditions. Randomisation will
be carried out by an independent registered trials unit at
Bangor University (the North Wales Organisation for
Randomised Trials (NWORTH)). Complete list randomisation using the dynamic adaptive algorithm1 [41] will
be implemented, by a validated computer package with
stratification by size of school (large/small split by the
median) and proportion of children eligible for free
school meals (high/low split by the median). Researchers
are unable to remain blind to school allocation, as the
implementation evaluation will be undertaken with
schools when they are delivering the programme. However, the statisticians on the trial will be blind to allocation status. Schools will be informed of their assignment
(intervention or control group) by Bangor University
towards the end of May 2013.
Intervention
The duration of the KiVa programme is one full academic year. As described above, the intervention contains universal and indicated elements. The components
aim to affect norms, skills, behaviour, attitudes, and
classroom and school climate. KiVa provides training,
resources, class lessons, online activities and advice and
support for parents that are based on the internationally
agreed and research-based definition of bullying. Within
the universal element there are three curriculum units,
for children aged 6 to 9 (Unit 1), 10 to 12 (Unit 2) and
Page 4 of 11
13 to 14 (Unit 3). Units 1 and 2 will be used in the
Wales trial. Each unit contains 10 × 90-min lessons to
be delivered monthly. Lessons include film clips, group
discussions and exercises. In Wales, lessons are usually
delivered as half lessons – i.e., 20 × 45-min lessons, delivered approximately fortnightly. The Key Stage 2 KiVa
programme maps onto the Welsh Personal and Social
Education (PSE) curriculum and covers over 50 % of it.
A copy of the PSE curriculum/KiVa mapping will be
provided to the intervention schools to enable them
to incorporate the KiVa lessons into their school PSE
plan. Additional universal elements are online games
(which can also be played at home), school-wide posters and high-visibility vests for staff to wear in the
playground during breaks to remind children they are
in a KiVa school.
KiVa provides a standard protocol for teachers to address confirmed cases of bullying (the indicated element). Members of the KiVa team meet with the bullied
victim and perpetrator(s) separately. If there is more
than one perpetrator, the KiVa team will hold an additional meeting with each of the perpetrators. The discussion with the perpetrator can be approached in either
a ‘confrontational’ or ‘non-confrontational’ manner. In
the confrontational approach, the teacher refers to the
perpetrator’s role in the bullying incident explicitly,
before asking them to agree to a plan to address the problem. In the non-confrontational approach, the teacher
simply explains that the victim is having a difficult time
and asks the perpetrator to commit to ways to help them
feel better. High-status peers are encouraged to befriend
and support the victim and to work with the teacher to
think of ways to do this. A follow-up discussion with both
the victim and the bully (or bullies) is scheduled for two
weeks later to establish whether the bullying behaviours
have stopped, and, if necessary, to repeat the process or
ultimately to move to other sanctions.
Support and feedback sessions and a helpline will
be provided to assist with any queries and improve
school adherence to the intervention protocol. Intervention delivery begins at the start of the school year
(September).
Intervention training will be provided in the summer term prior to the academic year in which implementation starts (i.e., June/July 2013 for intervention
schools). Accredited KiVa trainers (members of the
Finnish KiVa team, JH and SC) will provide training
in Bangor and Cardiff respectively. Two members of
the teaching/management team from each of the
schools will be required to attend the two-day training. Follow-up twilight school-based training sessions
will be delivered to all school staff (JH and SC). All
Key Stage 2 regular class teachers will then deliver
the KiVa curriculum to pupils.
Control
Control schools will provide services as usual. PSE is an
essential element of the basic curriculum for all pupils at
maintained schools in Wales [42]. The PSE curriculum
aims to develop and explore pupils’ values and attitudes,
equip them to live safe and healthy lives, promote selfrespect, celebrate diversity, and empower participation in
school and community life as responsible citizens. The
PSE Framework states that “it is the responsibility of the
school to plan and deliver a broad, balanced programme
of PSE to meet the specific need of the learners” (p.3).
Control schools will continue to use their existing plan
for covering the PSE curriculum. Schools use various
strategies to improve social interactions, such as peer
support/mentoring schemes (62 % of UK schools [43]),
and to prevent or address bullying. No other programmes or strategies will be prohibited during the trial,
so that there is no interfererence with standard school
practice. The trial uses a waitlist control design and
KiVa will be implemented in the control schools after
the end of the trial.
Outcome measures
The effectiveness objectives of the trial are to evaluate
whether KiVa:
(1)reduces pupil-reported victimisation (primary
outcome) and bullying perpetration, as measured
by the KiVa pupil online survey [32];
(2)improves children’s emotional well-being as measured
by the emotional difficulties subscale of the teachercompleted Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
(SDQ) [44, 45];
(3)has a positive impact on other aspects of children’s
social and emotional well-being, as measured by the
subscales of conduct problems, peer relations and
prosocial behaviour, the “total difficulties” score
and the impact score on the teacher-completed
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)
[44, 45] (see below for further details);
(4)reduces school absenteeism as measured by school
administrative data on authorised and unauthorised
half-day absences.
Victimisation and bullying
The primary study outcome is pupil self-reported victimisation, occurring at least twice a month. Both victimisation and one of the secondary outcomes, pupil
self-reported bullying perpetration, will be measured
using the Bully/Victim Questionnaire (BVQ) [46], which
is part of the KiVa pupil online survey [32], completed
by the study participants. The global items: “How often
have you been bullied at school in the last couple of
months?” and “How often have you bullied others at
Page 5 of 11
school in the last few months?” will be used to measure victimisation and bullying, respectively. Pupils respond to both items on a five-point scale (0 = “not at
all”, 1 = “once or twice”, 2 = “2 or 3 times a month”,
3 = “about once a week”, 4 = “several times a week”).
Each item will be dichotomised for analysis so that
those scoring 2 to 4 will be classified as victimised/
bullied others and those scoring 0 to 1 as not victimised/did not bully others. This categorisation is conceptual (bullying concerns repeated acts), but it is
supported by empirical research showing that there
are large and highly significant differences between
these groups on internalising problems (for victims)
and externalising problems (for bullies) [47].
Social and emotional well-being
In order to measure aspects of children’s social and
emotional well-being (also secondary outcomes), the
teacher-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) [44, 45] will be administered at baseline and
at 12-month follow-up. It is a 25-item screening measure widely used in developmental, social, clinical and
educational studies to measure children’s mental health
and well-being. The teacher version can be completed
for children aged 4 to 17 years. It comprises five subscales (each with 5 items) assessing hyperactivity, conduct, emotional difficulties, peer relations and pro-social
behaviour, respectively, over the past six months. There
are three response options for each item (0 = “not true”,
1 = “somewhat true”, 2 = “certainly true”). For each of
the subscales the score can range from 0 to 10; a higher
score indicates more problems for all subscales apart
from the prosocial subscale, for which a higher score indicates more prosocial behaviour. The “total difficulties
score” is calculated by summing the 20 items that comprise the first four subscales listed above (total score
ranges from a possible 0 to 40, with higher scores indicating greater problems).
The SDQ also has a brief ‘Impact supplement’ which
starts with a single question about whether the child has
difficulties with emotions, concentration, behaviour, or
being able to get on with other people (response set:
“No”, “Yes – minor difficulties”, “Yes – definite difficulties”, and “Yes – severe difficulties”). If the answer is
“Yes” there are four additional questions, focusing respectively (in the teacher version) on: chronicity, or duration (response set: “less than a month”, “1–5 months”,
“6–12 months”, “over a year”); distress to the child (response set: “not at all”, “only a little”, “quite a lot”, “a
great deal”); impact on the child’s everyday life in terms
of peer relations and classroom learning respectively (response set: 0 = “not at all”, 0 = “only a little”, 1 = “quite a
lot”, 2 = “a great deal”); and burden to the teacher or
class as a whole (response set: 0 = “not at all”, 0 = “only a
Page 6 of 11
little”, 1 = “quite a lot”, 2 = “a great deal”). The teacherreport impact score is calculated by summing responses
to three items, namely (i) whether the difficulties upset
or distress the child, and impact on (ii) peer relations
and (iii) classroom learning, with the total score ranging
from 0 to 6, where higher scores indicate greater impact.
A review of the psychometric properties of the
teacher-completed SDQ, examining 26 studies involving
teachers of children aged between four and 12 years,
estimated the overall Cronbach’s alpha of inter-item reliability to be 0.73 for the emotional symptoms subscale,
0.82 for prosocial behaviour, 0.70 for conduct problems,
0.63 for peer problems, 0.82 for the total difficulties
score and 0.85 for the impact score.2 The pooled testretest reliability correlation from six studies was also
high for the total difficulties score (Pearson’s correlation
(r) =0.84) and the impact score (r = 0.68) [48].
School absenteeism
School records of authorised and unauthorised half-day
absences will be provided at the pupil level by school administration staff for participating pupils in the study for
the academic years 2012–2013 (baseline) and 2013–2014
(12-month follow-up). These data are routinely collected
by schools for all pupils as a legal requirement. Schools
will provide the anonymised attendance data linked to the
KiVa IDs to ensure that pupil anonymity is protected.
Data collection
Table 1 summarises when the outcome data will be
collected. Baseline data will be collected via pupil and
teacher surveys in intervention and control schools in
June/July 2013 for children in Years 2, 3, 4 and 5
(i.e., about to enter the Key Stage 2 Years 3, 4, 5, and
6). Data using the same measures will be collected at
12 months post-baseline (June/July 2014) for children
coming to the end of Years 3, 4, 5, and 6.3Ethnicity,
free school meals and SEN status (for baseline, or
point of entry to school if the pupil joined the school
subsequently) and absence data (for the academic
years 2012–2013 and 2013–2014) will be collected by
Autumn 2015.
Analysis of effectiveness of the KiVa intervention
The analysis will estimate differences at 12-month
follow-up between the two trial arms, adjusting for
baseline data. Statistical analyses will be reported in accordance with the CONSORT guidelines for cluster
RCTs [49].
Baseline characteristics of the schools and pupils will
be summarised separately for each trial arm using means
and standard deviations (or medians and interquartile
ranges) for continuous variables and numbers and percentages for categorical variables.
Comparison of outcomes at follow-up will be based
on the intention-to-treat (ITT) principle with schools
(clusters) and pupils analysed according to the trial
arm they were allocated to, irrespective of the level of
intervention actually received. The main reported
findings will be based on analyses of 20 multiply imputed datasets generated (each using 10 cycles) using
the fully conditional (“chained equations”) approach
to “fill in” missing values [50, 51]. All study outcomes
(primary and secondary), trial arm status, stratification and prognostic factors/confounders (outcome
score at baseline, age, gender, ethnicity, qualifying for
free school meals (child level) and special education
needs (child level)) and potential effect modifiers of
interest (see below) will be included in the imputation
model.
Binary outcomes will be compared between trial arms
using marginal logistic regression models using Generalised Estimating Equations with information sandwich
(“robust”) estimates of standard error assuming an exchangeable correlation structure. Continuous outcomes
will be compared using random effects linear regression.
Both methods allow for correlation of outcomes within
schools (clusters).
Tests of interaction will be performed to investigate
whether the intervention effect on victimisation status at
follow-up is moderated by victimisation status at baseline, gender and age, and whether the intervention effect
on bullying status at follow-up is moderated by bullying
status at baseline, gender and age. Tests of interaction
will be considered to provide significant results if the pvalue is less than 0.05. These analyses are purely exploratory, with any significant findings needing to be
replicated in other studies to give them credence. Furthermore, we acknowledge the low power of these
analyses.
The findings from analyses of imputed data will be
contrasted with sensitivity analyses based on analysis of
complete cases only (listwise deletion). The amount of
Table 1 Timing of data collection and intervention delivery
June/July 2013
Sept 2013–July 2014
June/July 2014
By Autumn 2015
Intervention arm schools
Baseline outcome data
collected for Years 2, 3,
4, 5
Delivery of KiVa programme
12-month post-baseline
outcome data collected
for Years 3, 4, 5, 6
Collection of school administrative
data on ethnicity, free school meals,
SEN status and absence.
Control arm schools
As above
Provision as usual
As above
As above
missing data will be reported as a percentage for the
main outcomes in each trial arm along with the amount
of data recovered in the imputation analysis. The characteristics of children lost to follow-up will be compared
to those retained in each trial arm to assess the nature
of attrition.
Stata 13.1 will be used for the analyses using the mi
impute and mi estimate commands to generate imputed
datasets and analyse these, respectively.
Process evaluation
Implementation fidelity
The objective of the first part of the process evaluation
is to describe the level of implementation fidelity as
assessed by the teacher-completed online Teacher
Lesson Record Books (for class lessons) and independent
observations (for the school-wide element). Data on the
fidelity of programme implementation will be collected
for intervention arm schools and waitlist control schools
when they subsequently deliver the intervention. Although the analyses of effectiveness are based on data
collected during the trial period only, the process evaluation will use data from the waitlist controls as well.
Quantitative data relating to the delivery of the KiVa
lessons will be collected using KiVa online teacher lesson
record books. The teachers document the following:
time spent preparing each lesson; time spent delivering
each lesson; which parts of the lesson were delivered;
their view on the suitability of lesson content; and the
proportion of pupils who were positively engaged in the
lesson. In line with previous research on the fidelity of
delivering KiVa lessons [52], the analysis will focus on
adherence (to lesson content), exposure (length of lessons) and quality (using time spent preparing lessons as
a proxy). Lesson adherence will be calculated as the proportion of tasks delivered for each lesson averaged over
the 10 lessons (expressed as a percentage). Lesson duration will be calculated as the number of minutes used
for teaching lesson content averaged across the lessons a
teacher is reported to have delivered. Time spent preparing the lessons will be calculated by averaging the
reported number of minutes across the lessons delivered
by a teacher.
School-wide programme implementation will be assessed
by independent observation (one per school, conducted in
Spring 2014 for intervention schools and Spring 2015 for
control schools). These school observations will be undertaken to look at how the schools are delivering the
programme and examine differences and similarities in
delivery across different school contexts. School-wide
observations will use a list of eight items and researchers will score each one on a three-point scale
(0 = “not true”, 1 = “somewhat true”, 2 = “certainly
true”) with additional space for recording notes to
Page 7 of 11
support the score given. Items cover: the visibility of
KiVa materials in the school; the extent to which the
headteacher, playtime supervisors, a Key Stage 2 teacher
(or the KiVa team lead) and Key Stage 2 pupils can talk fluently and knowledgably about the programme; evidence of
a KiVa team logbook being used to record incidents of
bullying and how they were dealt with; and whether parents know what the programme is, have received information about it from the school and have used the website
(schools will select parents, and it is acknowledged that
they will be unrepresentative). Scores on the school observation measure will be summed to give an overall score for
each school in the range 0 to 16, where a higher score indicates stronger school-wide implementation. These scores
and the observers’ comments will be used to help identify
common strengths and weaknesses as regards implementation. Again, analyses will use data on KiVa delivery in intervention and waitlist control schools.
Scale issues
The second part of the process evaluation will explore issues relating to potentially scaling up KiVa in Wales using
focus groups and structured interviews. The focus groups
will be held with key stakeholders in the implementation
of school-based bullying interventions, namely policy
makers/anti-bullying advocates (including Welsh Government, local education authorities, anti-bullying NGOs,
teacher unions), teachers and other educators (working in
KiVa schools), and parents/children (also from KiVa
schools). They will consist of facilitated discussion, supported by a series of questions and prompts, of three main
topic areas relevant to the scalability of KiVa in Wales: the
need and demand in Wales for anti-bullying programmes
generally and KiVa specifically, and how to build demand;
how well KiVa fits with the social, political and cultural
context in Wales and with the educational context (including the curriculum); and, should the trial results be
positive, how the implementation of KiVa at scale in
Wales can best be enabled and supported given the context (to cover the most suitable support structure for implementation, including training, technical assistance and
financing). It is planned to hold 18 focus groups, or as
many as needed for data saturation (i.e., fewer may be sufficient). Focus group data will be analysed using thematic
analysis [53] to identify themes relevant to developing a
scalable model of the programme. Data will be coded deductively, focusing on data items related to need/demand,
attitudes towards the KiVa programme, and sustainability.
The structured interviews will be conducted with
headteachers in schools delivering KiVa and teachers
who deliver the programme, and will elicit their experiences of implementing KiVa. The interview content will
cover the following: how the programme is working in
the school; what teachers like or dislike; any observed
benefits for the school; any challenges of implementation
(and efforts to overcome those challenges); and any reflections on how implementation may better be supported in Wales. A narrative summary of the structured
interviews with teachers will be produced.
Micro-costing
The study will estimate the cost per school and per child
of setting up and implementing the KiVa programme in
Wales. A micro-costing analysis will be undertaken to determine the cost of implementing KiVa in the intervention
arm schools in the first year (i.e., during the trial), including
set-up or non-recurrent unit costs (e.g., purchasing materials, training staff) and recurrent unit costs (e.g., staff time,
yearly registration costs) for the programme. Costs related
to undertaking the research evaluation will be excluded
where they are not integral to the implementation of the
KiVa programme. Micro-costing is a bottom-up approach
used to estimate the cost of setting up and delivering an
intervention. It involves collecting detailed information
about the resources required to deliver an intervention,
and subsequently assigning economic unit costs to each
component of resource use. The alternative approach
would be gross-costing, a top-down approach where the
total cost invoiced is divided by the total resource use to
obtain an average cost of resource use. The micro-costing
approach is accepted as being more accurate than grosscosting, and is widely used in costing studies [54–56].
Costs will be presented in UK Pounds Sterling for the financial year 2013–2014. Structured forms (record books)
will be developed and distributed to the designated KiVa
lead at participating schools, together with the KiVa project
team (responsible for providing materials, training, supervision and additional support). These record books will ascertain how much time the KiVa lead and other school
staff spend each month on activities directly related to
implementing KiVa (e.g., staff meetings, setting up and inviting parents to a meeting to introduce the programme).
The fidelity measures will also be used to assess the
amount of time teachers spend on lesson preparation and
delivery. Additionally, the KiVa lead for the school will
be asked to complete a structured form summarising
how much time school staff spend travelling to training
and supervision sessions. Time spent by teachers and
other school staff at supervision sessions will be calculated using attendance records completed by the KiVa
project team. The KiVa project team will also be asked
to provide details summarising costs and time related to
providing materials, training, supervision and additional
support.
For the analysis, teacher costs will be based on data
collected regarding staff time multiplied by national
average salaries for a mid-point M5 qualified teacher. A
school year of 38 weeks for the delivery of KiVa will be
Page 8 of 11
assumed, taking sickness, Continuing Professional Development and holidays into account. Salary calculations
will be inclusive of employers’ on-costs (25 %). The KiVa
programme costs will be separated into recurrent and
non-recurrent costs and will exclude costs related to
undertaking the evaluation. The various elements will be
summed and divided by the number of schools (i.e., 10)
delivering KiVa in the trial to give an average cost per
school. In order to calculate the average cost per child,
the total cost will be divided by the number of children
receiving the intervention.
Ethical approval
Ethical approval was granted by the School of Psychology, Ethical and Governance Board, at Bangor University on 30th May 2013 (Ethical approval code:
2013–9162).
Informed consent
Obtaining informed consent for this trial will be on five
levels, as follows.
(1)Head teachers: Subsequent to expressing their
interest in the intervention, attending a recruitment
meeting, and thereby being provided with the
opportunity to discuss the implications of the trial,
head teachers will provide written consent for their
school to participate in the trial (which includes
adhering to the randomisation outcome, delivering
the programme in full, participating in the training
and making good use of additional support). They
will also consent to allow the research team to
collect and use for the purposes of analysis the
following: child and teacher online questionnaires
(BVQ and SDQ); child-level data held on the school
administrative system (ethnicity, free school
meal status, SEN status, attendance); programme
implementation monitoring data (online teacher
lesson records completed by teachers after each
KiVa lesson); school observation data; interview
data; and implementation costs data.
(2)Parents: It is not necessary to obtain parental
consent for the intervention as the programme falls
within usual curriculum and other institutional
activities. However, parents of pupils in the relevant
year groups in participating schools will be provided
with an opt-out (passive) consent form that they
must return to the respective school if they wish
their child’s data (from the BVQ/SDQ) to be
withdrawn from the research (they cannot withhold
consent for the KiVa pupil online survey to be
completed as it is part of the programme). If parents
do not opt out it is assumed that they consent to
the data collected on their child being used in the
evaluation. (Neither children nor parents on their
behalf may opt out of participating in the KiVa
programme as this is being delivered as part of the
PSE curriculum, which is a curriculum requirement.)
Parents participating in discussions organised as part
of the school observations will be required to provide
active consent. As the school observations also involve
a researcher asking questions of a class of children,
headteachers will be encouraged to let parents know
that a researcher will be visiting the school and for
what purpose. It is not deemed proportional to obtain
passive or active parental consent for this because
the questions are non-sensitive, no information is
collected about individuals per se, and the data are
anonymised at source.
(3)Children: Consent to take part in the programme
is not required as it falls within usual curriculum
and other institutional activities. However, pupils
in relevant year groups will be required to provide
active consent to complete the KiVa pupil online
questionnaire, and will be able to stop completing
the questionnaire at any time.
(4)Focus groups: Headteachers, teachers, parents,
children and other stakeholders will be required to
provide active written consent to participating in the
respective focus groups and to the information they
supply being used in the research.
Bilingual (English/Welsh) consent forms will be provided in all cases.
Project timetables and milestones
Delivery of the intervention is dictated by the school
academic year (early September to mid July), so the recruitment of schools, baseline assessments and the training for intervention arm schools need to take place
before the academic year 2013–14. The timetable and
milestones will be set according to these criteria. Schools
will be recruited in March-April 2013 and randomly allocated to intervention and control arms in May 2013.
Baseline data will be collected from all schools in June/
July 2013 (BVQ and SDQ). Teachers and other staff in
intervention arm schools will be trained in June/July
2013. Intervention delivery will commence in intervention arm schools in September 2013. Coaching for staff
in these schools will be provided in each of the three
terms of the 2013–2014 academic year. Follow-up outcome data (12 months post-baseline) will be collected in
all schools in June/July 2014. This follow-up will overlap
with training of staff in control arm schools. Waitlist
control arm schools will commence delivery of the
programme in September 2014 (after the trial) and
receive coaching in each of the three terms of the
2014–2015 academic year. The economic evaluation
Page 9 of 11
focuses on intervention arm schools only. Focus groups
will take place between February and June 2014, while
school observations (including interviews with school
personnel) will take place in May/June 2014 for the
intervention schools and May/June 2015 for the waitlist control schools. The data analysis will take place
at the end of 2015.
Discussion
This pragmatic cluster RCT will provide important information on whether the KiVa programme is transportable from Finland to Wales in terms of effectiveness and
implementation. In particular, it will examine whether
KiVa is effective in reducing child-reported victimisation
and bullying and improving pupils’ emotional well-being
and school attendance. It will provide information about
the cost to deliver KiVa in Wales. In addition, it will
generate insights into the need and demand for KiVa,
the fit with the Welsh context and educational curriculum, and approaches to supporting the scale-up of KiVa
in Wales should the findings indicate that it is effective.
Endnotes
1
The algorithm is tuned to allow a balance between
predictability and balance between the allocated groups,
within stratification variables and the strata (stratification variable combinations). As all participants will be
recruited before randomisation in this instance the algorithm ensures exact balance between the groups, stratification variables and strata.
2
The score for the hyperactivity/inattention scale was
0.83 but this outcome is not examined in the present
study, as it is not hypothesised that the programme will
have an impact on it.
3
Data will also be collected at 24 months post-baseline
(June/July 2015) because the online survey is part of the
KiVa programme, but as the control group will receive
the intervention in the second year of the study the data
cannot be used as part of the RCT.
Abbreviations
BVQ: Bully/Victim Questionnaire; CAFCASS: Children and Family Court
Advisory and Support Service; CEBEI: Centre for Evidence Based Early
Intervention; CEIT: Children’s Early Intervention Trust; DSRU: Dartington
Social Research Unit; FSM: Free school meals; ICC: Intra class correlation;
ITT: Intention-to-treat; PSE: Personal and Social Education;
RCT: Randomised controlled trial; SDQ: Strengths and Difficulties
Questionnaire; SEN: Special educational needs.
Competing interests
Since starting the trial JH and SC have been approved as certified
trainers for the KiVa programme. The other authors declare that they
have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
All authors contributed. NA and JH are the principal investigators and, with
VB, led on the design of the study and the application for funding. SC led on
the ethical approval and the preparation of this manuscript. ZH represents
the Bangor Trials Unit and is responsible for the randomisation procedure.
ZW developed the analysis plan for the qualitative data. RTE and JC are the
health economists and, with GB, designed the micro-costing element of the
study. OU and JM wrote the statistical analysis plan. All authors contributed to
drafting and refining the study protocol and approved the final manuscript.
Authors’ information
SC completed an MScRes at Bangor University on the Welsh KiVa pilot trial.
She is currently working as a Research Project Support Officer on the KiVa
RCT, and undertaking a PhD on its impact on school connectedness.
NA is a Senior Researcher at the Dartington Social Research Unit. He leads
the Unit’s work on KiVa and a range of other projects focused on ‘what
works’ in prevention and early intervention.
VB is a Senior Research Fellow for NIHR CLAHRC South West Peninsula
(PenCLAHRC) partnering with commissioners and providers in heath and
social care to build research capacity and answer clinically meaningful
(patient-focused) questions. Her area of expertise is children’s mental health,
parenting and domestic abuse.
RTE is a Professor of Health Economics and Co-Director of the Centre for
Health Economics and Medicines Evaluation, Bangor University. She has
published collaboratively over 100 peer-reviewed articles, on health economics
methodology and cost-effectiveness studies. RTE has also published reports and
book chapters on political devolution and health policy and health economics
in medical education.
GB is a Research Fellow at the Dartington Social Research Unit. She has
experience of working on several RCTs of interventions for children.
ZW is a Researcher at the Dartington Social Research Unit. She is the DSRU
Trial Coordinator for the KiVa RCT, and has experience of working on several
qualitative evaluations.
JC is a Health Economist at the Centre for Health Economics and Medicines
Evaluation, Bangor University. She has undertaken previous research and
published peer-reviewed articles on the topic of conducting economic
evaluations of childhood parenting programmes and micro-costing
methods.
ZH is Principal Statistician at North Wales Organisation for Randomised
Trials in Health (& Social Care). She has published work on randomisation
methodology and has worked extensively delivering and collaboratively
publishing results of pragmatic randomised trials in a variety of clinical areas.
OU is an Associate Professor in Medical Statistics in NIHR CLAHRC South
West Peninsula (PenCLAHRC), University of Exeter Medical School. His area
of expertise is the analysis of data from cluster randomised trials.
JM is an Associate Research Fellow at in NIHR CLAHRC South West Peninsula
(PenCLAHRC), University of Exeter Medical School. He provides statistical
support to a range of PenCLAHRC projects.
JH has worked in North Wales since 1973 and is Director of the Bangor
University Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention. She has published
extensively, advised UK and Welsh Governments, lectured and taught
internationally and in 2011 received an OBE for services to children
and families.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Big Lottery Fund in Wales, in
particular Hywel Lovgreen, and KiVa Finland, in particular Christina Salmivalli,
in the course of planning this trial. VB, OU and JM are supported by the
National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in
Applied Health Research and Care South West Peninsula at the Royal Devon
and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. The views expressed are those of
the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR or the
Department of Health.
Funding
BIG Lottery Wales (REF: B/l/1/010430196) is funding the costs of the trial,
including recruitment conferences, provision of programme resources for
schools, translation of resources into Welsh, support and feedback sessions,
and central organisational meetings. The design, management, statistical
analysis and dissemination of the trial are fully independent of the BIG
Lottery and KiVa Finland. The programme is delivered by teachers and other
school staff during school hours and no supply costs are provided to schools
for staff training.
Page 10 of 11
Author details
1
Centre for Evidence Based Early Intervention, School of Psychology, College
of Health and Behavioural Sciences, Bangor University, Nantlle Building,
Normal Site, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2PX, Wales, United Kingdom.
2
Dartington Social Research Unit, Lower Hood Barn, Dartington TQ9
6ABDevon, United Kingdom. 3NIHR CLAHRC South West Peninsula
(PenCLAHRC), University of Exeter, Exeter, Devon EX1 2 LU, United Kingdom.
4
Centre for Health Economics and Medicines Evaluation, Bangor University,
Ardudwy Hall, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2PZ, Wales, United Kingdom.
5
NWORTH CTU - North Wales Organisation for Randomised Trials in Health,
Bangor University, Y Wern, Normal Site, Holyhead Road, Bangor, Gwynedd
LL57 2PZ, Wales, United Kingdom.
Received: 2 December 2015 Accepted: 18 January 2016
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