The Potential of Anti-Bullying Efforts to Prevent Academic Failure and Youth Crime. A Case Using the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP).

The effectiveness of bullying prevention programs has led to expectations that these programs could have effects beyond their primary goals. By reducing the number of victims and perpetrators and the harm experienced by those affected, programs may have longer-term effects on individual school performance and prevent crime. In this paper, we use Norwegian register data to study the long-term impact of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) on academic performance, high school dropout, and youth crime for the average student, which we call population-level effects.

Bullying Involvement in Adolescence: Implications for Sleep, Mental Health, and Academic Outcomes.

Adolescents' involvement in bullying is associated with both sleep and mental health problems, but the nature of this association remains unclear; further, its association with academic outcomes has received little attention. Thus, the aims of the current study were to (a) determine whether involvement in bullying as a victim, bully, or bully-victim was associated with greater sleep and mental health problems and (b) explore the potential mediating effect of sleep and mental health problems on the association between bullying and academic outcomes. A large 2012 population-based study in Hordaland County, Norway, surveyed 10,220 adolescents (16-19 years; 54% girls) about bullying involvement using the revised version of the Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire, detailed sleep assessment, and mental health questionnaires.

Long-term school-level effects of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP).

In agreement with two predictions, this somewhat unusual study documented that 70 elementary schools (A-schools) with continued and repeated use of the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire (OBQ) in a four-year follow-up period of 2007-2010, two to eight years after original implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP), had a clearly more favorable long-term development in terms of being-bullied problems, as measured with a completely independent data source, the National Pupil Survey than 102 comparable schools (B-schools) that had not conducted any OBQ-surveys in the same period. The odds of being bullied for students in a Norwegian average elementary school were also almost 40% higher than for students who attended a school with continued use of the OBQ, and very likely, other components of the program. Several alternative explanations of the findings were explored and found wanting.

Bullies and victims at school: are they the same pupils?

Background: The reported prevalence of bully-victims and aggressive/provocative victims varies quite considerably in previous research, and only a few studies have reported prevalence rates across grades. There is also a lack of detailed analyses of the extent to which victims are also bullies, and bullies are also victims.

Aims: To study the prevalence of male and female bully-victims across grade/age and to establish the degree of overlap or relative size of the bully-victim group by relating them to all victims, all bullies and all involved students.