DAPHNE PROGRAME II “ A n investigation into forms of peer-peer bullying at school in pre-adolescent and adolescent groups: new instruments and preventing strategies”

University of Bologna, Department of Psychology Italy Prof. Maria Luisa Genta Antonella Brighi, PhD Annalisa Guarini, PhD Lucia Berdondini, PhD Gallingani Francesca, research assistant Nicoletti Sandra, research assistant

Other partners in our “open team” Dott. Elena Buccoliero, Promeco, Ferrara (2 research assistants enrolled), sociologist Malaguti Elena, PhD and Prof. Andrea Canevaro (1 research assistant enrolled for data collection in Bosnia), professor of Education; Melotti Giannino, PhD, Social psychologist Passini Stefano, PhD, Social psychologist Morselli Davide, PhD student, Social psychologist.

Activities Designing the questionnaire…. The cyberbullying questionnaire has been translated from English into Italian. The translation was carried out independently by two translators and the two versions compared. There were frequent consultations between the members of Bologna team to discuss, compare versions, suggest possible changes, reduce the number of items in the questionnaires chosen.

Our sociologist and social psychologist collegues have suggested items for describing the social clima in the school and in the classroom and for socio-demographic indexes.

Establishing connections and network…. We took part to many meetings at the “Ufficio Scolastico Regionale”(Scolastic Regional Office for Emilia Romagna) to discuss and share the project, to decide how to involve the schools, to plan the data collection, to receive ethical approval for our study. This process led to a letter signed both from Maria Luisa for the Department of Psychology and from the head of Ufficio Scolastico, to be sent to all the schools of Bologna and Forlì and informing about the project and asking to take part in it. Other connections have been established with Osservatorio Nazionale sul Bullismo, as Maria Luisa is an official consulting member. The Bosnian partner (which has mo funding) will be represented by a young Bosniac assistant researcher, bilingual, who will proceed to the translation into bosniac language and to the data collection in Bosnia. (aggiungere)

Selecting the schools for data collection We are selecting some schools belonging to different areas of the city and to different organizational structures (i.e. Licei etc). As agreed in the Bologna meeting last spring, we selected three age- levels: years, years, years. The participants will be about 500 for each age-level coming from 5 different schools. State schools with mixed sex are chosen. Schools with special needs are not included..

Providing the tools for optical reading of the questionnaire… Our budget planning predicted the necessity to buy a device (scanner for fast document scanning) and specific software for optical reading of documents. We choose an italian producer, with a product which seems quite flexible and powerful (nome) Our team was also trained for three days by the staff of the software house, allowing us to prepare the forms for optical reading.

Getting ready for data collection… In the last weeks we organized a meeting with all the research assistants involved in the project in order to train them to the correct procedure and instructions to be given to students. A FAQ sheet was also provided, trying to anticipate possible questions from the students.