1. KiVa: An evidence–based programme
Professor Vanessa Green
David Wegerhoff
Dr Lisa Woods
Susie Harcourt
Victoria University of Wellington

2. KiVa’s impact on students
The United Kingdom
(Hutchings & Clarkson, 2015)
17 schools, 473 children
New Zealand
(Green, Wegerhoff, Woods & Harcourt, 2017)
14 schools, 5, 288 children
In addition to the vast amount of evidence that has come out of Finland with regard to the effectiveness of KiVa, other countries have begun reporting on their findings. One recent study in the UK that included 17 schools from Wales and England found a significant reduction in both bullying and victimization for girls and a significant reduction in bullying but not victimization for boys.
Similar to the UK study we have evaluated the effectiveness of KiVa after one year of implementation by using data from the anonymous online yearly surveys that the students complete.

3. The Questions
How often have you been bullied at school during the past few months?
Have you been bullied through the internet during the past few months?
How often have you bullied another student at school during the past few months?
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement ‘I feel safe at school’?
How much has your teacher done to decrease bullying this year?
Has your school been having KiVa lessons this year?
Although the survey contains 23 questions for the purpose of this presentation and the accompanying report I am just discussing our findings based on these six questions.

4. Haven’t been bullied in last few months
Before KiVa
After I year of KiVa
Haven’t been bullied in last few months
47.8%
58.3%
Haven’t been cyber-bullied in the last few months
77.9%
83.5%
Haven’t bullied others in the last few months
74.6%
84.3%
As you can see from the first line of this table just under half of the sample hadn’t been involved in bullying. For cyberbullying and bullying others – the majority of children are not involved. However, the fact that more than half the sample had reported being bullying at least a few times in the previous months is very concerning.
After one year of KiVa there was about a 10% increase in the number of children not involved in bullying. Suggests that KiVa is having a positive impact overall.

5. Been bullied at least once or twice in the last few months 29.9% 24.4%
Before KiVa
After 1 year of KiVa
Been bullied at least once or twice in the last few months
29.9%
24.4%
Been cyber-bullied at least once or twice in the last few months
16.9%
12.1%
Bullied others at least once or twice in the last
few months
19.5%
11.9%
Approximately 53% of the sample had experienced some form of bullying in the last few months. This sample was broken down into a number of sub-groups – depending on how much bullying they had experienced - a few times a month, a few times a week etc.
The largest group were those who had experienced bullying once or twice in the last few months. Before KiVa this was approximately 30% of the sample and after KiVa it was approximately 25%.
As you can see there was a similar trend for cyberbullying and for those who admitted to bullying others.
Similar decreases were observed for those children who had reported that they were bullied 2-3 times a week and once a week – from approximately 15% down to 10%.

6. Other findings “I feel safe at school”
49.9% to 54.9%
“My teacher is doing a lot of work to decrease bullying”
38.8% to 50.1%
“We have had KiVa lessons this year”
87%
Prior to KiVa, 50% children agreed a lot with the statement “I feel safe at school’ and a further 30% agreed a little with this statement. 15% didn’t know and the rest disagreed.
After KiVa there was a significant increase in the number of children saying that they completely agree with the statement I feel safe at school. There was also a significant increase in those who said they agree a little with this statement. Similar number said I don’t know and there was a drop in the number of students who disagreed with this statement.
When children were asked how much their teachers are doing to decrease bullying there was a significant increase in the number of students reporting that their teacher was doing a lot to decrease bullying and
finally when children were asked after one year - 87% of the students said they had KiVa lessons. This may be because some of them weren’t aware they were having lessons. Speaks to the visibility of KiVa in the school.

7. Impact on School Staff Finland (Annarilla, et al., 2012).
128 teachers – KiVA schools
110 teachers – control schools
New Zealand – preliminary findings
14 teachers/principals
In addition, to measuring the impact KiVa has on student outcomes, it is also important to see what impact if any it is having on the teachers. As you would be well aware without teacher/principal buy in the programme won’t work – well no programme will work for that matter! So finding out how the teachers experience the process is vital to its success.
The Finnish study showed that teachers self-evaluated competence to tackle bullying was at a higher level in the intervention schools than in the control schools.
As many of you would be aware we have also conducted some preliminary research with teachers and principals by asking about their experiences.

8. How have the students responded to the implementation of KiVa?
Questions:
Mean (SD)
How have the students responded to the implementation of KiVa?
1 – mostly negative to 5 – mostly positive
4.32 (.77)
KiVa has had a positive impact on the school environment, to what extent do you agree?”
1 – Strongly disagree – 5 Strongly agree
4.13 (.83)
KiVa has had a positive impact on the wider school community, to what extent do you agree?
3.77 (.94)
KiVa has been a challenging programme to implement to what extent do you agree?
3.36 (1.10)
KiVa fits well with the New Zealand curriculum, to what extent do you agree?
4.53 (.74)
For this presentation I am just focusing on the impact of KiVa. The staff agreed that the students had responded positively and that it had had a positive impact on the school environment. There was less agreement for the impact on the wider community and whether or not it has been a challenging programme to implement. Again there was good overall agreement with regard to how well it fits with the NZ curriculum.
As you would be aware there were also in-depth interviews conducted with many of you with regard to your experiences of KiVa, the training, challenges and strenghts of the programme. This qualitative data set is currently being analysed and will be available by the end of this year.

9. Discussion/Implications
Positive impact on student outcomes
KiVa lesson implementation
Future Directions
Tracking the students
Referrals/incidents
Bystanders
Early Childhood
Implications
It also works in NZ!
It appears from this very first preliminary evaluation that KiVa is having a positive impact on traditional bullying, cyberbullying and victimization as well as school liking in NZ. Although it is a small sample of schools, the number of children included in the sample is substantial.
These findings are in line with previous international research with regard to the percentage of change after just 9 months. And are promising given that we don’t know how many/much KiVa was actually delivered during the intervention year. Fidelity is a critical component to KiVa’s success and one that Accent will be discussing with you in their presentation
Moving forward, we would like to see and increase in the number of schools taking up KiVA and would like to continue to evaluate its effectiveness. In addition to the student survey and data from teachers about the programme it would be good to match pupil survey data so we can start analysing it at the pupil/class level and begin better understand the effects of the programme.
In addition, it would be useful to collect data on the number of referrals/incidents.
It would be interesting to find out more from the very large number of children who are not invovled in bullying – with regard to bystander behaviour. Finally, given that bully like behaviours begin as young at 3 - we are looking at the possibility of developing a pre-KiVa programme for preschools and year 1.
As the first schools to adopt KiVa you have been faced with the biggest challenges with regard to embedding this programme into your school. However, you are also an important part of the solution because you are changing the narrative from “we don’t have a bullying problem therefore we don’t need a specific programme” to “we want to prevent bullying and address the issues in a systematic way as they come up.” So you are all now the leaders in this area and our strongest advocates.

10. Thank you
By participating in this research you are helping us to improve the way in which KiVa is implemented in NZ. So Thank you!