1. Bullying: An innovative intervention programme for the future
Dieter Wolke, Sarah Woods, Ruth Aylett

2. Research Findings Overview : What is bullying? Who are they?
Bullying and intervention strategies.

3. True or False? There is no bullying at my school. True/False?
Bullying others toughens you up.
Fighting back with the bully is the best thing to do.
Ignoring the bullying will make it go away.

4. True or False? Bullying only happens among boys. True/False?
Bullying is part of growing up & you just have to accept it.
Bullying only happens in disadvantaged schools.
There is more bullying in large classes compared to small classes.

5. Bullying vs Teasing Everyone has conflicts:
What is bullying?
What is teasing?
Everyone has conflicts:
When does it become bullying?

6. Bullying Characteristics
Bullying behaviour is different to teasing & aggression because:
Bullying behaviour is repeated over time and does not just happen once.
Bullying involves power relationships. The victim feels over powered and intimidated by the bully.
Bullying is planned and deliberate and is not just a joke.

7. What is Bullying?
Direct Bullying: A Student is being bullied or victimised when he or she is exposed repeatedly and over time to negative action on the part of one or more others students. (Olweus, 1991)
Relational Bullying: The purposeful damage and manipulation of peer relationships and feelings of social exclusion. (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995)

8. Direct/Physical Bullying
This includes behaviours such as:
- being hit
- being kicked
- being punched
- being blackmailed or threatened
- people being spiteful to you

9. Verbal Bullying This includes behaviours such as:
- Being called nasty names
- Having lies spread about you
- Receiving nasty or threatening text
messages.

10. Relational Bullying
This type of bullying usually involves the people who you hang around with:
- Friends deliberately leaving you out
- Friends deliberately falling out with you
- Friends spreading nasty rumours about
you or stories that are not true

11. Bullying and victimisation
% of antisocial behaviour

12. Bullying Behaviour and Antisocial Behaviour
Victimisation decreases but becomes more stable (same children victims again and again).
Bullying remains more stable.

13. ‘Pure’ Bullies ‘Pure’ Victims Bully/victims Neutrals
Bullying Sub-groups
‘Pure’ Bullies
‘Pure’ Victims
Bully/victims
Neutrals
2/26/2019

14. Characteristics Bully Sub-Groups
Individual Differences
Social Understanding
Social/Peer Status
Family Functioning

15. Characteristics of Bully/victims
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: irritable, angry and hot tempered, impulsive, hyperactive, short attention.
SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING: +ive attitude to aggression, misinterpret hostile intentions (ambiguous provocation), low-mod social understanding.
SOCIAL/PEER STATUS: moderate to high social impact, few friends, highly rejected by peers, reinforcer or assistant.
FAMILY FUNCTIONING: experiences of violence in family, inconsistent discipline & parenting, often marital conflict, father often absent, dysfunctional.

16. Characteristics of Bullies
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: little anxiety, good self-esteem, well regulated.
SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING: uses aggression to dominate, ‘cool cognition’ good understanding social situations.
SOCIAL/PEER STATUS: high social impact, no. friends, ring leader, popular & rejected.
FAMILY FUNCTIONING: harsh discipline, no violence, distant family structure, -ive sibling relations.

17. Characteristics of Victims
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES: withdrawn, anxious, low self-esteem, unassertive, upset easily.
SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING: -ive attitude to violence, poor social understanding.
SOCIAL/PEER STATUS: low social impact, few or no friends, rejected or neglected.
FAMILY FUNCTIONING: over protective mothers, fathers often distant.

18. Precursors of Bullying Involvement: Bully/victim and Antisocial Child
Child Characteristics
Neuropsychological: hyperactivity, learning problems
temperament: difficult infant
Attachment Style
insecurely or disorganised attachment
Parenting Style and Family
inconsistent, poor monitoring, violent, siblings who bully
Neighbourhood Contexts:
affiliation with antisocial peers

19. Consequences of Bullying
Truancy
Decrease in Academic Achievement
Psychological Symptoms
Physical health Problems
Problems in later adult life
SUICIDE

20. Research Findings Overview of research findings:
The prevalence of bullying behaviour.
The relationship between bullying and behaviour problems.
Bullying and intervention strategies.

21. How big a problem is bullying?
UH carried out a research project with schools in Germany and the U.K. between
The major research questions were to find out about any differences in bullying behaviour experienced by German and English children aged 6-9 years old.

22. The sample of children U.K. Germany Number (N) of children in study
Year 2 (N) and average age
N: 1072
M: 6.71 yrs
M: 8.11 yrs
Year 4 (N) and average age
N: 1305
M: 8.32
Not applicable

23. What did the children have to do?
Children who took part all had to complete an INDIVIDUAL INTERVIEW.
Types of bullying (e.g. names, hit/beaten)
Frequency of victimisation
Frequency of bullying others
Location bullied in (e.g. classroom)
Age & gender of bullies
Telling adults – teachers/parents
The word ‘bullying’ was not used in the interviews

24. Children Physically Victimised

25. Children who Physically Bullied Others

26. Bullying Groups: Physical Bullying

27. Different Schools & Bullying
The relationship between bullying behaviour and school factors (e.g. class size, school size) was investigated.
GERMANY: None of the school factors were related to bullying behaviour.
U.K:
School size
Class size
Urban/Rural
All related to bullying behaviour

28. What about other studies?
Studies worldwide
Victimisation
Bullying others
Primary school (aged 8-12)
8% to 46%
3% to 23%
Secondary school
(aged 11-16)
4% to 30%
4% to 19%

29. Bullying and Behaviour Problems among primary school children
Dieter Wolke Linda Bloomfield
Sarah Woods Lyn Karstadt
University of Hertfordshire, Psychology Department

30. Bullying & Behaviour Problems
Previous studies have found:
Lower
Self-esteem
Depression
Increased Anxiety
Conduct problems & Hyperactivity
Victims
YES NO
Bullies

31. Research Questions
What is the extent of behaviour problems for children involved in direct or relational bullying?
Are there any different effects for direct and relational bullying on behaviour problems?
Do those children involved in both direct & relational bullying have the most behaviour problems?

32. Research Instruments Bullying interview:
direct bullying (e.g. hit/beaten)
Relational bullying (e.g. social exclusion by friends)
Behaviour Questionnaire
- 5 scales
1. Emotional symptoms
2. Hyperactivity
3. Conduct problems
4. Peer problems
5. Prosocial behaviour
Total difficulties

33. Total behaviour problems in the clinical range
*** P < significant
***
***

34. Conclusions Involvement in bullying is related to behaviour problems.
Bully/victims both direct and relational may be the highest risk group for life persistent behaviour problems.
Relational bullies – low behaviour problems – Are they ‘Cool Manipulators’?

35. Bullying Interventions
There are many different intervention strategies to tackle bullying problems:
The no-blame approach
The Method of shared concern
Peer Counselling
‘Buddy’ programmes
‘Whole-school’ Approaches
INTERVENTION APPROACHES HAVE HAD LIMITED LONG-TERM SUCCESS

36. School Anti-bullying Policies
All schools are required by law to have a comprehensive behavioural policy to deal with bullying problems.
A recent research study revealed that the content and detail of anti-bullying policies had little impact on the levels of bullying behaviour in schools.

37. What next?……………..
If bullying strategies to date have had limited success rates, what should be done?

38. Bullying stories
The UH team is currently working with children aged 8-12 to design some bullying stories that can be used for a new bullying intervention initiative (VICTEC).
Children working in pairs are provided with a ‘story brief’ and then have an 1h30 to produce a story using a software package called ‘Kar2ouche’. (

39. The ‘Story Brief’ Children are provided with the following info:
The story can have a maximum of 3-4 characters (these could be the b, v, b/v, bystander etc).
The environment for the story should focus on the school (e.g. playground, classroom).
An introduction should be given about the main characters and some background information.

40. The ‘Story Brief’
The story should be made up of 3-4 different episodes or characters.
The children should think about different coping strategies to deal with bullying.
Think about the ending of the story – will it be happy or sad or a mixture?

41. Physical Bullying Story
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3

42. Relational Bullying Story
Episode 1
Episode 3
Episode 2
Episode 4

43. New Research………..
Based on the research findings so far, the team hopes to design a new intervention strategy.

44. What does VICTEC stand for?
V: Virtual
ICT: Information Communication
Technology
E: Empathic
C: Characters

45. Who is involved in VICTEC?
European Project with partners in the U.K, Portugal and Germany.
3 universities, 1 private research institute, 1 small company
The teams have expertise in:
Psychology, 3D interactive graphics, Socially intelligent agents, Artificial Intelligence and business enterprise.

46. Inspired by theatre Use of performance to dramatise the problem
Theatre in Education
Linked workshops
But is not a cheap option
In every group some will be bullying others
Interaction is limited in conventional performance

47. Forum theatre (Boal) An interactive form of theatre
Sections of audience ‘own’ a character
The actor meets them ‘in role’ and discusses actions
Can only act ‘in character’
Episodic performance
Actor can halt an episode to ask for more advice
Hard to manage in school environment

48. The aims of VICTEC - 1
Implement a virtual Forum Theatre
3D interactive graphics and virtual actors - synthetic characters
Individual interaction based on creating empathy with the characters
Computer game technology - but NOT a game!
Provide a safe environment for children to explore different perspectives on bullying behaviour.

49. The aims of VICTEC - 2 Evaluate the system Integration
Does it affect children’s views on bullying behaviour?
Do children actually feel empathy with the characters in the scenarios?
Integration
How this fits into schools’ social and educational curriculum for issues around bullying and aggression

50. What are Intelligent Synthetic Characters?
A synthetic character is a digital or physical entity with personality that can interact with people in real time.
Computer games characters are not very intelligent
Do not remember anything about interaction
Hard to believe in them as personalities

51. An Animated Character

52. How realistic should they be?
We want them to be believable
Is believability the same as realism?
We believe in Mickey Mouse…
Characters that are NEARLY realistic may be ‘creepy’
We have high expectations
And then they clash with them

53. Realistic vs. cartoon characters

54. Realistic vs. cartoon characters

55. Who plays what?
JOHN
LUKE
MARTINA

56. Cartoon vs. realistic school

57. How will we create empathy?
The character must be believable
No rerun - what happens counts
Different scenarios and characters
Emerging story as in improvisational drama, not pre-scripted
Acting as an ‘invisible friend’.
Tamagotchis seemed to evoke empathy
Give advice about dealing with the situation and see what happens

58. Victimisation Scenario (1)
Work has commenced towards developing a scenario comprised of several episodes to depict direct victimisation.
There will be a maximum of 3 characters per episode (e.g. bully, victim and bystander).
The environment to be modelled will focus on the school classroom and playground.

59. Victimisation Scenario (2)
The scenario will begin with an introduction to the main character (victim).
A tour of the school and classroom will then be given highlighting some of the schooling history and the other characters.
The first victimisation event will then occur. The victim will ask the user what he/she should do?

60. Victimisation Scenario (3)
The user gives advice
This will influence the character
Repeated - 5 or 6 episodes
Similar-but-not-identical incidents but maybe in different locations with slight difference in cast.
Child has chance to try out different sorts of advice

61. Victimisation Scenario (4)
Ending the session
give the child a summary story (still shots of key moments)from the episodes
Use this to promote reflection: Why did this happen? How did each character feel?
Educational messages
Also at the end: ‘don’t suffer in silence, tell somebody you trust’. Internet addresses and contact no.s will also be supplied.

62. A Trailer
Not the finished software, but how we think it is going to look

63. Development of Scenarios
Several different sources for help here
UH Drama Department
Children’s Literature
Professionals in the bullying arena
Kar2ouche Software Package
Children’s real life experiences

64. UH Drama Dept.
8 detailed bullying and victimisation dramas depicting both direct and relational bullying
We provided the students with a brief - how many episodes to include, the no. of characters etc.
We have since scripted all the plays/dramas and are hoping to use them

65. Teacher Workshop
The project recently hosted a Teacher Workshop to encourage school involvement and generate ideas for scenarios and character design.
Schools have since sent in scenarios that have been written by the children themselves.

66. Virtually friends
Event for 400 children in June 2004 at University of Hertfordshire:
Virtually friends: Social role-play with robots and agents
Questionnaire and interaction with the software
Activities with the robots used in research
Contact us if you would like to take part!

67. Storyboard Evaluation
Pilot evaluation work has started with schools in the U.K. (Salford & Herts) concerning the bullying storyboards.
Children aged 10 were asked about what they liked:
The characters (3D or 2D)
School environment (realistic vs cartoon)
Questions about bullying
Questions about empathy with characters

68. Results of storyboard evaluation
Children prefer 3D characters to 2D.
Children prefer the realistic looking school compared to the cartoon one.
The direct bullying scenario was too ‘dramatic’ and needs to be more realistic.
There is some empathy for the characters, children felt sorry for the victim, it made them feel sad, the bully made the children feel angry.

69. Challenges - 1 There IS no easy answer .No strategy always works
Tension between realism and a straightforward message
Do we have to present a happy ending?
Producing believable characters and varying scenarios
Pushing the technology here
Especially language for unscripted interaction

70. Challenges - 2 Cultural differences
There is no word exactly equivalent to ‘bullying’ in German or Portuguese
School uniform and other differences
Where bullying takes place
No school dinners in Germany
Children unaccompanied to school
Now extending work to China...

71. Contact Details Ruth Aylett (project coordinator)
CVE, Business House, University of Salford, Salford, M5 4WT
The project website