On April 20, 1999, two students in Littleton, Colo., acted on their plan to murder as many people at Columbine High School as possible. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, members of the senior class, shot 13 people to death that day before killing themselves.

Colorado's governor appointed a commission to investigate the massacre. Of the many contributing factors, one is described in the commission's report as "a pervasive problem in American schools." That problem is bullying.

The commission did not conclude that bullying alone caused the Columbine killings. However, it noted reports that bullying at Columbine High School was "rampant" and uncontrolled. During public hearings, commission members also discovered that students who experienced bullying at Columbine included both Klebold and Harris.

Bullying is an issue that all schools should address. One of the best ways to address the issue is by using the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, the most researched and probably best-known bullying prevention program available today. A revised and updated version of the program will be available from Hazelden Publishing in June 2007.

Changing attitudes
Dan Olweus, PhD, professor at the Research Center for Health Promotion at the University of Bergen, Norway, directed the first scientific study of bullying. Today he is widely acknowledged as the foremost expert on the problem and its solutions. Olweus and Susan P. Limber, PhD, a professor of psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina, are two of the leading authors of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program. "When I started my work in this area in the early 1970s, parents of a bullied child who turned to the school for help were often met with phrases like Bullying is part of growing up, Kids are kids, or She or he must learn to stand up for her or his rights, Olweus says. "Nowadays, more than 25 states in the United States have adopted legislation against bullying, and a very sizable number of schools in the country are working energetically and systematically to prevent and counteract bullying."

Understanding the problem
Bullying is when someone repeatedly and on purpose says or does mean or hurtful things to another person who has a hard time defending him or herself. In its direct forms, bullying includes open attacks such as name calling, spitting, hitting, shoving, and kicking. But indirect bullying takes place when students become subjects of rumors or face exclusion from group activities.

Research about bullying in American schools points to a persistent problem. The first nationally representative study, published in 2001, included over 15,000 students in grades 6 to 10. Seventeen percent of them reported having been bullied "sometimes" or more often during the school term. Eight percent had been bullied at least once a week. About 19 percent bullied others "sometimes" or more often during the term, and 9 percent had bullied other students at least once a week.

However, data from such studies represent averages. Bullying at one school may be two to three times more common than at another school in the same district.

"The negative effects on the bullied students are so devastating and often quite long-term," says Olweus. "It is simply a fundamental human right for a student to have a safe school environment and to be spared the repeated degradation and humiliation that comes from being bullied."

Olweus adds that bullying also has long-term consequences for perpetrators: "If their merciless and malicious behavior is not stopped and moved in a more prosocial direction, many of them will continue on an antisocial path involving criminality, drug use, and destructive personal relationships, as documented in our research."

A solution in four dimensions
Some other attempts to prevent bullying take the form of curricula to be presented in individual classrooms. In contrast, the Olweus program involves everyone who comes into contact with students--teachers, administrators, support staff, cafeteria workers, custodians and parents.

Focusing on students aged 6 to 15, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program works on four levels at once:

• At the school level, educators form a bullying prevention coordinating committee, administer the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire, introduce rules against bullying, and train staff members about bullying and how to effectively address it. A kick-off event, often involving students and parents, launches the school-wide program.
• At the classroom level, teachers hold regular class meetings to talk about bullying issues and establish rules against bullying. These rules are posted throughout the school and consistently enforced.
• At the individual level, educators meet with students who bully others, students who are bullied, and the involved parents. In addition, staff members intervene on the spot when bullying takes place.
• At the community level, messages about bullying prevention are featured on billboards, in the local news, and other public media. Community members are also invited to join the bullying prevention coordinating committee.

"When well implemented, the program communicates a consistent anti-bullying message across many different levels and contexts," Olweus says. "This will gradually change the school culture in dramatic ways, providing fewer opportunities and rewards for bullying behavior."

Evidence of effectiveness
Six studies of the Olweus program involving over 40,000 students indicate 30 to 70 percent reductions in reports of bullying. These occurred along with significant reductions in vandalism, fighting, theft, and truancy.

Today the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is a Model Program as defined by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder also recognizes Olweus's work as a Model Blueprints Program. "We realize that any time you attempt to change the climate of a school or community, there is a great deal of work that needs to be done," says Carolyn Latady, family support advocate for Forest Lake Area Schools in Minnesota, which is implementing the Olweus program. "This is not meant to be a 'quick fix' for something as serious as bullying."

Latady adds, however, that the program "will be effective because of the comprehensive approach of the program--engaging all staff and administrators, parents, and community groups and most importantly working with all students--not just students who bully or are bullied."

Using the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire, educators in Forest Lake learned that most students want to prevent bullying. "Students need to learn the skills for intervening in bullying situations," Latady says, "and the Olweus program provides strategies to empower individual students to help."

Hazelden publishes Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is supported by 35 years of research and applications in Norway, Sweden, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany, Australia, Japan and the United States.

Hazelden's distribution and now publication of the program marks the first time that all of the program's components are available from one source in a unified package. Those four components include:

• A 170-page Teacher Guide with an accompanying DVD/CD-ROM. This offers a step-by-step guide to implementing the program in the classroom. The guide has been updated and revised to include practical tools for classroom teachers--posters, class meeting outlines, video bullying scenarios, role-play scripts, and more.
• A 150-page Schoolwide Guide gives step-by-step instructions on how to implement the Olweus Program schoolwide. Included are tools such as posters, a coordinating committee workbook, an implementation checklist, background information on bullying, staff training agendas, and program promotional materials. An accompanying DVD/CD-ROM offers a 25-minute presentation about the problem of bullying and an overview of the Olweus program.
• The Olweus Bullying Questionnaire for students in grades 3-12. When administered before the program begins and at regular intervals thereafter, the questionnaire offers baseline data about bullying problems and measurements of improvement. Reports generated for the questionnaire compare a school's results with a national database. Results are also summarized as a PowerPoint presentation.

"With the acquisition of the Olweus program, Hazelden has become the leading publisher of research-based prevention products," says Sue Thomas, a senior acquisitions editor for Hazelden Publishing. "We now publish SAMHSA [Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration] model programs for violence prevention in grades 1-12.

The fully updated and revised Olweus program will be available in June 2007. However, schools can pre-order it now. For more information, go online to www.hazelden.org/olweus or call 800-328-9000.

References

Black, S. (2003). "An ongoing evaluation of the bullying prevention program in Philadelphia schools: Student survey and student observation data." Paper presented at Centers for Disease Control's Safety in Numbers Conference, Atlanta, Ga.

Colorado Governor's Columbine Review Commission, Report of Governor Bill Owens' Columbine Review Commission, 2001, http://www.state.co.us/columbine.

Kallestad, J.H. & Olweus, D. (2003)."Predicting teachers' and schools' implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: A multilevel study." Prevention and Treatment, 6, Article 21, pp. 3-21.

Limber, S. P. (2004). "Implementation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: Lessons learned from the field. In D. Espelage & S. Swearer (Eds.) Bullying in American Schools: A Social-Ecological Perspective on Prevention and Intervention (pp. 351-363). Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Nansel, T. et al., "Bullying Behaviors Among U.S. Youth," Journal of the American Medical Association, 285 (16), 2094-2100, 2001.

Olweus, D. (1991). "Bully/victim problems among schoolchildren: Basic facts and effects of a school based intervention program." In D. Pepler and K. Rubin (Eds.), The development and treatment of childhood aggression (pp. 411-448). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Olweus, D. (2005). "A useful evaluation design, and effects of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program," Psychology, Crime & Law, 11, 389-402.

Olweus, D., Limber, S. P., & Mihalic, S. (1999). The Bullying Prevention Program: Blueprints for violence prevention, Vol. 10. Center for theStudy and Prevention of Violence: Boulder, Colo.

--by Doug Toft

Published in The Voice, Winter 2007