Targeting the group as a whole: the Finnish anti-bullying intervention

Abstract

Impetus for the intervention study, early stages of planning, and funding Why is there bullying in schools? How should we try to reduce it? Our answers to the former question have implications for our ideas about the latter. The Finnish intervention project was inspired by the increasing literature, as well as our own studies, stressing the group nature of bullying. It has recently been pointed out, and also empirically shown, that peer bystanders play an important role in encouraging and maintaining bullying, and, therefore, they should also be targeted by intervention programmes (Cowie and Sharp, 1994; O'Connell, Pepler, and Craig, 1999; Olweus, 2001; Sutton and Smith, 1999; Stevens, Van Oost, and de Bourdeaudhuij, 2000). In our research group, the different participant roles the bystanders or students who are neither bullies nor victims take in the bullying process have been in the focus for several years (Salmivalli, 2001a; Salmivalli, Huttunen, and Lagerspetz, 1997; Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Björkqvist, Österman, and Kaukiainen, 1996; Salmivalli, Lappalainen, and Lagerspetz, 1998; Salmivalli and Voeten, 2004). Our own studies, as well as the literature at large, point to the direction of trying to affect the bystanders' reactions to bullying, and also to study such changes in a systematic way.

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