Empowering the Victims of Bullying: The ‘Bullying: The Power to Cope’ Program

Abstract

This study replicates an earlier study (Markopolous & Bernard, 2015) that evaluated the impact of the program, Bullying: The Power to Cope (Bernard, 2019) on potential victim’s cognitive, emotional and behavioral responses. The program is aimed at teaching student rational beliefs and coping skills they can employ to cope with various types of bullying. In the present study, participating classes were randomly allocated to either an experimental or control condition. The study conducted in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, consisted 115 participants (n = 55, experimental group; n = 60 in the control group), 57 males and 58 females, aged 10 to 14 years of age. Self-report data was collected pre- and post-test, measuring children’s cognitive, behavioral and emotional coping responses to four written bullying vignettes. Measures of state and trait anxiety were also collected at pre- and post-tests. Results revealed students in the experimental group significantly improved in cognitive and emotional coping responses compared with students in the control group. Nonsignificant differences were found between males and females and between primary and secondary school students on their response to the program. State anxiety did not influence responsiveness to the program, but students with lower levels of trait anxiety (pre-test) made significantly greater improvements on emotional coping responses compared to students with higher levels of trait anxiety. Implications of these findings are discussed as well as limitations and considerations for future research.