Examination of the effect of peer bullying prevention program on peer bullying among secondary school students according to various

Peer bullying is the behavior of one or more children in the same age group intentionally and systematically harming another person or group. Peer bullying can be seen not only in physical violence but also in the form of verbal assault, humiliation, emotional assault, and psychological violence. Peer bullying seen in schools harms children's psychological and physical health and can cause serious traumas in children. These traumas do not only remain in childhood but can last a lifetime and can cause serious damage to public health. This research aims to examine the effects of the peer bullying awareness training program prepared for this study in order to prevent peer bullying on peer bullying according to various variables. The research was conducted as a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test control group research design. The universe of the research consisted of 7th grade students in a middle school in Çorum, and the research was conducted with a total of 138 students. No sample selection was made in the research, and the entire universe was reached. Of the 5 branches in the research universe, 2 were the experimental group and 3 were the control group. The "Bullying Scale" and "Personal Information Form" were applied to the students at the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year, and then the "Peer Bullying Prevention Program", which is an awareness training and prepared for this study, was applied to the experimental group. While creating the peer bullying prevention program, the literature was reviewed and students were informed about the issues related to peer bullying. Within this scope, students were given general information about peer bullying on the subjects of "Conflict Resolution, Anger Management, Peer Bullying and Cyber Bullying, Empathetic Thinking, Adolescence Information Sessions, Conscious and Safe Technology Use, The Importance of Saying No" and parents were given general information about peer bullying. After the Peer Bullying Prevention Program ended, the "Bullying Scale" was applied to both the experimental and control groups again to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. According to the post-test results, there is no statistically significant difference between the students' victimization, bullying and life enjoyment sub-dimensions and the experimental and control groups. In addition, the relationship between various variables that may be related to peer bullying and peer bullying was also examined in our study. When the relationship between various variables and peer bullying was examined, it was found that there was no statistically significant difference, only students who loved school had higher average scores for enjoying life. The study revealed that providing awareness training to students and parents on the subject alone was not enough to prevent peer bullying.