Examining the effect of the program developed to adress bullying in primary schools

Objective: This study was conducted in order to test the reliability and validity of Parental Monitoring Instrument (PMI), evaluate the effectiveness of the program developed to address bullying and to determine the relationship between bullying and parental monitoring status and health problems of students.Method: Research was composed of three phases with methodological, experimental and descriptive parts. At the methodological phase, the reliability-validity test of PMI was conducted methodologically on 532 students at sixth, seventh and eighth grades of three primary schools in İzmir. Experimental phase was carried out on 113 students studying at the sixth grades of two schools by using the pretest-posttest with experiment control group and the monitoring model. Data were collected through Peer Bullying Determination Scale Adolescent Form. Bullying prevention program was applied to the students in the experiment group for five weeks, seminars were organized for their parents and teachers. Data were collected two weeks, six weeks and one year after the training. As for the descriptive phase, it was conducted with 113 students and parents, PMI and the health problems identification form were used. Variance analysis, t-test, chi-square and correlation analysis were used.Findings: Cronbach alpha was found to be between 0.62-0.78 in subscales of PMI. It was detected that bully and victim scores of groups were significant in terms of victim according to the group, time and group time variables and it was not significant only in the group time variable in terms of bullies. In the restrictive monitoring, a low level positive and significant relationship was detected with bully scores and victim scores. It was also observed that students included in the group with high victim scores experienced more problems than those with lower victim scores.Conclusion: PMI is a reliable and valid instrument. It was detected that the program developed for bullying became effective in reducing the bullying and victimisation ratios of the students and that this effect continued for a long time in victims while it was not significant in bullies in the first year.