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Roland, E., Bru, E., Midthassel, U. V., & Vaaland, G. S. (2010). The Zero programme against bullying: Effects of the programme in the context of the Norwegian manifesto against bullying. Social Psychology of Education, 13, 41–55. Access Abstract NPM: 7-2: Child Safety/Injury (10-17 years)
9: Bullying
Intervention Components (click on component to see a list of all articles that use that intervention): CLASSROOM, Adult-led Curricular Activities/Training, SCHOOL, Identification and Monitoring of/Increased Supervision in Targeted Areas, YOUTH, Adult-led Support/Counseling/Remediation, CAREGIVER, Outreach (caregiver)
Intervention Description: Zero is a schoolwide antibullying program developed by the Centre for Behavioural Research at the University of Stavanger, Norway. It is based on three main principles: a zero vision of bullying, collective commitment among all employees at the school using the program, and continuing work. Based on these principles, the program aims to reduce student bullying by increasing the school's ability to uncover and stop bullying, and eventually to prevent it.
Conclusion: After 12 months of the total 16 months programme period, the overall reduction in the number of pupils being bullied weekly, and more often, was about 25%. This is a substantial but not very strong effect (Smith et al. 2004). Piloting only the class level elements of the Zero programme, Roland and Galloway (2004) reported stronger effects compared to this study. This is in line with research showing that scaling up interventions is a challenge (Elias et al. 2003). While small interventions usually give high control on support given to the school and the fidelity towards the programme is high, this becomes more problematic as the number of participating schools becomes high. The number of schools participating in the Zero programme was indeed high, the schools came from all over the country and the instructors for the schools were set up only a short time before the programme was launched because of a very short time limit given by the Ministry of Education. The general qualifications of these instructors were regarded as good, although the specific competence needed for supporting the schools in implementing the programme varied. Time and opportunity for training before and during the programme period was also limited. Similar to the reduction of bullying among pupils in the schools participating in the Zero programme in 2003–2004, there was a reduction in bullying in the comparison group from 2001 to 2004. At least this was true for the grades 5–7 where there were comparison data. The fact that results indicate a national reduction in bullying is likely due to the national, highly profiled, Manifesto Against Bullying. Furthermore, research by Snyder and Hamilton (2008) has shown that when national campaigns are run successfully, it is hard to obtain additional local effects. Compared to international standards, the level of bullying in Norwegian schools is relatively low, which is also demonstrated by the baseline data in the Zero sample and the national sample. One reason for this may be political, public and professional concern over many years (Olweus 1999b; Olweus and Roland 1983; Roland 2007). Accordingly, Norwegian head teachers and teachers may be better informed about bullying and about efforts to reduce it than colleagues from most other countries. This combination of relatively low prevalence of bullying and fairly strong concern and competence regarding this problem may make it difficult to achieve very strong additional effects from an anti-bullying programme. It is difficult to know whether the Zero sample was different from the national one. The national sample is representative for Norwegian primary schools according to the Norwegian classification system for communities, and the Zero sample is regarded to be quite similar as far as this criterion is concerned. The tendency for the Zero sample to have a lower baseline prevalence of bullying in 2003 compared to the baseline for the SES sample in 2001, may reflect an emerging national effect from the Manifesto for the Zero sample already before the start of the programme, which may have made further improvements hard to achieve for the Zero schools. It is also likely that there is a floor effect and that low scores on the pre test makes it less likely to obtain a significant decrease. Finally, an important difference between the Zero samples and the SES samples is the time span for assessing change, which was only 1 year for the Zero schools.
Study Design: RCT
Setting: Primary schools
Target Audience: Students in Norwegian primary schools
Data Source: Student surveys/questionnaires
Sample Size: 20,466 students from 146 Norwegian primary schools
Age Range: Not specified
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