Modifying self-blame, self-esteem, and disclosure through a cooperative cross-age teaching intervention for bullying among adolescents

Abstract

Bullying is common among school students, and some victims hold self-blaming attributions, exhibit low self-esteem, and do not seek social support. A wait-list control pre/post-test experimental design, with random allocation, was used to assess the effects of a novel cross-age teaching of social issues intervention (CATS) on the latter three variables among peer-identified victims of bullying (N = 41, mean age = 14.5 years). In small co-operative groups of classmates, participants designed and delivered a lesson to younger students that informed them that bullies not victims are in the wrong, victims have no reason to feel bad about themselves and that seeking help can be beneficial. CATS led to a significant improvement on all three dependent variables with mostly large effect sizes, these positive effects were even stronger with a bigger dose of intervention (six versus four hours), and changes in self-blame, and separately changes in self-esteem, mediated the positive effect of the intervention on help-seeking. The theoretical and practical implications of these results were discussed, especially in terms of supporting a highly vulnerable sub-group of adolescents.