Elsevier

Behavior Therapy

Volume 45, Issue 6, November 2014, Pages 760-777
Behavior Therapy

Randomized Controlled Trial of a Family Intervention for Children Bullied by Peers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2014.06.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Randomized controlled trial with children chronically bullied at school

  • Intervention was intensive cognitive-behavioral family program, Resilience Triple P

  • Intervention produced greater reductions in victimization and distress than control

  • Following program, children better accepted by peers and liked school more

  • Shows a targeted family intervention can improve outcomes for victims of bullying

Abstract

This study examined the effects of a family intervention on victimization and emotional distress of children bullied by peers. The intervention, Resilience Triple P, combined facilitative parenting and teaching children social and emotional skills relevant to developing strong peer relationships and addressing problems with peers. Facilitative parenting is parenting that supports the development of children’s peer relationship skills. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 111 families who reported chronic bullying of children aged 6 to 12 years. Families were randomly allocated to either an immediate start to Resilience Triple P (RTP) or an assessment control (AC) condition. Assessments involving children, parents, teachers, and observational measures were conducted at 0 (pre), 3 (post) and 9 months follow-up. RTP families had significantly greater improvements than AC families on measures of victimization, child distress, child peer and family relationships, including teacher reports of overt victimization (d = 0.56), child internalizing feelings (d = 0.59), depressive symptoms (d = 0.56), child overt aggression towards peers (d = 0.51), acceptance by same sex and opposite sex peers (d = 0.46/ 0.60), and child liking school (d = 0.65). Families in both conditions showed significant improvements on most variables over time including child reports of bullying in the last week reducing to a near zero and indistinguishable from the normative sample. The intervention combining facilitative parenting and social and emotional skills training for children produced better results than the comparison assessment control condition. This study demonstrated that family interventions can reduce victimization and distress and strengthen school efforts to address bullying.

Section snippets

Recruitment

The 111 families were recruited between September 2010 and March 2012. All assessments and program sessions were held at a family clinic in Brisbane, Australia. Families were informed about the trial through school newsletters and, after initiating contact, were assessed for eligibility. To be eligible, the target child needed to be (a) aged between 6 and 12 years, (b) living at home, (c) attending a regular elementary school,1

Preliminary Analyses

To check the effectiveness of randomization, we analyzed between-group differences at Time 1. There was a significant difference on one demographic measure with AC parents tending to be older, F(1, 107) = 11.20, p = .001. There was an initial difference between groups on 2 of the 26 outcome variables. The AC group reported higher scores on Problem of Sibling Agonism, F(1, 107) = 4.27, p = .041, and RTP children were liked less by peers of the opposite sex than were AC children, F(1, 107) = 4.27, p = .041.

Discussion

This trial examined the effectiveness of Resilience Triple P (RTP) in improving outcomes for children bullied by peers. For bullying victimization, there were significant improvements over time across both conditions, but children whose families received RTP had significantly greater overall change reported by children and parents and significantly greater reductions in overt victimization reported by teachers. For child distress, children who received RTP had significantly better outcomes than

Conflict of Interest Statement

Researchers for this trial are also authors of the Resilience Triple P program. The copyright for Resilience Triple P is owned by University of Queensland and any possible future royalties for publication of the program would be distributed according to university intellectual property policies.

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    We gratefully acknowledge the funding of this trial by the Australian Research Council (DP1095196) supplemented by a philanthropic donation by the Butta and Filewood families. We thank local theme-park Dreamworld for providing discount cards for families. Thank you to Dr. Michael Ireland for providing expert statistical consultancy in LMM to analyze our data.

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