Background: Bullying behavior is a concern among school-aged youth and anti-bullying programs have been implemented in schools throughout North America. Most anti-bullying programs are delivered to adolescent youth because antisocial-aggressive behaviors are typically associated with this developmental stage. This paper is a review of empirically…

Education policy increasingly promotes action groups as a key strategy for student and/or staff participation in school improvement and whole-school health promotion. Such groups can coordinate multi-component interventions, increase participation and engagement, and enable local adaptations, but few process evaluations have assessed this. We…

Peer bullying increases in times of school transition, influenced by changing peer and friendship groups, new schooling environments and greater stress. Covert forms of bullying, including cyberbullying, become more common in secondary school and cause considerable distress and long-term harm. The period of transition to secondary school is…

Background: The aim of the present study was to conduct a preliminary empirical evaluation of the KooLKIDS program, a school-based intervention that utilises a combination of whole-of-class and individual sessions for young children with early onset antisocial behaviour. Method: Trained facilitators delivered the 13-session program to a completer…

Although most states across the United States have enacted anti-bullying legislation, state laws vary greatly in detail and direction, leaving many school districts wondering how to best address the problem of bullying and comply with their state's legislative requirements. In response, a comprehensive, statewide training initiative was conducted…

Second Step is a social-emotional, skill-based, violence-prevention programme, which has been adapted for several European countries. The various versions of the programme (for kindergarten/preschool, elementary school, middle school) have been evaluated in a series of research studies. The outcomes and study designs of these studies are reported…

The impact of a school-based violence prevention program, Second Step, on peer victimization and aggression, and emotion regulation was evaluated among 457 sixth graders. A cluster-randomized trial was conducted with classrooms randomly assigned to intervention (n = 14) or control (n = 14) conditions. A repeated measures analysis of covariance on…

In order for schools to be successful in providing students with developmentally appropriate instruction and social experiences, an atmosphere of safety and protection is required. The recent spike in school shootings over the past 15 years has created a sense of urgency to examine the dynamics of school violence in order to generate and implement…

Despite recent research suggesting that relationally aggressive behaviors occur frequently and may lead to physically aggressive actions within urban school settings, there has been little prior research to develop and evaluate relational aggression prevention efforts within the urban schools. The current article describes the development and…

This paper summarizes an effort to transpose and sustain the evidence-based Early Risers "Skills for Success" conduct problems prevention program in a real world community service system. The Early Risers program had previously been implemented by a local agency within the context of research-based operations. In the current initiative,…

The collection of articles in this special issue on relational aggression gives a glimpse into the complex social networks, first, of children's relational aggression and, second, of the collaborators who develop and validate children's prevention programs. The programs described in this special section are among the first to address relational…

Sexually aggressive behavior, especially on college campuses, is an issue of major concern. Previous research has found that 54% of college women report being sexually victimized (Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987). Given the scope of this problem, effective prevention strategies are necessary. Sexual assault prevention programs have included…

The purpose of this study is to test the effects on children's social, behavioral, and academic outcomes of an intervention, Families and Schools Together (FAST), when implemented in two novel ways: (a) in schools with predominantly Latino children and (b) on an entire grade-level cohort instead of with individual families targeted for the…

In 2004, Second Step (Committee for Children, 2002), a violence prevention program, was implemented in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district for 1,416 K through second grade students. Both process and outcome measures were used to evaluate program impact and examine issues related to the implementation and evaluation of…

This paper presents the results of an independent two-year evaluation of the I Can Problem Solve (ICPS) universal prevention program, implemented in kindergarten and first grade classrooms in a racially and ethnically diverse urban school district. Matched pairs of schools were assigned to Instruction (i.e., treatment) or Control status. Teachers…