For Whom Is Anti-Bullying Intervention Most Effective? The Role of Temperament

Annalaura Nocentini, Benedetta Emanuela Palladino and Ersilia Menesini
Additional contact information
Annalaura Nocentini: Department of Educational Science and Psychology, University of Florence, Ital Via di San Salvi, 12, Complesso di San Salvi Padiglione 26, 50135 Florence, Italy
Benedetta Emanuela Palladino: Department of Educational Science and Psychology, University of Florence, Ital Via di San Salvi, 12, Complesso di San Salvi Padiglione 26, 50135 Florence, Italy
Ersilia Menesini: Department of Educational Science and Psychology, University of Florence, Ital Via di San Salvi, 12, Complesso di San Salvi Padiglione 26, 50135 Florence, Italy

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: Studying moderators of the effects of anti-bullying universal interventions is essential to elucidate what works for whom and to tailor more intensive, selective, and indicated programs which meet the needs of non-responders. The present study investigated whether early adolescents’ temperament—effortful control (EC), negative emotionality (NE), and positive emotionality (PE)—moderates the effects of the KiVa anti-bullying program. The sample consisted of 13 schools, with 1051 sixth-grade early adolescents (mean age = 10.93; SD = 0.501), randomly assigned to the KiVa intervention (seven schools; n = 536) or to the control condition (six schools; n = 516). Adolescents reported bullying and victimization before the intervention (pre-test) and after (post-test). Temperament was assessed by a self-report pre-test. Findings showed that EC and NE moderated intervention effects on bullying, indicating that subgroups with high levels of EC, and with low and medium levels of NE were those who benefited most from the intervention. The low-EC subgroup showed a lower increase compared to the control condition, with a considerable effect size. Conversely, the high-NE subgroup did not show any positive effects compared to the control group. Regarding victimization, findings showed that early adolescents with high and medium levels of PE were the subgroups who benefited the most from the intervention, whereas the low-PE subgroup was the most resistant. The present study confirms the relevance of considering temperament as a moderator of intervention effects, since interventions tailored to early adolescents with specific traits might yield larger effects.

Keywords: effectiveness; moderators; temperament; anti-bullying; subgroup analyses (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/3/388/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/3/388/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:3:p:388-:d:201894

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().