Editors: Elliott will be available to take calls on May 17 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on May 18 from 9 a.m. until noon.
Requests for information about how to address bullying in schools is becoming increasingly common at the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Professor Delbert Elliott, the center's director, said bullying was one of two common concerns he heard last year during an extensive statewide tour of schools he made with Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar. The other major issue was drug use.
While bullying has always existed, "The marginality of students is greater in these big mega-schools," Elliott said. "And so I think this issue may be greater today than it used to be."
Moreover, "The fact that we've always had it does not mean we should allow it to go on," he said. In addition to the woes suffered by victims of severe bullying, research shows that bullies themselves are at higher risk of being seriously violent.
Bullying is a major risk factor for school shootings, but not by itself, he said. Serious school shootings always involve multiple risk factors and "bullying is one risk factor that should be addressed along with others," he said.
Schools where students have a high degree of satisfaction and attachment to the school provides the school with protection against violent behavior, he said. If a school is having trouble with bullying, the Bullying Prevention Program, developed in Norway, is known to be effective and has been successfully replicated in England, Germany and the United States.
"We know that if they implement this program and do it carefully, they can cut the rate of bullying by 50 percent," Elliott said. Many other anti-bullying programs are available, but none has been rigorously evaluated and demonstrated to work, and few are intensive and comprehensive enough to be effective, he said.
The Bullying Prevention Program is one of 11 violence prevention programs the CU-Boulder center recommends as meeting the highest scientific standards for preventing or reducing levels of violence. More than 500 violence prevention programs were reviewed by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence before it designated the 11 programs in its Blueprints for Violence Prevention series.
The violence prevention center is currently working with five communities nationwide to implement the Bullying Prevention Program. The five locations are:
o Ouray and Ridgway, Colo.
o Portland, Maine
o Farmington, Maine
o Ashland, Va.
o Moreland, Ga.
Proper implementation of any of the 11 Blueprints programs is essential, Elliott said. "You can't implement even our very best programs half-heartedly and expect them to work."
Schools are more concerned about violence prevention "and that's a good sign," Elliott said, because schools are thinking about prevention rather than relying primarily on law enforcement reactions to violence after it has occurred.
"Prevention is clearly more cost effective, both in dollars and human lives," Elliott said. Handbooks detailing each program in the Blueprints for Violence Prevention series are available at low cost to any interested person and provide enough information to make an informed decision about using a program. If a decision is made to replicate it, the center recommends working with the designer of each program.
Summaries of each of the Blueprints programs and brief video clips are posted on the Internet at .
For more information call (303) 492-1032 or write the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, University of Colorado at Boulder, 442 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309.