Abstract:

Nowadays there is a considerable growth in community concern about bullying evidence in schools, in many countries (Olweus & Limber, 2010). Bullying is a prolonged and repetitive behavior of physical, verbal and psychological aggression of one or a few students to another(s) with the intention to cause damage, with significant physical and psychological consequences (Olweus, 1998), which have aroused the need to address and design intervention programs, including the mosts recognized, Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP), University of Bergen, Norway and Proyecto Sevilla Anti-Violencia Escolar (SAVE), University of Sevilla, Spain. The OBPP is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Some researchs shows it as the most evaluated program, with reductions by 20 to 70 percent in student reports of being bullied and and bullying others (Olweus & Limber, 2007). Authors such as Cecil and Molnar-Main (2014) found in a study that evaluated the fidelity implementation of programmatic activities of OBPP between 2.020 teachers in 88 Pennsylvania schools that by performing the kick-off event to launch the program, and disseminate the rules to students, schools improved her life and showed that OBPP components are easier to make than other programs, because of its standardization. Also, Bowllan (2010) who conducted a study in an United States school, showed that after one year of implementing the OBPP was a decrease of 34,4 percent on reports of exclusion and 31,1 percent in bullying. For its part, SAVE, an open program, adjustable to the needs of schools, with fewer subsequent studies, shown in its original version a reduction in the percentage of victims from 9 to 4 percent, as well as aggressors 0.7 to 0.3 percent. This, is posible to infer an approximate effectiveness of 50 to 55 percent, while the qualitative results showed a change in the social and school sensitivity about bullying, increasing the motivation of teachers to organize activities that improve coexistence with methods like exploration, awareness, orderly, comprehensive and ecological intervention of the problem. In this sense, this study aims to determine the effectiveness of OBPP and SAVE programs in reducing bullying in public schools of Bucaramanga, Colombia, through a descriptive study with a type of quasi-experimental pretest-postest design with two experimental groups and one control group. The sample consists of 1.383 students and 50 teachers from nine educational institutions intentionally selected: three in the experimental group 1 (EG1), who advance the SAVE program; three on the experimental group 2 (EG2), who advance the OBPP program; and three in the control group (CG), receiving no program. The groups were evaluated at the beginning of implementation and will be evaluated again at twelve months to determine the programs’ effect. According to the course of the research, at this time, is posible to hypothesize greater effectiveness of OBPP, due to its standardization, rules, consequences and instructions thoroughly tested in contexts where it has been implemented, including Mexico, whose context sociocultural is comparable with the Colombian context.

Keywords:

Effectiveness, bullying reduction, OBPP, SAVE.