Abstract:

Cyberbullying consists of using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), Internet (e-mail, SMS, websites, blogs…) and mainly mobile phones to perpetrate psychological peer bullying. It is an aggressive and intentional behavior that is repeated over time against a victim who cannot defend him-or herself easily. The rapid growth of cyberbullying, this new form of bullying, its high worldwide prevalence, and noxious consequences on all those involved has generated the urgent need to propose programs to prevent and/or intervene in this type of violence.

The aims of the study were:
1) to design a program targeting adolescents to prevent and reduce cyberbullying;
2) to implement it during the school term; and
3) to experimentally assess its diverse effects on types of school violence and aggressiveness.

The investigation analyzes the effect of the Cyberprogram 2.0 and proposes three hypotheses.
H1: The program will decrease diverse types of school violence (teachers' violence towards students, students' physical and verbal violence, social exclusion, disruption in the classroom, violence through ICTs).
H2: The intervention will decrease impulsive and premeditated aggressiveness.
H3: The intervention will affect both sexes similarly.

This study was carried out with a sample of 176 Spanish adolescents, aged between 13 and 15 years; 77 (43.8%) were male and 99 (56.3%) were female. Out of the total sample, 93 (52.8%) were randomly assigned to the experimental condition and 83 (47.2%) to the control condition. Of these students, 44.3% attended public-secular schools, and 55.7% private-religious centers. A random sampling technique was used to select the sample, taking into account the list of schools in Gipuzkoa. The study used a repeated measures pretest-posttest design with a control group. Before and after the program, two assessment instruments were administered: the CUVE-R, Cuestionario de Violencia Escolar-Revisado [School Violence Questionnaire - Revised] (Álvarez-García et al., 2011) and the CAPI-A, Cuestionario de agresividad premeditada e impulsiva [Premeditated and Impulsive Aggressiveness Questionnaire] (Andreu, 2010).

The intervention consisted of 19 one-hour sessions carried out during the school term. The activities that make up the program have three main goals:
1) to identify and conceptualize bullying/cyberbullying, and the three roles involved in this phenomenon;
2) to analyze the consequences of bullying/cyberbullying for victims, aggressors and observers, promoting critical capacity and the capacity to report such actions when they are discovered; and
3) to develop coping strategies to prevent and reduce bullying/cyberbullying behaviors.

The pretest-posttest ANCOVAs confirmed that the program stimulated a decrease in diverse types of school violence (teachers' violence towards students, students' physical and verbal violence, social exclusion, violence by means of ICTs) and premeditated and impulsive aggressiveness. Also, the results revealed that the change stimulated by the intervention program was similar in males and females for all the variables of school violence assessed and for premeditated aggressiveness.

The results allow us to emphasize the importance of implementing programs during childhood and adolescence to promote socio-emotional development, improve coexistence, and prevent/reduce violence. The work provides an efficacious intervention tool to prevent and reduce cyberbullying.

Keywords:

Cyberbullying, School Violence, Adolescence, Aggressiveness, Impulsivity.