Abstract:

The purpose of the present work was to assess the impact of a School Violence Prevention Program designed with a Life Skills approach (PREVIOHpV) in students of a public junior high school from Yucatan, Mexico. A cross-sectional field study with a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, control and treatment groups was conducted. A total of 66 second grade students with ages ranging from 13 to 16 years, averaging 14 years of age participated. The experimental group was comprised by 12 males (36.5%) and 21 females (63.5%), and the control group by 16 males (48.5%) and 17 females (51.5%). The display of violence was measured using the Violence Questionnaire CUVE3-ESO by Dobarro Gonzalez (2011) (adapted version). The PREVIOHpV covered a total of 20 sessions of 50 minutes each and included those factors which indicated school violence; the program was conducted in the classrooms. The CUVE3-ESO was applied to a simple of 123 students in second grade; the groups that showed no significant differences made the control and experimental groups with the granted permission from the teacher to proceed with the intervention. The results revealed significant differences in some violence displays within the experimental group before and after the intervention; the t-test of related samples revealed a significantly lower mean value in the Verbal violence factor towards the teacher (t (33) = -2.29, p = .028) after the intervention, but higher values in the Classroom disruption value (t (33) = -4.20, p = .000). Regarding the differences by group in the posttest, the t-test of independent samples revealed significant differences in the factors: 1) General violence (t (54) = 2.46, p=.017), 2), Teacher towards student violence (t (59) = 3.34, p = .001) and 3) Direct physical violence and threats among students (t (64) = 2.99, p = .004), with the lowest mean values in the experimental group in relation to the control group; however, the Classroom disruption violence factor (t (65) = -3.14, p = .003) in the experimental group presented a higher mean value than in the control group. These findings suggest that the Program PREVIOHpV Works as a violence modulator, as it managed to reduce the school violence levels. However, it is recommended to increase the intervention time, involve the professors and administrative staff, as well as parents to improve the results.

Keywords:

Prevention, School violence, Life skills, Secondary Students.