The “Steps to Respect Program” as a Means to Increasing Feelings of School Safety Among Students

Background and Purpose: School safety is a top priority among administrators and researchers alike. There is often little agreement regarding what variables account for safe schools. In this ‘post Columbine' era, where school violence is often equated to school shootings, we have come to find out that over 70% of school shooters have been identified as targeted victims of school bullies (Vossekuil et al. 2002). Preventing circumstances that can lead to disaster is a key component of school safety initiatives. The Steps to Respect bullying prevention program is designed to be integrated into every day school curriculum in an effort to encourage a culture of respect within the school and prevent bullying behaviors from being accepted among students. Our study wanted to find out if students who participated in the Steps to Respect program changed their opinions regarding how safe they felt at school, their knowledge regarding what to do and who to talk to in a bullying situation and their beliefs about the need for treating other students with respect.

Methods: A large suburban school district was chosen for participation in this study. One elementary school from this district was chosen to receive the Steps to Respect prevention program. All third grade students within this school participated in the program. A pre-test post-test design was utilized for evaluation purposes. Students took the pre-test prior to the first scheduled program session. The post-test was administered approximately six weeks later after the final session was completed. A brief six question survey was developed utilizing a likert scale response. Questions were read aloud to students for consistency and students were asked to circle their response on the scale, which included numbers, words (good, bad, ok, etc.) and a series of smiley/frowny faces for added comprehension. SPSS 13 was utilized to analyze the results.

Results:

• At post-test a significant difference was found with regards to how safe from bullies students felt at school.

• A frequency analysis showed that the majority of students who felt less safe at pre-test improved at a significantly greater rate than those who felt safer at pre-test.

• Friendship building was found to be significantly correlated with feeling safe at school at post-test.

• Students who scored high on knowing how to treat others with respect at school was strongly correlated with being able to make friends easily.

Conclusions and Implications: Students who are able to build friendships and treat others with respect feel safer at school and are less likely to become victims of bullies. As dictating policy regarding friendship is futile, future research needs to focus on social skill building and early skill based intervention programming.