Impetus for the intervention study, early stages of planning, and funding

Over the past decade, Canadians have become increasingly aware of the extent and consequences of bullying problems. Recently, there have been several high-profile cases of Canadian children who have suffered from prolonged victimisation, with severe consequences of suicide, revenge attacks, or death at the hands of peers. These cases have highlighted the need for empirically based prevention and intervention programmes. We will describe a school-based intervention programme developed prior to the recent surge in interest in the problem of bullying in Canada.

This anti-bullying initiative emerged from a survey conducted in the early 1990s by the Toronto Board of Education in collaboration with researchers from York University. The questionnaire used for the survey was modelled after the Olweus self-report questionnaire (Olweus, 1989), with some adaptations for the Canadian context. The survey indicated that bullying and victimisation were pervasive problems. During the past two months, 24% of the grade 3–8 students reported that they had bullied other students at least once or twice, and 15% more than once or twice. Half of the students (49%) indicated that they had been victims of bullying at least once, 20% more than once or twice, and 8% reported being victimised weekly or more often during the past two months (Charach, Pepler, and Ziegler, 1995).