Effectiveness of Bullying Prevention Training on Bullying and Empathetic Behaviors and Academic Procrastination among Students

Bullying in schools is a type of interpersonal violence that can have adverse short-term and long-term academic and social consequences. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of bullying prevention education on bullying, empathetic behaviors, and academic procrastination among students.

This semi-experimental research was carried out with a pretest-posttest and follow-up design. The statistical population included all boy students aged 12 to 15 in a secondary school in Isfahan City. To carry out the research, 30 of the mentioned students with an average or higher cut-off score in the bullying behavior questionnaire were purposefully selected. To evaluate the pre-test, the students completed the Bullying Behavior Questionnaire by Splich and Hallett (2001), the Empathic Behavior Questionnaire by Vossen et al. (2015), and the Academic Procrastination by Solomon and Rothblum (1984). In the next step, the experimental group received bullying prevention training proposed by Akbari Balootbangan (2018), while the control group received no training. The data was analyzed through analysis of variance with repeated measurement variance.

The results showed that, in the post-test and follow-up stages, there was a significant difference in the variables of bullying behaviors, academic procrastination, empathic behaviors, and the dimensions of these variables between the control group and the experimental or bullying prevention training group (P<0.001). The effect of bullying prevention training on reducing bullying behaviors and academic procrastination and increasing sympathetic behaviors was in the post-test 0.94, 0.89, and 0.63, respectively, and 0.93, 0.90, and 0.60 in the follow-up phase.

Therefore, it can be said that if the bullying prevention program is provided in schools and educational places for children and students, it will prevent the occurrence of bullying behavior and academic procrastination and lead to the learning of empathy.