JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

A new and growing body of research describes bullying among children in Early Childhood Education and Care Centres (ECEC). The Bernanese Program (Be-Prox) is designed to systematically prevent and handle bullying between children in Swiss ECECs. The effectiveness of the Be-Prox intervention is not known in a Norwegian ECEC setting.

Objective:

To evaluate the effectiveness of Be-Prox program to prevent and handle bullying among peers in Norwegian ECECs.

Methods:

ECECs from two Norwegian municipalities will be invited to participate in a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of the Be-Prox intervention on peer bullying in Norwegian ECECs. Project ECECs will be randomized to an intervention or control arm after baseline measures have been taken. The Be-Prox intervention will be introduced to ECECs in the intervention arm through 6 modules over a 9-month period immediately following the randomization. ECECs in the control arm will participate in the data collection and offered the Be-Prox intervention the following year. The primary outcome of the effect evaluation is the mean change in negative behaviour from baseline to the end of the Be-Prox training in the intervention arm. Secondary outcomes include child bystander behaviour and teacher’s self-efficacy and ECEC authoritative climate. An extensive implementation and process evaluation, and cost-effectiveness analyses will be conducted alongside the RCT. A two-level random intercept multilevel model will be used to detect group mean differences (intervention versus control).

Results:

Baseline data collection was conducted in September 2023, and the post-intervention data collection will start in May 2024. From baseline we have data in 709 children from 39 project ECECs in the 2 Norwegian municipalities, and 413 of the personnel. Results from the study will be available late 2024 at the earliest.

Conclusions:

The proposed project includes a comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of Be-Prox in Norwegian ECECs directly targeting the prevention and handling of bullying, including implementation and cost-effectiveness evaluations. Results from the project have the potential to fill in identified knowledge gaps in the understanding of negative behaviour and bullying between peers in ECECs, and how these may be prevented. If proven efficient, our ambition is to offer Be-Prox to Norwegian ECECs as evidence-based practice to prevent and handle bullying among preschool children. Clinical Trial: The project is registered at ClinicalTrials (ID NCT06040437).