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A new Canadian network of 23 university researchers and 34 non-governmental organizations has launched a national imitative to help schools and communities adopt more scientific – and proven – approaches to combat bullying, victimization and aggression among children and youth.

Led by York and Queen's Universities, PREVNet is one of five national initiatives to receive federal funding from the Networks of Centres of Excellence. It represents the first time that Canada has worked on a national level to provide standardized training materials, assessment tools, intervention strategies and national policies to address relationship problems. It will lay the groundwork for a national strategy to reduce the use power and aggression in relationships.

The need for a national strategy on bullying is underscored by a recent World Health Organization survey, which ranked Canada a disappointing 26th in bullying, and 27th in victimization, among the 35 countries assessed. Across all ages and categories of bullying and victimization, Canada consistently ranked at or below average among those countries.

"Canada is playing catch-up compared to a lot of other countries in dealing with these problems, but I believe we are on track to take a very different, and hopefully more effective approach," says Dr. Wendy Craig of Queen's University. PREVNet is headed by Dr. Craig and Dr. Debra Pepler of York University's LaMarsh Centre for Research on Violence and Conflict Resolution, both renowned international experts on bullying.

Where other countries have launched national campaigns targeted at schools, PREVNet views bullying as a community-based problem, not a school problem. As such, it is focusing on places where children and youth live, work and play, including local sporting groups, girl guide troops, churches and recreation programs.

"Although schools play a key role, we believe that bullying is a community problem, and that's why we have assembled such a range of agencies and non-governmental organizations, along with educators, to address the problem," says Dr. Pepler.

Putting science to work in local communities
There is no shortage of programs across Canada to address bullying. The problem, says Dr. Craig, is that few are empirically based or evaluated. Surprisingly, researchers found that 15 per cent of these programs actually made the problems worse.

Partner Organizations - Canadian Principals Association - Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children - Kids Help Phone - Girl Guides of Canada - Canadian Association of Social Workers - Canadian Parks and Recreation - The Hospital for Sick Children

Linking researchers with each other and with national NGOs, schools and community groups is where the NCE's new initiatives program can help. Dr. Craig describes it as the "perfect vehicle" for PREVNet because of its emphasis on networking, partnerships and knowledge translation.

"The NGOs are much more effective at knowledge translation and dissemination than we as researchers could ever be," she explains. "What they lack, though, is the empirical information and the skills to set up an evaluation or assessment tool. As researchers, we can provide that for them."

One of PREVNet's main goals over the next two years is to create a web-based tool where people can log on to assess their particular bullying problem. They would then receive a list of recommendations for what to do, based on what has been proven to work in similar situations.

PREVNet researchers will also create training manuals, support materials and research communiqués that people can download. For national organizations, such as the Kids Help Line, researchers have developed more tailored information to assist counselors in providing advise to children who call about bullying. "We're trying to train the national organizations to provide them support and the tools to train their own provincial and municipal levels," says Dr. Craig.

Research exists on what works and what doesn't work, but Dr. Craig insists more is needed to determine how effective programs are over the long-term and to develop new programs that better understand the dynamics between individuals, peer groups and the family. While most studies have focused on school-aged children, she says more research into pre-school children would help to identify early risk factors.

PREVNet brings together researchers from 17 Canadian universities from diverse disciplines including psychiatry, social work, psychology, epidemiology and pediatrics. Students will be invited to join the network, where they will have an opportunity to participate in program evaluations and intervention programs through an internship with an NGO.

"We want to create a second generation of researchers who are really interested in addressing relationship problems in this applied way," says Dr. Craig.

www.prevnet.ca.htm