Do interventions on defending behaviour work in different countries? Cross-national findings from the GATEBULL project Intervention Phase

Background: Prejudice based bullying has dramatically increased in recent years across the world. The EU funded GATE BULL project, building on literature on bystander intervention in bullying and theories on intergroup contact and intergroup relations, consists in a serious game, classroom lesson plan and teachers’ training to encourage defending behaviour in weight-, ethnicity-, and religion-based bullying situations.

Methods: The GATEBULL intervention consisted in a 4-week school-based programme to encourage bystander intervention in weight-, ethnicity-, and religion-based bullying situations, targeting five hundreds and seventy eight 9–13-year-olds pupils from The Netherlands, Scotland and Greece. In the quasi-experimental designed study, participants were asked pre and post intervention to fill in scales of self-efficacy, intention to intervene, intergroup anxiety and attitudes, moral disengagement, and peer norms.

Findings: In the Netherlands young participants in the ‘intervention’ group reported more positive peer norms; minority group children reported to be significantly more confident to defend other minority group children; and majority group children declared to be significantly less anxious towards Muslim children. In Scotland, participants reported higher intention to defend overweight children. In Greece, we did not find any significant effect due to this intervention.

Discussion: The intervention had a relevant impact on factors affecting bystander behaviour. However, stronger results emerged in The Netherlands in which mixed-ethnicity rather than mainly majority- ethnic group schools participated in the intervention. Strengths and limitations of conducting cross-national research on the GATEBULL intervention will be considered and future direction of investigation will be suggested.