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Running head: EVALUATION OF THE SOCIAL AGGRESSION PREVENTION PROGRAM 2014 Evaluation of the Social Aggression Prevention Program 2014 Psychology 491 Evaluation of Child and Youth Prevention Programs Justine Wendland University of Victoria

Transcript of Another editation of the final paper current one to work on as of nov 30th

Page 1: Another editation of the final paper current one to work on as of nov 30th

Running head: EVALUATION OF THE SOCIAL AGGRESSION PREVENTION PROGRAM 2014

Evaluation of the Social Aggression Prevention Program 2014

Psychology 491 Evaluation of Child and Youth Prevention Programs

Justine Wendland

University of Victoria

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Objectives of the ProgramThe Social Aggression Prevention Program (SAPP) is designed for girls in grade four-to-six,

approximately age nine-twelve years of age. The program aims to reduce social and relational

aggression through child participation in social activities. The program is “designed to foster

emotional awareness of oneself and others in situations that may elicit social aggression, cognitive

understanding of the motivation for” (Cappella & Weistein, 2006, p. 4) using relational aggression.

The importance of teaching emotional awareness and cognitive understanding is that the girls learn

more effective social information processing, which is a protective factor. The activities visualize the

consequences of relational aggression “to resolve socially aggressive conflicts with assertive and

respectful communication” (Cappella & Weistein, 2006, p. 4). They also work to increase the child’s

awareness of relational aggression, knowledge about the impact it has on their peers, increased

responsibility of the child to represent their community and protect their peers. SAPP is currently in

the efficacy phase of program prevention. The program has only been utilized in optimal conditions

in a few schools, though they have yet to show consistent results across trials in optimal conditions

(Cappella & Weistein, 2006). This evaluation will examine SAPP’s process and make

recommendations of how SAPP can progress to the Effectiveness phase and beyond.

How does the program work?Classrooms of grades four-to-six girls are selected from participating schools from a diverse

sample increasing the programs external validity. The program occurs for ten weeks with one forty-

minute session each week. Girls are selected for the program based on their teachers’

recommendation. Participants are randomly assigned into either the control or experimental group,

though the experimental group consists primarily of those girls teachers recommended. The

experimental group consists of small groups of four-to-seven girls and one group leader. The control

group consists of other girls in the class who are assigned a reading task to increase their reading

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levels over the same ten-week period. Both groups meet at the same time, for the same forty-minutes,

each week in separate rooms during the ten-week implementation. During the sessions leaders guide

the girls through all the team-building activities, they are: games, discussion, role-play, and

identification of relationally aggressive and pro-social behaviors. By placing the aggressive child in a

new peer-group with the objective of using prosocial rather than aggressive forms of social

interaction and problem solving, allow the child to redevelop their social schemas to more positive

ones. It is the mechanism of action of reduced exposure of prosocial behaviors in social situations as

well as opportunities to practice prosocial beahviors in a safe environment such as the home (Zhang

et al., 2010; Bulotsky-Shearer et al., 2010) which project the child to the program outcomes. The

groups provide stable adult mentors to model behavior and receive support, as well they provide a

sense of responsibility and goal achievement which fosters a feeling of belonging to their peer group,

both huge protective factors (Mason, 2014; Ostrov & Godleski, 2013; Maurizi, Ceballo, Epstein-

Ngo, & Cortina, 2013). Leaders are required to complete weekly summaries of whether all the

activities were completed, if there were any issues and how they were dealt with, and areas for

improvement or areas of difficulty.

Why Schools would want this ProgramPeer-rejection supports externalizing behaviors leading to hostile attributional biases towards

peers (McLachlan, Zimmer-Gembeck, McGregor, 2010) and peer-victimization is highest among

children who have a “tendency to overestimate [their] own level of peer acceptance in relation to

others” (White et al., 2011, p. 645). SAPP identifies “the clear link between aggression and

empathy, and aggression and social information-processing skills” (Cappella & Weistein, 2006, p. 5).

This is demonstrated using “role-playing (…) to promote empathic understanding of others and

broaden knowledge [the girls knowledge] of respectful and honest strategies for resolving difficult

social situations” (Cappella & Weistein, 2006, p. 5). From this research, it is recommended that

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SAPP be implemented in grade four and at earliest grade two when the child is developing social

schemas (Berk, 2012). The amount of victimization experienced is moderated by the child’s age

(Card et al., 2006) (Archer, 2004; Card et al., 2006; White et al., 2011), hence why early

implementation is critical. At the elementary age is when children primarily operate in same-sex

peer groups and often change their behavior to that of the collective group. Children frequently oust

no longer “respected” children (Berk, 2012) and SAPP would increase children’s social skills and

peer-status to prevent this happening so frequently.

Targets, Mediators, and Mechanisms of ActionSAPP’s target audience are girls who currently displaying relational aggression. A

recommended change to the program would be to include girls and boys (Archer, 2004) who are and

are not yet showing signs of relational aggression because it is known that age is a significant

moderator (Card et al., 2006) and when the majority of relational aggression occurs (Leff, et al.,

2010; Archer, 2004; Card et al., 2006; White et al., 2011). The activities provide children with

connections to increase the effectiveness of mediators such as friendship, peer-rejection, teacher

support and school-based involvement, and peer support. The child’s sense of belonging at school

(Maurizi et al., 2013) is a significant factor regarding the probability of a child developing relational

aggression or continueing relationally aggressive behavior. Sense of belonging is mediated by

protective factors including a good student-teacher relationship and a strong peer group (Maurizi et

al., 2013, p.326). If children feel they belong to their school they are less likely to engage in

relationally aggressive behaviors (Maurizi et al., 2013); the program activities provide peer support

fostering a sense of school belonging. The mechanism of action here is the child’s sense of value

within the school (Maurizi et al., 2013, p. 331).

Reactive aggression frequently causes peer-rejection (Card et al., 2006) and occurs most

often in a school-based context (Leff, et al., 2010). Friendship and peer rejection are important

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EVALUATION OF THE SOCIAL AGGRESSION PREVENTION PROGRAM 2014 5

mediators and in their absence it causes social problems resulting in loneliness for the child (Zimmer-

Gembeck et al., 2013; Beeri, 2011; Parkhurst, 1992), and play a significant role in middle school

peer-rejection and experiencing victimization in high school (Ostrov et al., 2013). Poor social

information processing (Card et al., 2006) is the target of the role-playing and discussion activities

because it produces negative biases to of the meaning of a social interaction and produces reactive

aggression responses. Having small groups for discussion of these topics creates a collective,

connective relationship between the children and the group leader fostering a good student-teacher

type relationship and sense of belonging. Another mechanism of action is the collective peer-group

an aggressive child may by belong to, the group may adopt the aggressive behaviors via conformity

training inorder to maintain a sense of belonging (Leff, et al., 2010; Mason, 2014).

Core Values The core values of the program include the weekly forty-minute group sessions consisting of

one group leader and four-to-seven girls, the team-building activities, having a group leader with an

educational background in counselling elementary children and clinical psychology, school support,

early-childhood implementation, and adult modeling from their teachers and group leaders. These

are essential because at the age children still look to their teachers as positive and ideal people to

model after (Berk, 2012).

Outcome Evaluation StrategySince the program has yet to demonstrate consistent results outside of optimal conditions

(Cappella & Weistein, 2006), the program will be tested using a longitudinal-experimental design

following the cohort of boys and girls in both the control and experimental group, from at least six

different schools, until they reach grade ten. Samples should be ethnically and socioeconomically

representative of the target population to allow for greater generalizability and therefore optimal

dissemination. Participating schools will be chosen on the basis of principle acceptance to integrate

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the program. Children will be in grades four-to-six and roughly ages nine-to-twelve years of age.

Participants will be randomly chosen from the participant pool and divided into control and

experimental groups. Experimental groups will experience the SAPP program and the control group

will have an art session instead of a reading group. This change is recommended because an art

session will allow children with aggressive tendencies to release them into the art, and not on their

peers. The control group’s art session where children will work individually and does not contain

any components of the SAPP program to avoid contaminating the control group. The control group

will be measured using the same relational aggression pre and post survey as the experimental group

to determine if there is a difference.

Stakeholders Many stakeholders from different areas of expertise will be necessary as partnerships in order

to implement SAPP to the fullest extent. Program staff will consist of the program providers,

program administration, and program leadership. Community groups and leaders will contain law

enforcement and community based-organizations and leaders. Organizational leadership and

program beneficiaries encompass the school board, each individual school principle, teachers, school

administration and school counselors, students, and parents. Professional Associates needed to help

disseminate the program to the community are Big Brothers Big Sisters, the YMC/YWCA, and the

Boys and Girls Club of Victoria. Experts will consist of graduate students with an educational

background in Counselling and Clinical psychology, the program providers, and volunteer

community leaders. Lastly, the policy groups necessary for implementing SAPP are: local policy

makers, Public Health Agency of Canada, Service Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research

Counsel of Canada, the Ministry of Children and Families, and the Ministry of Education.

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Measurement of OutcomesThe ideal short-term outcomes are: demonstration of prosocial behavior and skills that

participation in program activities are to produce by participating students, an extension of these

skills outside of the classroom on to the playground, and observation by community leader or

program provider of increased peer acceptance and problem solving will be measured using natural

observation and questionnaires. Medium and long-term outcomes coincide with behavior that should

appear as the child ages, such as: developing a sense of social responsibility for the wellbeing of their

peers, becoming “Prosocial leaders”, a reduction of exclusion and gossiping, modeling prosocial

behavior for younger children, and improved communication and prosocial behavior among peers.

The measurement of outcomes will consist of several data collection methods: surveys, self-

reports, questionnaires, and natural observation. The short-term and medium-term outcomes of

demonstrating the skills and strategies SAPP taught them, as well as increased peer acceptance and

increased leadership will be measured using natural observation of the children over 3 month periods

for the first year. Following the first year, medium and long-term outcomes will be measured using

questionnaires and self-report surveys on a scale of 1-5 (1 very unlikely and 5 very likely) regarding

the frequency of prosocial behavior. Some sample questions are: how likely the child would be to

assist a child they did not know or were friends with in a relationally aggressive situation, how often

they themselves experience relational aggression after participating in SAPP, and how likely are they

to teach their peers about the skills and strategies they learned in SAPP? The results would be

collected every six months for the next several years until the children are in grade ten. This would

help show if SAPP’s impact is long lasting and if so for how long.

Measures of Implementation and ImpactThere are multiple measures for the assessment of SAPP’s implementation and impact. Pre-

implementation measures will consist of documentation that the group leader has received training, a

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and a participant questionnaire consisting of questions regarding the frequency of relational

aggression use or experience, as well as their age, ethnicity, sense of family, community and school

belonging. During implementation measure will consist of, one forty-minute small group session will

occur once a week for ten weeks and will be measured using a (A) checklist which the group leader

is required to complete at the end of every session, as well as a (B) survey to describe each child

weekly progress in the group. The checklist consists of the activities and their steps that must be

completed in each session as well as the typical length of time each activity should take to complete.

The duration of the activities and number of weekly meetings completed/attended will be recorded

and completed activities and an area to discuss why an activity was partially or not completed. There

is also an area for the group leader to describe the “school and community[s] characteristics” (Payne

& Eckert, 2009, p. 130) as this can provide some background on the children’s behavior.

The pre-implementation survey will consist of yes/no questions directed at the involvement

of the children: (1) how many students attended the group, (2) the frequency of child attendance of

weekly meetings (Payne & Eckert, 2009, p. 129), (3) did each child participate, if not who did not,

(3) did each child participate in each activity, (4) were there any difficulties for an activity, if so

describe, (5) did children ask any questions, if so what were they, (6) did any children seem reluctant

to interact with peers outside of their primary peer-group, and (7) describe the level of engagement

for each child for each activity. The “The Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction Questionnaire”

(Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2013) will be a second measure of each child and measure the childs

lonliness and frequency of socialization. These are both important because girls reported higher

loneliness than did boys (Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2013) as well as the childs lack of participation in

a social group often is a precursor for relational aggerssion (Asher et al., 1984).

A fourth measure of implementation is finding out whether the schools and program leaders

are using the program materials in the intended way to promote the predicted outcome using

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observations from community leaders. If the materials and instruction for the activities are not being

implemented as the program originally intended, the predicted outcomes are less likely to occur as a

result of the program. A fifth and final measure would be to have documentation of the group

leaders’ education and ensure that training is consistent for any group leader who is implementing the

program. Training would be required for each group leader as well as they would be required to

produce documentation of training completion and be given a small test before program

implementation to ensure they did in fact complete all necessary aspects of training to the necessary

degree to achieve optimal outcomes.

AdaptationsA desirable adaptation to the program would be to train teachers or community leaders to

implement the program instead of graduate students. Reason being is that graduate students do not all

have the same level of education in the current program, some have an elementary counseling

background and others have clinical psychology background. Though they have similar components,

ideally a background in child and youth counseling is ideal with a specialty in groups counseling. If

the knowledge the graduate students possess can be duplicated and taught to community leaders and

teachers during training then we can expect more consistent results for the likelihood of outcomes.

A second desirable adaptation would be to change the title of the group leader to that of a

‘Program Champion’ and give this same title to the principle and community leaders who also

implement and support the program at the school. This provides external role-models and further

enhances the importance of using prosocial behaviors towards others. A third desirable adaptation to

the program would be to include the parents in data collection in that they would complete a pre and

post survey of their child’s relational aggression and behavior in relation to participating in SAPP.

A poor adaptation would be to have larger groups of more than seven children taught by one

group leader. This is not ideal because a large group most likely will reduce team effort and small

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cliques are possible to form, altering the program. Similarly, the teaching of groups after school will

be restricted to the availability of group leaders, and may cause over worked teachers to deliver a

lower-quality program effecting outcome results.

Ethical concernsEthical concerns from school implementation may result from group leaders taking on more

than just the forty-minute group sessions and working extra with children they see improving less.

The idea of the group collective is to help foster new relationships consisting if prosocial behavior,

not providing extra one-on-one attention to girls who do not want to engage in the group collective.

The participants will likely not achieve the same outcomes as they will be receiving extra treatment

and reliability of the experimental group will be lost. Lastly, the group leaders must have at least

three years working with children in a variety of settings, as well as a strong understanding of

developmental disorders and ways of handling behavioral situations.

Marketing PlanThe plan for disseminating SAPP into the Vancouver Island schools would require several

components: (1) support from schools, parents, local authorities, and the community (2) funding

from stakeholders and the community, (3) expression of the need for this program which can be

supported with current research literature as well as current and local examples of relational

aggression and the consequences of it. Presenting the objectives and models of the program to the

schools and explaining the generalizability of the skills and strategies the girls learn in SAPP are

appropriate and applicable to a variety of settings outside the classroom such as the child’s

extracurricular activities, out-of-school groups, and the child’s home. Highlighting the emphasis of

protective factors such as a good student-teacher relationship, identification with their culture, having

a strong peer group, experiencing maternal warmth at home, and have a feeling of belonging at

school. Materials needing development are informal materials such as posters and pamphlets for

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parents, teachers, and schools about the program and its goals in an appealing manner will make it

more welcoming into the daily curriculum. Developing a website where information can be accessed

by the community, school and parents is ideal.

Capacity, Fidelity, and Cost-effectivenessLocal perception of the need for the social aggression prevention program comes from

teachers, parents, local authorities such as the police, and possibly public political figures. The

capacity of the school to carry out the program is important and would be increased with program

providers providing the materials free of cost if they agree to participate in the program trial.y.

Thereafter the schools would need to provide funding for updating of the materials over the years.

The only local resource stated was the school which the program takes place “during school hours

outside the classroom” (Cappella & Weistein, 2006, p. 7).

FidelitySAPP demonstrates acceptable fidelity in that it contains an outline of instructions by which

leaders can help the children achieve the program objectives. Long term outcomes are difficult to see

currently and out need follow-up data for at least five years after completing the program in order to

see these outcomes. Having scheduled by a community leader or police officer who is familiar and

supports SAPP visits once a month would allow the program providers to see whether the

components of the program and its activities are being used in the proper way to achieve the program

objectives, without rising observer bias or social desirability bias of the schools.

A refresher session about how to correctly implement SAPP should take place every two-to-

three years to keep teachers familiar with the components of SAPP and to reduce the likelihood of

teachers regressing to the baseline mean over time. This would severely effect program

implementation and reduce the likelihood of achieving program objectives. Preventing this with

teacher refresher sessions at the two-to-three year mark and refresh the schools program supplies free

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of charge would help keep the school loyal to the program as well as build relationships with

stakeholders.

When making adaptations to the program, these adaptations should be made at the retraining

mark of two-to-three years to the teachers have had a significant amount of time to feel comfortable

with implementing the program and this would make inserting adaptations to the program easier for

teachers to adapt to the change (Ringwalt, et al., 2010). The need for retraining and implementation

for two-to-three years is that teachers “initial implementation (…) tended to be mechanical (…)

while later” (Ringwalt, et al., 2010, p. 68) teachers became more spontaneous and therefore more

comfortable with the implementation process.

CapacityThe capacity for schools to be able to accurately implement and be sustainable over times

would require that the schools and staff within the school support the outcomes SAPP is aiming to

achieve. If the schools nor the teachers believe in what SAPP is doing, implementation quality will

be less than optimal and less likely that program objective will be achieved. Currently the program

is designed for use in urban school who would have ideally better access to resources such as money

for program supplies, a low teacher and principle over-turn, and community connectedness with

support from local leaders. The program would need to understand how implementation and

sustainability would function in a rural school where resources, teacher and principle turn-over rates,

and funding for programs are severely lacking.

Cost-effectiveness The cost-effectiveness of the SAPP is difficult to determine since it is still in the efficacy

phase of prevention. Though there are few components, capacity and teacher and principle turn-over

rates could be high at a specific schools and therefore cost the school more money to train the new

staff. Costs of the program stem from the materials needed for the activities, questionnaires, and

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surveys, the program manual, and compensating the graduate students for their times and effort. An

outline of costs has yet to be established and this would be helpful for gaining school participation as

well as dissemination across schools. The costs of how much training of teachers or graduate

students as group leaders is not documented. Training should be completed within a one-two day

training session and is led by the program provider.

Training PlanTraining for group leaders will begin two weeks before implementation and will consist of

basic knowledge about the developmental period that children in grades four-to-six are experiencing,

how to conduct activities and the purpose of them, as well as what forms leaders will need to fill out

each week. Leaders will be shown a sample of all the forms they will need to complete each week.

Training will also include a demonstration and practice trials of conducting the activities. Practice

sessions will be led by program providers and program administration in order to assess and ensure

training has been completed, as well as provide an opportunity for leaders to ask questions and gain

clarity to optimize implementation quality. Group leaders will be required to complete a final test

consisting of questions about implementation before the end of the two weeks to ensure leaders are

confident in their ability to implement the program without error.

Potential ObstaclesPotential obstacles might be maintaining implementation quality over the school year as

teachers take on more and more with fewer resources and time. Teachers may not attend training

unless it is made mandatory. This may cause some teachers implementation quality to be poor as

they may not see the value of the program whereas other teachers might. A beginning incentive for

teachers would be that group leaders attend class weekly to assist with implementation until the

teacher was familiar and capable of running the program without the leader being present. Every

three months for the first school-year of implementation a visitor from the program, either a program

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administrator or community leader familiar with the program, will attend the school to assess

implementation quality and bring to the attention of program providers any issues needing immediate

attention. Another issue for the study would be attrition and drop-out of participants, risking the

generalizability to the target population. Lastly, funding is often an issue but could be successful by

presenting the plethora of data and research regarding the current need for a program like this during

the marketing plan.

Assessment of Implementation QualityAssessment of implementation quality will consist of several components. Objectives of the

program are currently assessed using self-report measures from teachers, participants, and group

leaders. To ensure program implementation quality a weekly summary would be completed by each

group leader about the progress and issues of the group that week (Cappella & Weistein, 2006),

observations, questionnaires, and surveys will be used. The summary had questions highlighting

“quantitative ratings of curriculum completed, student attendance and participant involvement, as

well as qualitative descriptions of teaching moments and problems that arose” (Cappella & Weistein,

2006, p. 445). By doing this issues could be addressed promptly and dealt with in the group the

following week.

Observation will be used at specific intervals every three months for the first year throughout

implementation to catch leader implementation errors and correct as soon as possible; check-ins will

be every six months after the first year. Observations will be completed by select community

leaders, law enforcement, and program administration. Observers would be looking for exact

implementation as was taught during training and this information would be provided to the program

providers with a week to begin correction. After the tenth and final meeting, participants were asked

to complete a “group experience form” (Cappella & Weistein, 2006, p. 445) consisting of

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quantitative and qualitative questions measure the intervention participants’ overall interest in and

learning from the program.” (Cappella & Weistein, 2006, p. 445).

Questionnaires would be used to assess the quality via the likelihood of students using the

skills and strategies taught in the program outside of the program. They will be distributed to

teachers and students at the end of implementation. Questionnaires will consist of questions requiring

a yes/no response (Appendix A for teacher and student questionnaires). Student questionnaires will

contain some different questions asking about peer-relationships, sense of belonging, (other

protective factors). The inclusion of a weekly activity logbook would be used as a measure of

implementation. The weekly reflection book will contain three separate types of sheets which will be

collected at the end of implementation. One will be completed independently by the child to reflect

on their own behavior as a result of participating in the program, one with the joint effort of the child

and their parents to give positive feedback about behavior at home, and one sheet for the child to

complete independently about their peers progress from the program. Worksheets give a full picture

for the child to understand what areas are improving and what areas they need to work on.

What could be the problems in implementation?Implementation problems that may arise are that schools do not have the capacity to

implement the program long term, they may have a high teacher or principle turn-over rate. Schools

may choose a more developed social aggression prevention program over SAPP. Some teachers may

not believe in the strength of SAPP and implement only some of the activities, or teachers may alter

activities which is an illegal adaptation of the program as it will effect outcomes. Teachers as well

may refuse to take retraining which can cause program implementation to plateau and will be less

likely to achieve the desired outcomes. As well, children may discuss their experiences in the

program with the control group and risk contamination. Although, since the control group works

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individually instead of a group like the experimental group the risk of contamination may be

lowered.

Recommendations to program developers for improvement? A change to the program would be to understand why participants did so poorly in this area

of perspective taking in previous trials. Another change to the program would be to include cue cards

with different scenarios of relational aggression for the role-playing activity in which children would

learn how to use their newly acquired skills to solve in a pro-social manner. The use of cue cards

alleviates the need for program implementers and teachers to come up with scenarios for each

meeting or weekly in-class demonstration. The program provides exposure to protective factors such

as a positive student-teacher relationship, a strong association to a peer group, and a feeling of

belonging at school. Another recommendation is every month to bring in a community leader from a

different ethnic group who supports the program as a guest, and co-lead a weekly meeting with the

group leader or teacher. The mechanism of action is the social support, values, and morals the child

receives from their own culture and members of their cultural group in the context of the home

(Flanagan, et al., 2011; Zhang & Anderson, 2010). This is especially a protective factor for First

Nations children who have a higher risk than other minority groups (Flanagan, et al., 2011). A final

recommendation and future goal would be to create a sub-program of SAPP targeting relational

aggression on the internet and through the use of social media and cellphones as electronic

aggression is becoming more prevalent.

SAPP’s process requires some changes and refinement in order to progress up the ladder of

prevention program phases. Following the recommended changes and further examination of

protective factors, it would be important to understand how to enhance an aggressive child’s

exposure to the protective factors in a in-school setting. Relational aggression is becoming a

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significant factor influencing the well-being of children at an increasingly young age (Modecki,

Minchin, Harbaugh, Guerra, & Runions, 2014).

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