Three UCA professors were awarded a $286,500 “Decreasing Bullying with Self-Affirmation: A Test of the Compensation Model” grant. Paul Nail, Elson Bihm and Joan Simon are using the grant to study middle school bullying.

According to the psychology and counseling department, the interest in bullying was approached because it is an issue that has always been around.

“Before, bullying was seen as part of growing up. Today, it is seen by many as an acceptable form of intimidation,” Bihm said.

He said many people who have been bullied suffer from psychological problems.

Nail said bullying is a serious issue happening in middle school and this is why they chose this age group.

“Children of this age are able to self- report being a bully or victim on ‘paper-and-pencil’ tests,” Bihm said. “Therefore, data on a large number of persons could be collected.”

Simon said she was attracted to this topic because she knows people who have been personally affected by bullying. She is a school psychologist, and this topic especially sparked her interest.

Simon said she and her colleagues work well together because they have their own specialties and they can bring different knowledge and better their research. Nail is a social psychologist and Bihm is a counseling psychologist.

The middle school the professors are working with pulls in students from three different elementary schools when the students reach sixth grade.

When students reach this age, they often try to find a place they belong.

“It is a largely new social group that should afford plenty of opportunities for establishing one’s status in the fall of the year when the class/group is still fairly new,” Nail said.

He also said they chose this study “because bullying and aggression tend to increase when students are jockeying for position and status with a new social group.”

The professors received the grant in July 2013. They began their study last fall and plan to continue fall 2014. They will conduct the study during the fall because that is when all of the students from different elementary schools first come together and meet each other. The duration of the grant is two years because the professors need to study at least 400 students to get a sufficient analysis and the school has about 250 students each fall.

The goal of the study is to find a way to decrease bullying and stop it in the early stages. Simon said she finds that some schools bullying programs have been a success while some of them have not. The professors said they want to find another approach through their research to reduce bullying and incorporate their findings into anti-bullying programs.

The research will be conducted at a middle school in Central Arkansas in conjunction with the Eunice Kennedy Shiver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.