The UCA psychology and counseling department has been awarded a grant to study bullying in middle schools. The grant, entitled “Decreasing Bullying with Self-Affirmation: A Test of the Compensation Model”, is being used by Drs. Paul Nail, Elson Bihm and Joan Simon during the fall semesters. They began their studies in the fall of 2013.
It is a two-year grant worth $286,500.
The professors will gather data from at least 400 middle school students.
Nail said that they chose to study middle school students, “[…] because bullying and aggression tend to increase when students are jockeying for position and status with a new social group.”
The goal of the study is to find a way to decrease bullying and stop it in its early stages. The research will be conducted in collaboration with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, (NICHD).
