902 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD Method 0l, Experimental Context sed the numbers to nominate as many students as they wanted We use the sp dins time tosether question measured two mor times throughout the year.to approximate the frequency with e indicate with whom students are pe nally motivated to spenc sent their expe e harassment ir erived collective norms and behavior.We se this particul Peer harassment is defined as verbal or omplete pattern of Collective norms. We used a series of eight questions to of bhavior that c calate harassment and of students ,providin reminders about the om onflict we asked:"How many students at Ischooll believe it's wh asunng stu nd the intervention. for the believe's ormal to mind your One week after ne is making class penod【o every the s drama for them? step into the middleof o provided info nsent.The survey co hing you into a l ocker,but when they'res ing stuff befor don't talk to my frend I persona of harassm on.June 2011).Instead,teacher nd st ding h t at the school.On the basis of .and on initial qu that prevent future confl We nex essed norms regarding nent in all relevar ey questions (w which was defincd that sc stu se question 2011 wortquestionsSix,apcstioncicitcdsttcntrelation ps at the school in beha oraltems "With whom did yo in th you comn un with other students? "Who would you talk tofs mething D the inf respect"and "who you think are most popular").We followedMethod Experimental Context We studied a small public high school (N
291) that drew students from urban and suburban areas of Connecticut. Teachers had observed high levels of harassment among students in previ￾ous years, and as a response, the school invited the Anti￾Defamation League (ADL) to run an intervention program called “Names Can Really Hurt Us” (referred to below as NAMES). The NAMES intervention prepares a small group of selected students to present their experiences of and reasons to oppose harassment in a schoolwide assembly. Peer harassment is defined as verbal or physical abuse and social ostracism among peers. Prior to the intervention, we analyzed the complete pattern of relationships among students (the school’s social network) in order to identify a pool of widely known and clique leader social referent students and then randomly assign a subset of those social refer￾ents to participate in the program. Participation included leading the schoolwide assembly and, later, providing reminders about the themes of the program through publicity campaigns during the remainder of the school year. We first describe the saturated school survey to illustrate how we identified the social referent students within the school’s social network while measuring students’ perceived norms, beliefs, and experiences of harassment prior to the intervention. Schoolwide Survey: Social Network and Norms Measurement One week after school began in September, we administered a survey during a single class period to every student in the school (N
260 due to absences on the survey day and in the days following; 56% female; 44% African American, 23% Latino, 21% White; 59% of students were new to the school that year; see Table 1A). Parents signed a consent form for their child to participate, and students also provided informed consent. The survey consisted of four parts: demographic information, questions about relation￾ships with other students at the school (our social network ques￾tions), personal beliefs about and experiences of harassment￾related events at the school, and perceptions of collective social norms regarding harassment at the school. On the basis of previous work on harassment and bullying in schools, and on initial qual￾itative work at the school, we used the term making drama to refer to harassment in all relevant survey questions (which was defined in the survey as “talking behind the backs of other students or to their faces in a mean or rude way; spreading rumors by text, Facebook, MySpace posts, or instant messaging (IMs); giving other students mean or rude looks in the hall”; Marwick & Boyd, 2011). Network questions. Six questions elicited students’ relation￾ships with other students at the school. Four asked about friend￾ships at the school in behavioral terms (“With whom did you spend time in the last week?”; “With whom did you communicate online last week?”; “Who would defend you if you were having ‘drama’ with other students?”; “Who would you talk to if something bad or upsetting happened to you?”). Two questions elicited nominations of high status peers (i.e., students at the school “who you really respect” and “who you think are most popular”). We followed recommended procedures (Marsden, 2005) by providing each stu￾dent with a complete roster of students in the school, arranged by grade, sorted alphabetically by first name, and numbered. Students used the numbers1 to nominate as many students as they wanted for each question. We use the spending time together question, measured two more times throughout the year, to approximate the frequency with which a student is exposed to the behavior of their peers, and to indicate with whom students are personally motivated to spend time. Frequent and personally motivated everyday interaction is the proposed mechanism through which social referents influence perceived collective norms and behavior. We use this particular question to map the social interactions through which we trace the influence of the intervention and control social referents. Collective norms. We used a series of eight questions to measure perceptions of prescriptive norms regarding harassment at the school, specifically, perceptions of student approval of harass￾ment, of behavior that can deescalate harassment, and of students’ rationale for harassment. First we assessed an overall prescriptive norm of harassment: “How many students at [school] believe it’s normal when students start drama or any other kind of conflict with other students?” For norms regarding behavior to deescalate conflict, we asked: “How many students at [school] believe it’s wrong, or would criticize you, if you tried to stop other students from starting drama?”; “. . . believe it’s wrong, or would criticize you, if you did not defend your friends when someone else was making drama for them?”; “. . .believe it’s wrong, or would criti￾cize you, if you ignored rumors about you, rather than defending yourself?”; “. . .believe it’s normal to mind your own business when other students are starting drama for people?” and “believe it is important to defend your friends when someone is making drama for them?” As we learned through interviews at the school, behaviors that deescalate conflict are not necessarily interventionist behaviors in which students defend their friends or step into the middle of conflict. One student stated: “I can see helping out if someone’s pushing you into a locker, but when they’re saying stuff before class and you’re just like ‘don’t talk to my friend like that’ and you start talking too, that’s just starting more problems” (Student DE, personal communication, June 2011). Instead, teachers and stu￾dents identified behaviors like stepping back, minding one’s own business, and not grouping together to defend friends as behaviors that prevent future conflict. We next assessed norms regarding a rationale for harassment behavior: “How many students at [school] believe that sometimes students deserve to have rumors spread about them?”; and “. . .believe that students are seriously nega￾tively affected when they are targeted by rumors, gossip, or other drama?” Students responded to these questions using a pictogram with six options, each of which featured a collection of outlined stick figures. The proportion of shaded figures in each picture repre￾sented the percentage of students at the school who believed or supported the statement (1
Nobody, no shaded figures, 3
1 In the first wave of the survey, students were asked to write down both the name and number of other students they nominated in network ques￾tions. Due to students’ concerns about the confidentiality of the informa￾tion, we only asked them to record the other students’ identification numbers and not their names, in Waves 2 and 3 of the survey. 902 PALUCK AND SHEPHERD This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly