TPC-Journal-V5-Issue3

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 3 344 The study followed a pre-post quasi-experimental cohort group design (Cook & Campbell, 1979). Random assignment of individual students was not conducive to preserving the nature of a whole- school culture, so schools were assigned to either the treatment or comparison group based on the order in which they volunteered to participate. The first three schools to volunteer were assigned to the treatment group (schools A, B and C) while the last two schools (schools D and E) were assigned to the comparison group. Procedures Following approval from the university’s Institutional Review Board, consent for research was obtained from the participating school district, school administrators, parents, teachers and students. In September, five certified school counselors from the participating schools received a 1-day training in the manualized use of the SSS classroom guidance program as well as other study- related procedures including instrument administration and electronic summary report instructions. The SSS program, consisting of five consecutive 45-minute lessons spaced a week apart, was then implemented in all fifth-grade classrooms in the treatment schools beginning in October. Monthly booster lessons followed beginning in January. Only students with parent permission completed the required instruments: the Peer Relations Questionnaire (PRQ), the Student Engagement in School Success Skills (SESSS) survey and the My Class Inventory-Short Form Revised (MCI-SFR). Students were ensured of the anonymity of their reporting by using generic school, classroom and student numbers. For a classroom to remain eligible to participate, a minimum of 80% of the students in the classroom had to return a signed parent consent form. Treatment group. Schools A, B and C served as the treatment group ( n = 209) and participating fifth-grade students in this group received the SSS classroom intervention. These students completed the following pretests in September 2010: the PRQ, MCI-SFR and SESSS. Implementation of the SSS classroom program began in October. Following the completion of the first five SSS lessons, treatment students completed the SESSS instrument (posttest). Booster lessons were delivered in January, February and March, and treatment students were then asked to complete the PRQ, MCI-SFR and SESSS following the final booster lesson (post-posttest). Comparison group. Schools D and E served as the comparison group ( n = 127) and did not receive the SSS intervention during the study. Students in these schools experienced business as usual, including any regularly scheduled school counseling programming. Comparison schools were eligible to receive the SSS curriculum after the study was completed. Participating students in the comparison schools completed the three instruments at the same time intervals (pretest, posttest and post-posttest) as students in the treatment group. Instruments Peer Relations Questionnaire - For Children - Short Form . The PRQ (Rigby & Slee, 1993a) was designed to reveal student experiences with bullying at school. The questionnaire takes approximately 5–7 minutes to complete and is comprised of 20 items in which students are asked to circle how often the statements are true for them. The answers range on a 4-point scale from never = 1, once in a while = 2, pretty often = 3, to very often = 4. The PRQ consists of three scales and several filler items: a Bully Scale, a Victim Scale and a Prosocial Scale; students in the present study took all three scales. Scoring is determined by the items contained in each of the scales, with higher scores corresponding to a propensity for bully, victim and/or prosocial behaviors (Rigby & Slee, 1993b). Rigby and Slee (1993b) reported the reliability of the PRQ using the following alpha coefficients: bully scale (.75–.78), victim scale (.78–.86) and prosocial scale (.71–.74), indicating more than adequate