TPC Journal V8, Issue 1 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 1 83 Limitations and Future Research Although this study contributes to the literature regarding developmentally appropriate bullying interventions for high school students, several limitations must be considered. First, because of our small sample size and lack of control group, we cannot make causal attributions or generalize our findings to the larger high school student population. Although we enhanced the significance of our findings with a mixed methods design, there is a need for future studies investigating the efficacy of the aged-up STAC program through a randomized controlled trial. Further, since our study was intended as a first step in the development of an age-appropriate program for high school, we did not assess decreases in bullying victimization or perpetration. Therefore, future randomized controlled trial studies should include these outcome variables. Another limitation is related to the measures used. Specifically, both awareness of bullying and use of each STAC strategy were measured by a single item, which can result in decreased reliability. Further, although the developers constructed the items to have face validity, there are no studies investigating the psychometric properties of these items in measuring awareness of bullying or use of the STAC strategies. Additionally, our quantitative and qualitative findings were based on self-report data. It is possible that students’ responses were influenced by their desire to please the researchers, especially within the context of the focus groups. Thus, including objective measures of observable defending behaviors would strengthen the findings. Practical Implications Our findings provide important implications for counselors in both school and other settings. First, high school counselors can implement aged-up bullying intervention programs such as the STAC program. High school counselors can find encouragement in our findings indicating high school students are invested in helping reduce school bullying and that being trained to intervene can be associated with increased awareness and sense of responsibility. Further, findings suggest it might be helpful for school counselors to provide students trained in the program with an opportunity to meet in small groups to foster friendships with peers who are committed to acting as defenders. Results also suggest that high school students believe reporting bullying to adults may not be an effective strategy. School counselors are well positioned as student advocates to establish anonymous reporting procedures to counteract potential student fears related to being negatively perceived when they report bullying to adults. In all bullying intervention efforts, school counselors should coordinate with administration to ensure success. School counselors can facilitate teacher and staff development to help them understand students’ fears related to reporting bullying and provide teachers with necessary tools to help students who report bullying to them. Additionally, although a teacher training would increase the required time and resources needed to implement the STAC program, it may be an important addition at the high school level. In this module, school counselors could educate teachers about bullying and the STAC strategies so that teachers could reinforce the strategies with students. The training would emphasize Turning It Over, explaining to teachers their important role in helping student bystanders intervene when they observe bullying. Lastly, this study also has implications for counselors working with adolescents outside the school setting. There are negative associated consequences to witnessing bullying as a bystander (Rivers & Noret, 2013; Rivers et al., 2009). In addition, adolescents report not knowing how to intervene on behalf of targets (Forsberg et al., 2014; Hutchinson, 2012), which can lead to feelings of guilt (Hutchinson, 2012). Thus, counselors can empower clients to act as defenders by providing psychoeducation regarding the STAC strategies. They can focus on strategies that clients feel are a natural fit as a starting point. Counselors can encourage clients to share bullying situations they most commonly observe at school and invite clients to talk through how they could use a favorite STAC strategy.