Why Anti-Bullying Laws Are Doomed to Fail
Author’s note (June 12, 2022): This article was originally published on Nov. 2, 2005, on www.bullies2buddies.com. Time has proven it prophetic.
The Shocking Statistics about Anti-Bullying Programs
Almost a year has passed since the publication of a scientific report of such momentous importance that it should have caused an uproar in the Western world and made headlines in all newspapers. Instead, the information has fallen on deaf ears and one must play the detective to track it down.
The fourth quarter 2004 issue of the School Psychology Review, the research journal of the National Association of School Psychologists, published the findings of Canadian Psychologist, J. David Smith, PhD, of the University of Ottawa, in a paper entitled The Effectiveness of Whole-School Anti-Bullying Programs: A Synthesis of Evaluation Research. He had conducted a meta analysis of all the research studies on the effectiveness of whole-school anti-bullying programs. Guess what he discovered. They don’t work!
As Dr. Smith reports,
“…86% of victimization outcomes [reports by victims of program benefits] were negligible or negative and the remaining 14% of reported effects were positive (albeit small). For self-reported bullying, 100% of the reported…
