Introduction

Cyberbullying intervention resources can be divided into school-based programs and individual standalone interventions. School-based interventions are programs containing for example, lessons, videos, presentations, discussions, and workshops, which are used in classrooms or whole schools. Standalone interventions are programs that can be used independently of schools and classrooms. Most standalone interventions are psychoeducational websites. There are many such sites containing tips, topics, and recommendations regarding cyberbullying. The problem is, however, that many of these standalone programs and materials, while well intentioned, lack research evidence. They are based on practical beliefs or common sense (Snakenborg, Van Acker, & Gable, 2011) and hence do not have a theoretical base, nor have the effectiveness of their materials been investigated (Völlink, Dehue, Mc Guckin, & Jacobs, 2016). There are some exceptions, however. In this chapter the development and content of the Dutch theory-based tailored intervention “Online Pestkoppenstoppen” or “Stop Online Bullies” will be described. The intervention is aimed at low academically achieving students of 12–15 years old who have experienced cybervictimization.

Evidence for effectiveness

To test the effectiveness of “Stop Online Bullies,” a randomized controlled trial was conducted, in which the outcomes of the experimental condition at baseline, and 1, 2, 6, and 12 months later were compared with the outcomes of a control group, which received general information, and the outcomes of a control group, which received no information. All secondary vocational education schools in the Netherlands were approached via about 600 contact persons. They were told that their participation could help reduce cyberbullying and associated problems, and information on cyberbullying and a description and screenshots of the intervention were provided. The researchers visited the schools that indicated willingness to participate and gave a short introductory presentation to all students. Since the first recruitment round did not generate enough participants, a second recruitment round was conducted, in which teachers introduced the intervention and the study to their students by means of videos developed by the research team. Students received a written information letter and informed consent, which had to be signed by both the participant and his or her parent(s). In this first round, students were included as a victim when they experienced at least three of 17 forms of cyberbullying acts at least once a month, or at least one form two or three times a month during the past 6 months (Vandebosch & van Cleemput, 2009). In the second round, it was decided to broaden these inclusion criteria by also including students who experienced one or two cyberbullying acts once a month, because a single action (e.g., uploading an embarrassing video or picture) can result in repeated humiliation (Dooley, Pyzalski, & Cross, 2009). About 56% of the students (> 2000) of participating schools clicked the “I participate” button on the website of the intervention. Instead of the expected 25%, only 18% of the students (360) matched the criteria of being a victim of cyberbullying. Half of these students, 183, completed the informed consent, and 170 started the first measurement, a number that declined to 59 by the second measurement. Unfortunately, throughout the intervention the dropout continued to remain very high, which meant that an effectiveness study was not possible. To understand the processes responsible for the unsuccessfulness of the intervention (e.g., high dropout) and to provide guidelines for future interventions, a process evaluation was conducted (Baranowski & Stables, 2000; Hulscher, Laurant, & Grol, 2003).

In general, adolescents were rather positive about the website. The three topics received overall appreciation scores ranging from 7.3 to 7.7 on a scale from 1 (not appreciated at all) to 10 (very much appreciated). The appreciation related to interestingness, comprehensibility, believability, amount of information, the novelty of information, the helpfulness of information in stopping cyberbullying and personal relevance was relatively high. On a five-point scale (1 = I totally disagree, 5 = I totally agree), scores ranged from 2.8 to 4.3. The first topic, focused on thoughts, was rated as most comprehensible. The second topic was rated as being the most helpful in stopping (cyber)bullying, probably because this session aimed to change actual behavior. The information in the third topic was rated as the most novel. The majority watched the movies, pictures, and comics completely and did the exercises of the three sessions. The personal page however was not used frequently: some adolescents indicated they did not look at this page and half of them looked only once or twice.

In addition to questionnaires, qualitative data were gathered by email and phone calls. It appeared that the questionnaires preceding the topics were perceived as too long, tedious and difficult, which explains part of the dropout. Moreover, some of the adolescents mentioned that they simply forgot to return to the website, despite automatically and manually sent emails and text messages.

Benefits and drawbacks of Stop Online Bullies

Monitoring and regulating the usage on the Internet by adults can be difficult, since there can be a generational divide in Internet usage. Children and young people may feel that parents are often less than experts in the new communication technologies (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008; Wong, 2010). Moreover, children and young people value their privacy and therefore often exclude their parents from their Internet activities (Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 2008). So, parents are frequently unaware of the activities of their children on the Internet, and even worse, they are frequently unaware of their child being involved in cyberbullying (Dehue, Bolman, & Vollink, 2008; Hoff & Mitchell, 2009; Perren et al., 2012). Victims of cyberbullying are reluctant to report to their parents that they are involved in cyberbullying because of the fear of losing computer privileges and hence being isolated from peers (Bath, 2008; Kraft & Wang, 2009; Mishna, Saini, & Solomon, 2009). Literature shows that children and young people prefer to get anonymous help (Webb, Burns, & Collin, 2008) and report a need for help through the Internet (Havas, de Nooijer, Crutzen, & Feron, 2011). Therefore, the best method to deliver cyberbullying interventions seems to be over the Internet. The most important benefit of Stop Online Bullies therefore is related to the fact that it is a web-based standalone intervention that can be completed without the help of adults.

Web-based interventions such as Stop Online Bullies have several advantages. For example, they can reach a lot of people in a relatively inexpensive way and can be used whenever and wherever the individual prefers. But most importantly they can be tailored to the individual, which appears to be a successful health promotion technique (Krebs, Prochaska, & Rossi, 2010; Noar, Benac, & Harris, 2007). To be effective, first of all, interventions should fit the personality of the student. Several personality traits have been linked to coping strategies. For example, prior research has shown that children and young people who are resilient, tend toward a problem-solving approach of coping, such as deleting unwelcome messages, blocking contacts in the context of cyberbullying, seeking social support from peers and adults, or confronting the bully online (D'Haenens, Vandoninck, & Donoso, 2013; Hunter, Boyle, & Warden, 2004; Machmutow, Perren, Sticca, & Alsaker, 2012; Matsunaga, 2011; Perren et al., 2012). Those who are not resilient, tend to use an emotion-solving approach of coping, such as ignoring the bully or bullying the bully, using aggression, reacting submissively, avoiding the situation or acting helpless (Acirak, 2009; Dehue et al., 2008; Perren et al., 2012; Riebel, Jäger, & Fischer, 2009). Furthermore, research in biology and epidemiology shows that optimism is also linked to coping. Optimism can be defined as the general tendency to have positive rather than negative outcome expectancies. Ursin and Eriksen (2010) showed that individuals who generally have positive outcome expectancies use active coping strategies, whereas individuals who generally have negative outcome expectancies perceive the situation as uncontrollable and their possible actions as useless and hence use passive coping strategies. Indeed, research has shown that compared to general information, interventions that fit the personality of the user are perceived as more personal and relevant, are more often read, saved, remembered, and discussed (Brug, Oenema, & Campbell, 2003), and result in more improvement in behavior (Krebs et al., 2010). However, not only personality characteristics influence the use of coping strategies. Contextual features like the kind of relationship between victims and perpetrators (Vandebosch & van Cleemput, 2009) and the kind of emotion evoked by the cyberbullying experience also influence coping. Threats may evoke anxiety, humiliating pictures may evoke shame and name calling, or gossiping may evoke anger. So, the effectiveness of a coping strategy may depend on the specific experience. The importance of tailored topics is reflected in the results of the process evaluation of Stop Online Bullies. The second topic of the intervention, dedicated to effective and ineffective coping behavior, was tailored to the individual's experiences with coping strategies and was perceived as most relevant and interestingly, being the most helpful in stopping cyberbullying. Thus, the most important advantage of Stop Online Bullies is the fact that the intervention provides tailored advice.

Paradoxically, the fact that Stop Online Bullies is a web-based standalone intervention that can be completed without the help of adults also shows the most important drawback: the lack of guidance. The target group seems to need guidance in regulation and motivation activities (De Boer, Reinards, & Reubel, 1993; Den Boer, Mittendorff, & Sjenitzer, 2004). Indeed, Jacobs, Völlink, Dehue, and Lechner (2014c) concluded that their target group lacked the motivation and discipline to complete the intervention on an individual basis, and that more guidance and structure in using the intervention is needed. The lack of guidance by adults, such as explaining to children and young people the usefulness and the benefits of the intervention, and reminding them to return to the intervention, can partly explain the large dropout.

Another factor that may have influenced this dropout was the design of the intervention, which had some drawbacks. Previous research shows that program length and the number of sessions decrease the use of interventions (Bouwer et al., 2009; Glasgow, 2007). As well, interest in returning to interventions seems to decrease over time and revisits are uncommon in interventions (Gustafson et al., 2001; Schulz et al., 2014). Intervention website visits should not be longer than 17 min (Verheijden, Jans, & Hildebrandt, 2008), whereas Stop the Bully contains three topics of 45 min each, to be completed at fixed times with a time interval of at least 1 month. Furthermore, the number and negative content of the measurements, which are necessary to tailor and to measure the effectiveness of the intervention, may have influenced the dropout rate (Bunker, Howell, & Weaver, 2007; Jacobs et al., 2014c). In addition, the login procedure was too complicated and the procedure at the start of Stop Online Bullies was different from the procedure at the follow up sessions.

Although all materials were positively evaluated, some other drawbacks were related to the presentation of the content of the intervention. Low academically achieving students, and thus our target group, do not like to read and need teaching methods that use a concrete manner of working (De Boer et al., 1993; Den Boer et al., 2004). The first topic “Think strong, feel better” does not use a concrete manner of working since it mostly focuses on thoughts and feelings and concerns the understanding of the relation between the 5Gs, and hence may be too abstract.

Conclusion

As described, Stop Online Bullies provides online tailored information for victims of both traditional and cyberbullying to decrease their victimization, but also provides topics to increase psychological well-being, and to decrease problem behavior, school problems, and truancy.

The intervention was based on the assumption that victims of bullying behavior prefer to get anonymous help delivered via the Internet, without the intervention of adults. Although all three topics were evaluated as rather positive, personally relevant, and helpful, an online approach to combat cyberbullying appeared to be less effective than expected. The experience with the delivering of the intervention and the process evaluation, however, provided many important insights and several recommendations for future interventions.

First of all, the several studies and the process evaluation of Stop Online Bullies clearly suggest that it is of utmost importance that information and topics in future cyberbullying online standalone interventions are tailored for the individual.

Second, the many advantages of online standalone interventions like Stop Online Bullies seem not to fit the ability of victims to independently use the intervention. Low-academically achieving adolescents seem to need more guidance and external motivation to continue and finish such an intensive online intervention. Therefore, for future intervention, it is important to deliver anonymous help via the Internet, but at the same time researchers should face the challenge to incorporate some assistance and structure provided by adults. An online blended approach meets these criteria, by providing an online standalone intervention in combination with face-to-face classroom methods provided by teachers, for example feedback on the exercises done in the standalone intervention.

Third, victims probably need freedom to obtain help when needed, without interruptions and several sessions. Multisession interventions have been found to have a low reach (Glasgow, 2007), and interest in returning to intervention websites appears to decrease over time (Gustafson et al., 2001). Revisits are uncommon in interventions (Schulz et al., 2014), as was experienced in testing Stop Online Bullies. Despite the emails and text messages, participants did not return. The three topics of Stop Online Bullies could only be completed at fixed times, with a month interval, although the Internet provides 24-h access. So the challenge for future online interventions is to target different areas without the requirement of multiple sessions.

This leads to the fourth recommendation: standalone interventions should be kept as short as possible, especially for low-academically achieving adolescents. This implies that the questionnaires needed for tailoring and research purposes should be short. The number and length as well as the negative content of measurements could be one reason that the young people dropped out (Bunker et al., 2007). However, reducing the number of questions can influence the validity of the measurement. Hence, for future researchers, it is a challenge to develop interventions with a balance between the number of questions and the validity of the measurements.

The fifth recommendation concerns the login procedure. Online interventions should have an easy login procedure (Bouwer et al., 2009; Schneider, van Osch, Schulz, Kremers, & de Vries, 2012).

Finally, the acceptability of the materials appeared to depend on how helpful it was. This also emphasizes the importance of tailoring the interventions. Moreover, the acceptability of the material also depended on the novelty of the information. This implies that for future interventions it is important to keep the information up to date, especially when it concerns information on using specific social media in a safe way, since the popularity of these specific media rapidly changes over time. Therefore, it is probably easier to incorporate links to sites on the Internet that provide these safety tips. Finally, future interventions should pay less attention to abstract concepts, and instead use more concrete information, as low academically achieving adolescents do not like to read and need concrete teaching methods (De Boer et al., 1993; Den Boer et al., 2004). Although all materials of Stop Online Bullies were evaluated as positive by the young people, and almost all indicated that they read the texts, watched the movies, pictures, and comics, and did the exercises of the three sessions, earlier research found that the use of and exposure to the content of online interventions is often less than optimal (Campbell et al., 2002; Cunningham, Gulliver, Farrer, Bennett, & Carron-Arthur, 2014; Leslie, Marshall, Owen, & Bauman, 2005; Mañanes & Vallejo, 2014). Games have been found to improve attractiveness of the sites and consequently longer visits (Vandelanotte & Mummery, 2011). Future interventions should therefore pay less attention to abstract concepts, and instead use more novel and concrete information. Standalone online tailored interventions should be restricted to effective coping strategies, social skills, insights in social norms, behavior, and manners, and differences between online and offline contacts. Abstracts concepts like the five G-scheme, the effects and restructure of irrational thoughts, and the negative effects of harassments on self-esteem are probably more suitable when more guidance is possible, as in a face-to-face classroom part of a blended approach, linked to safety programs in schools. In a study among 309 primary and secondary Flanders schools, it was found that 92% of the teachers consider it their duty to inform young people about cyberbullying. However, 87% reported to receive insufficient professional support and 85% reported to receive insufficient guidelines to prevent and combat cyberbullying (Vandebosch, Poels, & Deboutte, 2014). Materials of Stop Online Bullies that are too abstract for an online standalone approach could be redeveloped in a blended approach for teachers in school.