Exploring the Anti-bullying Role of a Befriending Peer Support Programme: A Case Study within the Primary School Setting in Northern Ireland

Bullying remains a significant issue in the lives of many primary school children in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. Children are now experiencing direct and indirect bullying as well as cyberbullying, all of which can have significant negative consequences for health and well-being that may persist in the long term into adulthood. Many children do not tell of their bullying experience or seek help and support. While bullying has achieved a higher profile on the policy and practice agenda over the past few years, prevalence and incidence rates have improved little. Peer support programmes have increasingly been identified as an important element of whole school approaches to tackling and preventing bullying. It has been suggested that these programmes contribute by building resilience, promoting friendship and challenging negative peer group roles in bullying behaviour. This paper presents a case study that describes the process by which a befriending peer support intervention was developed in a primary school setting in Northern Ireland. The factors contributing to its role in promoting friendship and countering bullying at the school are presented.     

The importance of 'morality' in the social construction of suicide in Scottish newspapers

Abstract Suicide stories in newspapers have been identified as an important risk factor for individual suicide because they provide real‐life models for vulnerable individuals. The link between suicide ‘stories’ and suicide rates, however, is not clearly understood. One problem is the lack of detailed analysis of how suicide stories are constructed. Yet this is important because it would enable researchers to comprehend more fully how newspaper reports shape and structure ‘reality’. It is argued that the suicide story is a way of mapping out reality and that by de‐constructing we can learn how this shapes and constrains our understanding of suicide and the actions adopted in response to it. The aim of this study, therefore, is to explore the social construction of suicide stories in Scottish newspapers. Two broad sheet and two tabloid newspapers were scanned for suicide stories for the year 1999. One hundred and ninety‐one articles reporting suicide were identified and analysed using grounded theory. This generated a set of conceptual categories, which formed the basis of a framework. The study found that visualising, locating, social impacting and causal searching were key concepts in the construction of a suicide story, and that these were connected through the core explanatory category of ‘morality’. The study also showed how suicide was rendered explicable through the concepts of deviancy, dysfunction and moral weakness.     

Maximising response rates in household telephone surveys

Background  

Epidemiological and other studies that require participants to respond by completing a questionnaire face the growing threat of non-response. Response rates to household telephone surveys are diminishing because of changes in telecommunications, marketing and culture. Accordingly, updated information is required about the rate of telephone listing in directories and optimal strategies to maximise survey participation.