ABSTRACT
Attention to bullying problems among children and youth has increased dramatically in the last decade with American educators, the press, and the general public. Whereas bullying had been the focus of wide public concern in Scandinavia since the early 1980s (Olweus, 1993), and while school-based interventions were being tested in England in the early 1990s, bullying was not on the radar screens of most Americans until several years later. In the mid-1990s, stories of bullying experiences began to appear in the national news media (ABC News, 1995) and school-based bullying prevention programs fi rst emerged in American schools (e.g., Garrity, Jens, Porter, Sager, & Short-Camilli, 1994; South Carolina Educational Television, 1995; Sjostrom & Stein, 1996). Today, a conservative count yields at least 40 diff erent school-based programs (including both curricula and comprehensive approaches) that focus signifi cantly on bullying and that are in use in elementary, middle, and high schools in the United States. Th is estimate includes only those programs that focus to a signifi cant extent on bullying and involve more than a minimal time commitment from school staff . Th e number of additional materials available to educators, parents, and others (e.g., books, multimedia resources, posters, gamers, booklets) is tremendous.1
