Bullying and cyberbullying are social problems that affect a growing number of adolescent students at an international level. Emotional competence is known to play a major role among those involved in these bullying behaviors. For this reason, developing a program that stimulates these competences can favor positive interrelationships between students and improve coexistence at school, the well-being, and quality of life of young people. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the ÆMO program, which focuses on enhancing emotional literacy and regulation, in reducing bullying and cyberbullying and improving the school climate. The study design was quasi-experimental with a pretest and posttest, in which 374 (52.14% female) Spanish students (aged 13 to 17 years) from 4 high schools participated, being assigned to an experimental (174 students) or control group (200 students). All students completed self-administered questionnaires on bullying, cyberbullying, and school climate before and after the intervention to identify possible changes in these variables caused by the program. After 5 months of intervention, the results showed a statistically significant reduction in bullying, peer victimization, cyberbullying, and cybervictimization behaviors in the experimental group. Similarly, a statistically significant improvement was found in school climate factors only in this group. In conclusion, the results of this study demonstrated that the ÆMO program is effective in reducing bullying and cyberbullying, and at the same time, in improving school climate.
Ruiz-Robledillo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.