Article Citation:
Dorothy L. Espelage,
Sabina Low,
Mark J. Van Ryzin, and
Joshua R. Polanin (
2015) Clinical Trial of Second Step Middle School Program: Impact on Bullying, Cyberbullying, Homophobic Teasing, and Sexual Harassment Perpetration. School Psychology Review: December 2015, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 464-479.
Special Topic: Bullying Research From a Social-Ecological Perspective
Clinical Trial of Second Step Middle School Program: Impact on Bullying, Cyberbullying, Homophobic Teasing, and Sexual Harassment Perpetration
Dorothy L. Espelage
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Sabina Low
Arizona State University
Mark J. Van Ryzin
University of Oregon
Joshua R. Polanin
Vanderbilt University
Support for research in the current study was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (No. 1U01/CE001677) to Dorothy Espelage (principal investigator) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or related offices.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dorothy L. Espelage
Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL
; e-mail:
Dorothy L. Espelage PhD, is an Edward William Gutgsell & Jane Marr Gutgsell Endowed Professor and Hardie Scholar of Education in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has conducted research on bullying, homophobic teasing, sexual harassment, and dating violence for the past 22 years. She is an author of over 130 peer-reviewed journal articles and 25 chapters and has coedited five books. Her research focuses on translating empirical findings into prevention and intervention programming and informs national policy.
Sabina Low, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. Her research interests include promotion of health social dynamics in families, romantic relationships, and peer relations, as well as translational science in the area of family violence prevention.
Mark J. Van Ryzin PhD, is a research scientist at the Oregon Research Institute and the Oregon Social Learning Center and faculty at the University of Oregon. His research interests include adolescent development, parenting and the family system, peer selection and influence, prevention science, and the application of innovative statistical methods.
Joshua R. Polanin, PhD, is a senior research scientist in the Research and Evaluation Division at Development Services Group. He is a quantitative methodologist by training, and his research primarily focuses on large-scale impact evaluations and meta-analyses on issues related to school bullying and violence, academic achievement, and predictors of school behavior.
Guest Editor: Melissa Stormont
Social–emotional learning programs are increasingly being implemented in U.S. schools to address a wide range of problematic behaviors (e.g., bullying, delinquency) and to promote academic success. The current study examined the direct and indirect impact of the Second Step Middle School Program (Committee for Children, 2008) on bullying, cyberbullying, homophobic name-calling, and sexual harassment perpetration over the course of a 3-year randomized clinical trial. Delinquency was examined as an intervening variable between treatment condition and aggression outcomes. Thirty-six schools in Kansas and Illinois were assigned to either a Second Step condition or a control condition, and 3,651 sixth-grade students completed self-reported surveys at four time points across 3 years. Students in the Second Step condition received a total of 41 lessons across the 3-year study. No direct intervention effects were found for multiple forms of aggression perpetration at the end of 3 years. However, as hypothesized, decreases in self-reported delinquency (intervening variable) over the first 2 years were significantly related to decreases in bullying, cyberbullying, and homophobic name-calling perpetration for Second Step schools across the 3-year study. Indirect effects of the Second Step program on bullying and aggressive behavior were statistically significant through reductions of delinquency.
Received: April 30, 2015; Accepted: September 16, 2015;
Copyright 2015 by the National Association of School Psychologists
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