The use of concept mapping to identify community-driven intervention strategies for physical and mental health

Research that partners with youth and community stakeholders increases contextual relevance and community buy-in and therefore maximizes the chance for intervention success. Concept mapping is a mixed-method participatory research process that accesses the input of the community in a collaborative manner. After a school-wide health needs assessment at a low-income, minority/immigrant K-8 school identified bullying and obesity as the most important health issues, concept mapping was used to identify and prioritize specific strategies to address these two areas. Stakeholders including 160 K-8 students, 33 college students working in the school, 35 parents, 20 academic partners, and 22 teachers/staff brainstormed strategies to reduce and prevent obesity and bullying. A smaller group of stakeholders worked individually to complete an unstructured sorting of these strategies into groups of similar ideas, once for obesity and again for bullying. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis was applied to the sorting data to produce a series of maps that illustrated the stakeholders' conceptual thinking about obesity and bullying prevention strategies. The maps for both obesity and bullying organized specific strategies into themes that included education, parental role, teacher/school supervision, youth role, expert/professional role, and school structure/support.

Coping strategies and perceived effectiveness in fourth through eighth grade victims of bullying

Victimization resulting from bullying affects millions of school children worldwide each year (e.g. Nansel et al., 2001; Sapouna, 2008; Smokowski & Kopasz, 2005). These children face the fear and humiliation of verbal, physical, and relational aggression and as a result, often suffer psychological ill effects (e.g. Kochenderfer-Ladd, & Skinner, 2002). This study examined the coping strategies of victims of bullying using qualitative research methodology. One-hundred-and-two fourth through eighth grade students participated in group interviews discussing the topics of bullying and coping with victimization. A coping model emerged from this study that included the primary categories of problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping, and eight subcategories, self-defense, stand up to the bully, seeking social support, distancing, internalizing, tension-reduction/externalizing, focus on the positive, and self-blame. Results revealed that problem-focused coping was the type of coping most often used by victims of bullying. Externalizing and seeking social support were the most commonly reported problem-focused coping strategies used by victims. Boys discussed using externalizing strategies with greater frequency than girls, whereas girls reported seeking social support more often than boys. Results also indicated that children generally found their implemented strategies to be ineffective in resolving their problem. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.