Developing and Testing a School-Family Cyberbullying Prevention Program for Secondary School Students in Thailand

Cyberbullying among secondary school students is increasing worldwide, causing psychological distress and adverse academic performance. Schools in Thailand often lack comprehensive prevention strategies. This study aimed to develop a school-family participatory cyberbullying prevention program and evaluate changes in students' cyberbullying knowledge and response skills following its implementation.

A quasi-experimental, single-group pretest-posttest developmental study was conducted in Chiang Mai, Thailand, from May to October 2022. Eighteen stakeholders (school leaders, teachers, parents, and community representatives) co-developed the program, which was subsequently implemented with 45 students in Grades 7-9. For data collection, self-report measures comprising demographic information, validated cyberbullying knowledge questionnaires, and response skills questionnaires were employed. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with SPSS version 24.

The developed program comprised four core activities: (1) building resilience against cyberbullying, (2) promoting positive communication, (3) creating a cyberbullying-free community, and (4) fostering sustainability. After participation, mean knowledge scores increased from 12.95 (SD=2.44) to 16.82 (SD=1.82) (P<0.001), with high knowledge levels rising from 4.45% to 75.56% (P=0.012). Response skill scores improved from 3.30 (SD=0.42) to 4.26 (SD=0.33) (P<0.001), with high-level responses increasing from 8.89% to 95.55% (P<0.001).

The school-family collaboration program effectively enhanced students' knowledge and response skills to cyberbullying and showed promise for broader implementation to promote safer digital environments.