Reducing victimisation and delivering social value: a behavioural evaluation of the stand up for respect program

Bullying remains a serious issue in Australian schools with the percentage of students who reported being victims of any type of bullying act at least a few times a month amongst the highest four countries in the OECD (OECD, 2019). School-bullying is defined as repeated aggressive behaviours that occur between a bully (or bullies) and victim with the intent to harm (Gaffney et al., 2021). Bullying behaviours can occur in many contexts, for example, in schools, in the workplace, between siblings and online (Gaffney et al., 2019). This study is focussed on bullying in schools.

The Stand Up for Respect pilot program was developed in response to this problem (see  Appendix for the Stand Up for Respect Theory of Change). Delivered by Life Education Queensland (Life Ed. QLD), and Social Marketing @ Griffith, Griffith University, the program piloted a whole-of-school approach to bullying prevention over a 10-week period. Stand Up for Respect aims to build the capacity of students, teachers and parents to recognise, respond to and prevent bullying in all its forms, namely physical, verbal, social and online. Stand Up for Respect is grounded in evidence, offering age-appropriate lessons for students, playground intervention strategies, professional development for educators and parent education resources.

Beyond directly addressing bullying, Stand Up for Respect is part of a broader strategy to prevent domestic and family violence. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2024) data showed that, on average 5,576 people in Queensland are victims of violence and sexual assault each month. This totals 66,912 reports of violence and abuse each year. This is an underestimate, as it does not include acts of violence and sexual assault that are not reported to police. Domestic violence impacts the broader Australian community and is estimated to cost the Australian economy $21.7bn per annum (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2024). These costs emerge from both the physical and psychological impact of violence on victims, the use of health care and justice services and the generational effects for children who live with violence.

Research shows a clear link between childhood bullying behaviours and the perpetration of violence later in life. Wolke et al. (2013) followed 1,237 children into early adulthood, conducting multiple follow-ups between ages 9–23–26. The research found that children who had been targets of bullying were 1.31 times more likely to experience future violent relationships compared to children who had not experienced bullying. The risk was also elevated for children who had engaged in bullying (4.48 times greater), as well as those who had been bully-victims (3.12 times greater). Costa et al. (2015) reviewed 25 longitudinal studies examining childhood and adolescent factors that lead to future domestic violence. They found in addition to a child’s family and economic circumstances; behavioural problems and poor-quality peer relationships are significant predictors of domestic violence in adulthood. Aggressive behaviour and conduct problems in the middle childhood years were found to be strong predictors of future violence perpetration and victimisation. Routine conflict in peer relationships, poor conflict resolution and a lack of closeness also increased the risk of future violent relationships.

By fostering respectful relationships from an early age, Stand Up for Respect seeks to disrupt this trajectory through reducing the incidence of both victimisation and bullying aiming to contribute to long-term cultural change. Over time, early intervention through school-based programs like Stand Up for Respect may represent a proactive and cost-effective strategy to reduce these harms and costs incurred by the taxpaying community. By equipping children with the skills to stand up for themselves and others, and by engaging the broader school community, Stand Up for Respect aims to lay the groundwork for a safer, more respectful future for all Australians.

Despite decades of research and intervention, bullying remains a persistent and damaging issue in Australian schools (Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, 2017). National and international evidence confirms that bullying has serious short- and long-term consequences for students’ mental health, academic achievement and social development. Victims of bullying are at significantly increased risk of depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide, with long-term impacts on their wellbeing and life outcomes. The economic burden is also substantial, with bullying-related mental health issues costing the Australian economy an estimated $763m annually, representing over 8% of national mental health expenditure (Jadambaa et al., 2021).

While numerous anti-bullying programs have been implemented (Gaffney et al., 2019; Gaffney et al., 2021), many lack systematic evaluation or fail to address the broader social norms that underpin bullying behaviours (Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, 2017). There is limited evidence on how school-based interventions can be designed to not only reduce bullying but also prevent future violence, including domestic and family violence. Research shows that bullying behaviours in childhood are linked to the perpetration of violence in adulthood (Wolke et al., 2013), highlighting the need for early, preventative interventions that promote respectful relationships and prosocial behaviour.

The Stand Up for Respect pilot was developed to address this gap. Stand Up for Respect adopts a whole-of-school approach, grounded in social marketing and behaviour change theory, to empower students, teachers and parents to recognise, prevent and respond to bullying. The program also aims to build a culture of respect and inclusion, thereby contributing to the long-term prevention of domestic and family violence.

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the Stand Up for Respect pilot in achieving increased student confidence and a reduction in self-reported victimisation and bullying for students. Specifically, the research seeks to answer the following questions:

Following ethical clearance, the Stand Up for Respect pilot program was evaluated using a mixed-methods approach to assess both its effectiveness in reducing bullying and its broader social impact through a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis. The evaluation was designed to be replicable and aligned with best-practice guidelines for pilot program assessment.

A repeated measure design using paper surveys captured information from students before and after participation in the 10-week Stand Up for Respect program. Survey items were selected from the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ; Olweus, 2013) to assess children’s experience of victimisation and self-reported perpetration of bullying. The Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ; Olweus, 2013) was selected due to its strong psychometric properties and widespread use in school-based bullying research (Solberg and Olweus, 2003; Olweus, 2013). The OBVQ operationalises bullying in line with Olweus’s established definition, capturing intentional, repetitive behaviour involving a power imbalance, thereby distinguishing bullying from general peer conflict. The measure demonstrates acceptable reliability and validity across diverse educational contexts and has been extensively used in evaluations of whole-school bullying prevention programs, supporting its suitability for assessing intervention-related change (Volk et al., 2017).

Student’s experience of victimisation (nine-items) and bullying (nine-items) were measured on a 0–4 scale where 0 was never and 4 was several times a week. Reliability analysis was performed, and all constructs exceeded the 0.7 threshold. Scales were summed for outcome evaluation and group analysis. Survey data was entered into statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) for cleaning and data analysis. Independent t-testing and one-way ANOVA was used to examine outcome effectiveness and group differences for student data.

SROI was assessed following procedures outlined in Clark and Rosenzweig (2004) and Cabinet Office of the Third Sector (2012). The SROI analysis followed a six-stage framework:

1. Establishing Scope and Stakeholders: key stakeholders included students, teachers, parents and school administrators. The scope focused on bullying prevention and early indicators of respectful relationship development.

2. Mapping Outcomes: outcomes were mapped using the program’s theory of change. Outcomes included reductions in victimisation and/or bullying incidents.

3. Values assigned to the agreed outcomes: student outcomes for victimisation and self-reported perpetration of bullying were calculated. Then values were assigned for each outcome by estimating financial proxies. These proxies are judgements informed by social indicators, prevalence statistics, monetary values (where available) and assumptions of expected change in these indicators. Although a subjective process, best practice is to justify each in detail and transparently.

4. Stage 4 established the impact by identifying how inputs and outputs contribute to impact. This involved identifying causal links between bullying and other behaviours known to deliver significant costs to Australian society. In this SROI, secondary data was available to verify the links between domestic violence, bullying and victimisation for students. Data was not available to verify outcomes for other stakeholder groups (such as teachers).

5. Calculate the SROI: gathered data was entered into an SROI ratio. Financial proxies were estimated for observed reductions in bullying victimisation, as a 10.45% reduction was observed from pre-to-post program. No financial proxies were estimated for self-reported bullying perpetration as no changes were observed pre-to-post according to the Olweus (2006) scale for bullying. All estimates including their rationale were transparently reported. The final SROI was determined. This is described as a ratio, where for every dollar invested an immediate impact of social value is provided in monetary terms.

6. Report generated: the SROI report was constructed so that all assumptions, calculations and findings are available.

This section presents outcome evaluation and SROI estimate of the Stand Up for Respect pilot program. The results are organised around the three research questions:

Quantitative data collected from a matched pre, during and post program implementation surveys revealed a statistically significant increase in student confidence to intervene to prevent bullying and a reduction in self-reported victimisation among students who participated in the Stand Up for Respect program. A repeated measure design using paper surveys captured information for students before and after their participation in the Stand Up for Respect program. Nine student survey items were selected from the 40-item Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (OBVQ; Olweus, 2013 to assess students’ experiences of bullying victimisation and self-reported perpetration (see selected items in Tables 2 and 3). Students’ experience of victimisation and self-reported perpetration were measured on a 0–4 scale where 0 was “never” and 4 was “several times a week”. Confidence to intervene in bullying, including students’ ability to recognise bullying behaviours and to respond appropriately, was measured on a 1–5 scale where 1 was “not confident at all” and 5 was “very confident”.

Survey data was entered into SPSS for cleaning and data analysis. Reliability analysis was performed, and all constructs exceeded the 0.7 threshold. Scales were summed for outcome evaluation and group analysis. One-way ANOVA was used to examine outcome effectiveness and to examine group differences for student data. Student outcomes are presented in Table 1.

The reduction in victimisation was observed across multiple forms of victimisation (see Table 2), which included behaviours such as name calling, ignoring other students, making fun of other students, taking or damaging things, spreading rumours, physically hurting other students or making hurtful comments about other students online.

In contrast to the reduction in victimisation, the evaluation did not observe a statistically significant change in self-reported bullying perpetration. Pre- and post-survey data showed variation across different behaviours with students admitting some types of bullying went up while other types of bullying decreased over the pilot program period (see Table 3).

An important consideration is that bullying behaviours are not evenly distributed across student populations (Espelage and Swearer, 2003). Research consistently demonstrates that a relatively small minority of students account for a disproportionate share of bullying perpetration, often exhibiting stable and repeated patterns of behaviour over time (Espelage and Swearer, 2003; Olweus, 2013). From this perspective, even small population-level increases in specific bullying behaviours may be meaningful if they reflect changes among this high-risk subgroup.

The SROI for the Stand Up for Respect pilot program includes the community costs of domestic violence, and the role that reductions in victimisation of bullying can have on reducing these costs. Specifically, domestic violence costs the Australian community an estimated $21.7bn dollars per annum (AIHW, 2024), and people who are targets of bullying are 31% more likely to experience domestic violence (Wolke et al., 2013). Reductions in experiences of bullying can therefore reduce the community costs incurred from domestic violence.

By this measure alone, the cost savings generated for the Queensland community through reduced domestic violence, because of the Stand Up for Respect pilot program is estimated to be $36,241 (see Table 4 for detailed calculations). A positive social value was therefore estimated.

It is important to note that this calculation is not intended to capture the full SROI from the program. This SROI calculation was focused on one known impact of reductions in victimisation. SROI can be calculated for a variety of known impacts. For example, the economic benefits to the community of reducing rates of school drop-out or lower workforce participation, are completely independent of the economic outcomes of domestic violence. Consideration of the benefits arising from lowering rates of school drop-out, which may include reduced reliance on social welfare through increased rates of employment, may lead to a higher SROI, but this was not calculated in this SROI.

Opportunities to consider other community benefits of the Stand Up for Respect program to the Queensland community may involve identifying links between reductions in victimisation and increased school attendance, improved student learning and academic achievement, a more conducive learning environment for all students and reductions in teacher burnout which are all important impacts that have economic outcomes for society. The benefits arising from improved school attendance include delivering positive impacts for society in terms of improved earning capacity and socio-economic status and the flow on benefits to the Queensland economy, which are likely to be substantial.

The SROI calculation reported in this paper is therefore not intended to be used as a single measure of the long-term impact of the program. This specific report of SROI aims to demonstrate how the delivery of Stand Up for Respect can be communicated in terms of its ability to deliver cost reductions for the Queensland community due to decreases observed in reductions of the incidence of student victimisation.

The Stand Up for Respect pilot program demonstrated promising results in reducing bullying victimisation and generating quantifiable social value, supporting the underlying theory of change ( Appendix) that informed program design. This theory of change assumed that bullying victimisation could be reduced by intervening across multiple, interacting systems within the school environment such as students, educators, parents and the broader classroom and playground context. By embedding practical strategies within the curriculum to help students recognise bullying and respond safely, while simultaneously equipping teachers and parents to reinforce consistent norms and responses, the program addressed both individual capability and environmental influences on behaviour. The observed reduction in victimisation suggests that aligning skills development with supportive social and institutional contexts was effective in disrupting bullying dynamics, consistent with social marketing principles emphasising systems thinking and multi-level value creation.

The 10.45% reduction in victimisation further highlights the effectiveness of a whole-of-school approach as a core mechanism within the theory of change. This finding aligns with existing evidence demonstrating that bullying prevention efforts are more successful when interventions are systemic, inclusive and embedded within everyday school practices rather than delivered as isolated lessons (Gaffney et al., 2019). Strengthening students’ confidence to recognise, report and respond to bullying appears to have reduced exposure to victimisation, even in the absence of immediate change in self-reported perpetration.

The absence of observable outcome change in self-reported bullying perpetration suggests that deeper behavioural shifts may require the addition of co-creation (Rundle-Thiele et al., 2021). While the first Stand Up for Respect pilot was informed by a rigorous evidence review and embedded best-practice bullying prevention strategies, it did not apply the Co-create–Build–Engage (CBE) process (Rundle-Thiele et al., 2021) or involve stakeholders in co-design (Trischler et al., 2019). Co-creation is essential to ensure that interventions are relevant, valued and effective. Co-design enables students, teachers and parents to act as experts of their own experience, contributing insights that cannot be captured through traditional research methods alone. Involving these groups in the program design process fosters ownership, builds trust and ensures that solutions reflect the lived realities of those they aim to serve.

Evidence from adjacent fields, particularly workplace sexual harassment prevention training, highlights the importance of careful program design to avoid reverse or backlash effects. Research documents that mandatory, compliance-oriented or externally controlling interventions can generate psychological reactance and norm resistance (Legault et al., 2011; Dobbin and Kalev, 2016). While Stand Up for Respect adopted a preventative, whole-school orientation, this literature underscores the need for autonomy-supportive implementation and robust evaluation. Analysis in this paper focuses on aggregate pre–post change, future research would benefit from examining heterogeneity in program effects, including subgroup or latent-class analyses to better understand differential impacts among persistent perpetrators. Future research could explicitly test for reverse effects by incorporating comparison or delayed-intervention groups, examining short- versus longer-term trajectories and using mixed-method designs to distinguish between heightened awareness and behavioural change.

From a social marketing practice perspective, the findings provide several actionable insights. Firstly, practitioners should design interventions around a clearly articulated theory of change that prioritises proximal, observable behaviours such as recognising bullying, reporting bullying and upstander action rather than relying solely on distal outcomes like reductions in bullying perpetration. Secondly, results highlight the importance of activating key influence points within the system, particularly educators and parents, through capacity building and shared language to ensure consistent norm reinforcement across contexts. Thirdly, embedding behavioural strategies into routine school practices including classroom activities, supervision and reporting processes appears critical for reducing harm while more entrenched behaviours are addressed over time.

The SROI findings further strengthen the case for investment, demonstrating meaningful social value alongside behavioural outcomes. For practitioners and decision makers, this economic evidence reinforces the importance of impact planning from project inception, including aligning activities, outputs and outcomes within an explicit impact map and measurement framework. Collectively, these findings offer a practical roadmap for social marketers seeking to translate theory into sustained, real-world behaviour change when addressing complex social problems such as bullying.

The Stand Up for Respect pilot program offers valuable insights into the potential of whole-of-school approaches to reduce bullying victimisation and deliver measurable social value. The program achieved a statistically significant reduction in victimisation behaviours and demonstrated a positive SROI, indicating that early intervention can yield both social and economic benefits for the Queensland community. However, the pilot did not observe significant changes in self-reported bullying perpetration, highlighting a key limitation in the pilot program’s ability to influence all dimensions of bullying behaviour.

Future research and program development should consider integrating co-design to ensure that interventions reflect the lived experiences and needs of the school community. Longitudinal studies are needed to assess sustained behavioural change and to capture broader societal impacts. Expanding the SROI framework to include additional indicators, such as school absenteeism, educational attainment and teacher burnout, could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the program’s value. By addressing these limitations and building on the pilot’s strengths, future iterations of Stand Up for Respect can contribute meaningfully to the prevention of bullying and domestic violence, while fostering respectful, inclusive school environments.

The ethical clearance number is Ref: 2022/789.