@Article{info:doi/10.2196/mhealth.4936,
author="Ybarra, Michele L
and Prescott, Tonya L
and Espelage, Dorothy L",
title="Stepwise Development of a Text Messaging-Based Bullying Prevention Program for Middle School Students (BullyDown)",
journal="JMIR mHealth uHealth",
year="2016",
month="Jun",
day="13",
volume="4",
number="2",
pages="e60",
keywords="bullying; mhealth; text messaging; youth; prevention",
abstract="Background: Bullying is a significant public health issue among middle school-aged youth. Current prevention programs have only a moderate impact. Cell phone text messaging technology (mHealth) can potentially overcome existing challenges, particularly those that are structural (e.g., limited time that teachers can devote to non-educational topics). To date, the description of the development of empirically-based mHealth-delivered bullying prevention programs are lacking in the literature. Objective: To describe the development of BullyDown, a text messaging-based bullying prevention program for middle school students, guided by the Social-Emotional Learning model. Methods: We implemented five activities over a 12-month period: (1) national focus groups (n=37 youth) to gather acceptability of program components; (2) development of content; (3) a national Content Advisory Team (n=9 youth) to confirm content tone; and (4) an internal team test of software functionality followed by a beta test (n=22 youth) to confirm the enrollment protocol and the feasibility and acceptability of the program. Results: Recruitment experiences suggested that Facebook advertising was less efficient than using a recruitment firm to recruit youth nationally, and recruiting within schools for the pilot test was feasible. Feedback from the Content Advisory Team suggests a preference for 2-4 brief text messages per day. Beta test findings suggest that BullyDown is both feasible and acceptable: 100{\%} of youth completed the follow-up survey, 86{\%} of whom liked the program. Conclusions: Text messaging appears to be a feasible and acceptable delivery method for bullying prevention programming delivered to middle school students. ",
issn="2291-5222",
doi="10.2196/mhealth.4936",
url="http://mhealth.jmir.org/2016/2/e60/",
url="https://doi.org/10.2196/mhealth.4936",
url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27296471"
}