Usability Testing of a Bystander Bullying Intervention for Rural Middle Schools: Mixed Methods Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Targets of bullying are at high risk of negative socioemotional outcomes. Bullying programming in rural schools is important as bullying is more prevalent in those schools compared to urban schools. Comprehensive, school-wide bullying programs require resources that create significant barriers to implementation for rural schools. Because technology-based programs can reduce implementation barriers, the development of a technology-based program increases access to bullying prevention in rural settings. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to conduct usability testing of a bystander bullying intervention (STAC-T). We assessed usability and acceptability of the STAC-T application and differences in usability between school personnel and students. We were also interested in qualitative feedback about usability, program features, and feasibility. METHODS: A sample of 21 participants (n=10, 48% school personnel; n=11, 52% students) recruited from 2 rural middle schools in 2 states completed usability testing and a qualitative interview. We used descriptive statistics and 2-tailed independent-sample t tests to assess usability and program satisfaction. We used consensual qualitative research as a framework to extract themes about usefulness, relevance, needs, barriers, and feedback for intervention development. RESULTS: Usability testing indicated that the application was easy to use, acceptable, and feasible. School personnel (mean score 96.0, SD 3.9) and students (mean score 88.6, SD 9.5) rated the application well above the standard cutoff score for above-average usability (68.0). School personnel (mean score 6.10, SD 0.32) and students (mean score 6.09, SD 0.30) gave the application high user-friendliness ratings (0-7 scale; 7 indicates highest user-friendliness). All 10 school personnel stated they would recommend the program to others, and 90% (9/10) rated the program with 4 or 5 stars. Among students, 91% (10/11) stated they would recommend the program to others, and 100% (11/11) rated the program with 4 or 5 stars. There were no statistically significant differences in ratings between school personnel and students. Qualitative data revealed school personnel and students found the application useful, relevant, and appropriate while providing feedback about the importance of text narration and the need for teacher and parent training to accompany the student program. The data showed that school personnel and students found a tracker to report different types of bullying witnessed and strategies used to intervene by students a useful addition to STAC-T. School personnel reported perceiving the program to be practical and very likely to be adopted by schools, with time, cost, and accessibility being potential barriers. Overall, findings suggest that the STAC-T application has the potential to increase access to bullying prevention for students in rural communities. CONCLUSIONS: The results demonstrate high usability and acceptability of STAC-T and provide support for implementing a full-scale randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the application.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.035 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".