Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2017 Oct;18(7):839-853.
doi: 10.1007/s11121-017-0775-3.

Does the Good Schools Toolkit Reduce Physical, Sexual and Emotional Violence, and Injuries, in Girls and Boys equally? A Cluster-Randomised Controlled Trial

Karen M Devries  1 , Louise Knight  2 , Elizabeth Allen  2 , Jenny Parkes  3 , Nambusi Kyegombe  2 , Dipak Naker  4
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Does the Good Schools Toolkit Reduce Physical, Sexual and Emotional Violence, and Injuries, in Girls and Boys equally? A Cluster-Randomised Controlled Trial

Karen M Devries et al. Prev Sci. 2017 Oct.

Abstract

We aimed to investigate whether the Good School Toolkit reduced emotional violence, severe physical violence, sexual violence and injuries from school staff to students, as well as emotional, physical and sexual violence between peers, in Ugandan primary schools. We performed a two-arm cluster randomised controlled trial with parallel assignment. Forty-two schools in one district were allocated to intervention (n = 21) or wait-list control (n = 21) arms in 2012. We did cross-sectional baseline and endline surveys in 2012 and 2014, and the Good School Toolkit intervention was implemented for 18 months between surveys. Analyses were by intention to treat and are adjusted for clustering within schools and for baseline school-level proportions of outcomes. The Toolkit was associated with an overall reduction in any form of violence from staff and/or peers in the past week towards both male (aOR = 0.34, 95%CI 0.22-0.53) and female students (aOR = 0.55, 95%CI 0.36-0.84). Injuries as a result of violence from school staff were also lower in male (aOR = 0.36, 95%CI 0.20-0.65) and female students (aOR = 0.51, 95%CI 0.29-0.90). Although the Toolkit seems to be effective at reducing violence in both sexes, there is some suggestion that the Toolkit may have stronger effects in boys than girls. The Toolkit is a promising intervention to reduce a wide range of different forms of violence from school staff and between peers in schools, and should be urgently considered for scale-up. Further research is needed to investigate how the intervention could engage more successfully with girls.

Keywords: Bullying; Gender; School-based interventions; Uganda; Violence.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Funding

This work was funded by the MRC/DfID/Wellcome Trust via the Joint Global Health Trials Scheme (to K. Devries) and the Hewlett Foundation (to D. Naker). The authors have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

Conflict of Interest

Dipak Naker developed the Good School Toolkit and is a Co-director of Raising Voices. The other authors have no conflict of interest to declare. Final decisions for analysis and publication of results rested with Karen Devries.

Ethical Approval

This study was approved by the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Ethics Committees. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Headteachers provided consent for schools to participate in the study. Parents were notified and could opt children out of participation in survey data collection. Children themselves provided consent for participation.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Flow of participants through the trial
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abraham C, Michie S. A taxonomy of behavior change techniques used in interventions. Health Psychology. 2008;27(3):379–387. doi: 10.1037/0278-6133.27.3.379. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Akmatov M. Child abuse in 28 developing and transitional countries-results from the multiple indicator cluster surveys. International Journal of Epidemiology. 2010;40:219–227. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyq168. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Boden JM, Horwood LJ, Fergusson DM. Exposure to childhood sexual and physical abuse and subsequent educational achievement outcomes. Child Abuse & Neglect. 2007;31(10):1101–1114. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2007.03.022. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bonell, C., Jamal, F., Harden, A., Wells, H., Parry, W., Fletcher, A., et al. (2013). Systematic review of the effects of schools and school environment interventions on health: Evidence mapping and synthesis. Public Health Research, 1(1). - PubMed
    1. Breen A, Daniels K, Tomlinson M. Children’s experiences of corporal punishment: A qualitative study in an urban township of South Africa. Child Abuse & Neglect. 2015;48:131–139. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2015.04.022. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types