The following is an excerpt of the intervention methodology. For more information, please see the full text of the article on the publisher's website or through your institution's library.

Method

Participants

Participants within each class were randomly allocated to one of the four cells of a 2 (Target: outgroup vicarious contact vs. ingroup vicarious contact) × 2 (Reinforcing activities: collective vs. individual) experimental design. […]

Procedure

Participants in each experimental group and class were divided into same-gender groups of three to four children. In each group, the researcher read the story to children. In the story, the protagonist, a child of the same age as the participants, is bullied by a popular classmate by means of name-calling, causing social exclusion of the protagonist by the other children. After working together for a school project, the protagonist befriends the bully's best friend, who asks to play together. After this event the bully's best friend understands that s/he was wrong to comply with the bully: after apologizing to the protagonist, they become good friends, and the protagonist is eventually fully socially included by the other children. […]

In order to manipulate the type of intervention, the story was developed in two ways: in the outgroup vicarious contact condition, the protagonist has a different ethnicity, as s/he comes from another country; in the ingroup vicarious contact condition, all characters have the same ethnicity (therefore, also the victim is of the same ethnicity as the bully and the other characters). […]

After reading the story, while participants were still in small groups, they were asked to take part in some reinforcing activities. These aimed at highlighting the just and unjust behaviors they observed in the story, at identifying appropriate behaviors, and at recognizing the emotions experienced by the characters. In other words, these activities aimed at creating an anti-bullying norm. We conducted three reinforcing activities. In the first, participants were asked to draw the different characters in one of two circles, one associated to fair and one to unfair behaviors. In the second, participants were provided with three rules (don't offend other children; help out children who need it; invite all children to play and to birthday parties) and were asked to first discuss and then order them according to their importance. In the third, participants were asked to draw the characters provided in a sheet on the basis of how they thought they had felt (e.g., yellow had to be used to indicate happiness, red to indicate anger, etc.). […]

In the collective reinforcing activities condition, for each activity participants needed to negotiate a collective response with the other children in their small group. In the condition where reinforcing activities were conducted individually, while still in their small group, children were administered the reinforcing activities individually, without conversing with other children. […]

Measures

Comprehension test

Before starting the session, children individually answered a brief written questionnnaire including 10 items (selected in agreement with school teachers), asking for the meaning of potentially complex words included in the stories. […]

Peer norms

Participants were asked to think about a foreign child who is socially excluded or offended only because of his/her foreign origins. They then answered the following three items: “According to your friends, is it fair to mistreat foreign children?”; “In your view, would your friends say it is fair to exclude a foreign child only because s/he is a foreigner?”; “In your view, would your friends say it is fair to offend a foreign child only because s/he is a foreigner?” 

Reactions to bullying
Children were presented with scenarios of name-calling behavior and of exclusionary behavior toward a foreign child […] Participants were then invited to answer items investigating their reaction intentions.