PRESS RELEASE
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS
JANUARY 17, 2014
CONTACT: Jeff Pitchford, vice president for university and government relations, at jeffp@uca.edu or (501) 450-3185.
Fredricka Sharkey, associate director for media relations, at fsharkey@uca.edu or (501) 450 -5114.
Professors awarded NIH grant to study bullying
Three University of Central Arkansas professors have been awarded a $286,500 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study middle school bullying.
The Department of Psychology and Counseling Department announced that Drs. Paul Nail, Elson Bihm, and Joan Simon have been awarded the grant entitled, “Decreasing Bullying with Self-Affirmation: A Test of the Compensation Model.”
Nail says that he first became interested in bullying from his study of organizational psychology.
According to Nail, “Leaders in dysfunctional organizations often bully employees, even when the consequences are in direct opposition to the organization’s stated goals. Our current research is directed toward finding and testing new ways to decrease bullying in middle school, hopefully before it becomes a deep-seated way of dealing with others.”
The duration of the grant is two years. The professors will specifically study the social relations in middle school children. The research will be conducted in conjunction with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
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