Bernese programme against victimisation in kindergarten and elementary school

Despite the growing interest in victimisation problems in school (see Smith et al., 1999), studies that have addressed this issue in the pre-school years are extremely rare. The existence of victimisation in pre-school children, however, had been systematically studied and demonstrated in earlier studies: in day-care centres in Norway (Alsaker, 1993a, 1993b); in the United States with kindergarten children (Kochenderfer and Ladd, 1996); and in kindergarten in Switzerland (Alsaker, 2003; Alsaker and Valkanover, 2001). All three studies showed that the extent to which victimisation occurs in the early childhood years is comparable with that in grade school and that it has an immensely stressful effect on young children.