A Qualitative Method to Examine the Positive Impact of a Storytelling Intervention in Reducing Reactive and Proactive Aggression in Young Schoolchildren

This study is the first to investigate the positive impact of a storytelling intervention based on the social information processing model in reducing reactive and proactive aggression among schoolchildren. The participants were 4,086 Grade 1 to 4 students from 15 randomly selected elementary schools in Hong Kong. Using the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire, 371 schoolchildren at risk of aggression were identified based on scores of one standard deviation above the mean and randomly assigned to the experimental, placebo, and control groups. Children’s anger, social communication skills, empathy, and forgiveness were examined using a qualitative method. Twelve children and 11 caregivers were randomly selected from the three groups to participate in qualitative interviews. Content analysis was adopted to analyze the interview data. We found that the intervention reduced reactive aggression by enhancing anger control, intent attribution, social communication skills, and forgiveness among reactive aggressors. However, the intervention did not improve empathy among proactive aggressors. Overall, the storytelling intervention had more encouraging results for schoolchildren with reactive aggression than those with proactive aggression. The current findings suggest that teachers and school counselors should adopt a social information processing-based storytelling intervention to reduce proactive and reactive aggression and bullying among schoolchildren.