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Article History

Received: 20 October 2021

Accepted: 17 March 2022

First Online: 5 May 2022

Declarations

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: Ethical approval has been obtained from Stellenbosch University’s REC: SBER (project number: 9183), and reciprocity has been received from the Psychology Research Ethics Committee (reference number: 19-073) at the University of Bath. The WCED approved of the study being conducted in the two schools (reference: 20200214-4483).Children returned to school in February 2021. Parents/caregivers of eligible children received written information about the study (via a letter sent home with their children). Two members of the research team (SH; HG) went to the respective schools in March and April to inform the grade 5 children about 4STMF and to hand out parental information letters and opt-out return slips for them to give to their parents. The information leaflet explained that 4STMF is a skills-based, non-therapeutic programme developed by researchers at Stellenbosch University and the University of Bath, which has also been approved by the respective school principals and the WCED to be delivered once a week during LO classes (or at a time deemed most suitable by the respective school principals and teachers) to grade 5 children. This information leaflet contains a return slip. Parents will be able to opt their children out of the study by return slip. The study team will check to make sure that those parents, who might return slips to school, understand that the form is opt out, rather than opt in. The written information leaflet contains details of the study and the programme to be undertaken as well as contact numbers of the school and the study staff to assist with any questions parents may have. Parents will be informed that the school has agreed for 8 sessions of this skills-based programme to be delivered to their children during 1 LO class per week (or as arranged in correspondence with the respective school principals and teachers) in the given term with the aim of enhancing self-esteem, promoting helpful thinking, developing emotional regulation, and empowering goal-focused action. Parents have been informed that the programme delivery has been approved by the school principal, teachers, and the WCED.Parents who opt out (by returning the slip) will be informed that their children will be allowed to participate during the sessions delivered in class time but will not take part in the assessment sessions where baseline and follow-up data on the outcome measures will be collected. It may be very difficult to exclude children whose parents have opted them out from the programme completely. However, in instances where parents insist their child not take part in any of the lessons at all, these children will be supervised by additional members of the research team (psychology students) or school staff in the school library area (or venue provided by the school) for the duration of the lessons. All children will provide written assent ahead of their completion of the battery of measures. Dual parental consent and child assent are required for participation in the completion of measures.For all participants, participation will be entirely voluntary, and no coercion will take place. Participants will be carefully monitored by the relevant research team members to detect behaviour that may indicate the participant is no longer interested in taking part (such as refusal to co-operate). Participants will be free to withdraw from the study at any point during the data collection process, without any consequences. However, data that has been anonymised and prepared for analysis during the later stages of this research will not be able to be withdrawn. We will destroy the information obtained from participants who choose to withdraw from the study in the early phases of this research (before analysis). However, we will request from participants that we keep data collected from them up to the date of withdrawal.All data will be anonymised. In the case of the interview data, the data will be anonymised at the point of transcription to maintain confidentiality. Quantitative data from the questionnaire measures will be anonymised at the point of data entry. All consent forms and front sheets from the questionnaire packs will be stored in a locked filing cabinet in BC’s office on the campus of Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.