The objective of this study is to verify if the teachers of the first Cycle of Basic Education and the childhood educators, in Portugal, consider the use of specific games to prevent bullying as pertinent. The study involved 276 first cycle teachers and 276 early childhood educators of both genders. The instrument used is a questionnaire inspired by Olweus (1989), although adapted by the author to the adult population of the study. Analysis of the results shows that most teachers and educators believe that it is pertinent to initiate bullying prevention during preschool education. One part knows at least one type of instrument or protocol to act in cases of bullying, in the institution where they work, and most defend the use of the playful nature of games as a preventive and sensitizing strategy in the early levels of formal education. The information obtained encourages the use of primary bullying prevention measures through the recreational dimension. When the game is well planned and tested, it is a tool that helps the developing of children's knowledge and skills, enabling them to gain autonomy and learn to respect the rules, providing moments of motivation, communication and positive and correct attitudes towards others.

Background: Loneliness in older people seems to have emerged as an increasingly prevalent social problem. Objective: To apply a machine learning (ML) algorithm to the task of understanding the influence of sociodemographic variables, physical fitness, physical activity levels (PAL), and sedentary behavior (SB) on the loneliness feelings of physically trained older people. Materials and Methods: The UCLA loneliness scale was used to evaluate loneliness, the Functional Fitness Test Battery was used to evaluate the correlation of sociodemographic variables, physical fitness, PAL, and SB in the loneliness feelings scores of 23 trained older people (19 women and 3 men). For this purpose, a naive Bayes ML algorithm was applied. Results: After analysis, we inferred that aerobic fitness (AF), hand grip strength (HG), and upper limb strength (ULS) comprised the most relevant variables panel to cause high participant loneliness with 100% accuracy and F-1 score. Conclusions: The naive Bayes algorithm with leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV) predicted loneliness in trained older with a high precision. In addition, AF was the most potent variable in reducing loneliness risk.

O objetivo deste estudo é averiguar se a situação pandémica agravou ou não as situações de bullying escolar. A metodologia utilizada foi o estudo de caso, de carácter exploratório e descritivo, onde se articularam os paradigmas quantitativo e qualitativo. Participaram neste estudo 370 alunos do 2º Ciclo do Ensino Básico (5º e 6º anos) do ano letivo 2020/2021, de dois agrupamentos de escolas do concelho de Bragança, no nordeste transmontano de Portugal continental. O instrumento de recolha de dados utilizado foi um inquérito por questionário ou survey construído no Google Forms e disponibilizado online na segunda quinzena de maio de 2021. Após a recolha e análise dos resultados verificou-se que, durante a pandemia, as situações de bullying diminuíram, embora o cyberbullying tenha aumentado ligeiramente, verificou-se uma diminuição das vítimas e correspondente diminuição das testemunhas que alteraram a sua forma de atuação perante este problema. Os resultados obtidos neste estudo servirão, após o alívio de muitas das medidas restritivas, como alavanca para incentivar as instituições educativas envolvidas neste estudo a olhar este problema como uma situação que exige a tomada de medidas para a sua minimização, para além de complementar outros estudos no contexto português ou mesmo na Península Ibérica.