Fark, u have no kids.
Did You Ever Spank Your Kids?
by minimus 42 Replies latest jw friends
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minimus
Elsewhere----why???
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Out at Last!
Spank? What is that? I got beat.
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daniel-p
I haven't read this article... however, I would suspect heavy bias. The reason is that who would dare to publish null results in this case? In other words, who would carry out, fund, publish, and spread the word about, a study that concluded spanking had no significant adverse effect? The answer is that no one would, for obvious reasons. Thus, the researchers who designed such a study likely already knew the results they wanted to find.
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daniel-p
Scratch my last comment. I'm reading the article now, and the researcher used a dataset that was already compiled, meaning that he did not administer the survey/interviews himself.
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daniel-p
Okay, I've skimmed the actual study and this is what I've found:
1. While significant (p<.01), the effect of corporal punishment on cognitive ability is not overwhelming. The correlation coeffecients are -.10 and -.12 (for the two age groups sampled), which signify relatively low effect sizes. On the other hand, meternal cognitive stimulation accounted for way more in how the child performed cognitively (.31 and .28), as well as maternal emotional support. WHat this means is that, while yes, spanking has a statistical negative corelation with cognitive ability, maternal stimulation and support is WAY more important.
2. This is the bombshell, if only newspapers knew what the hell they're talking about and were less interested in sensationalism. As another poster astutely observed, correllation never, ever implies causation. However, our instincts often get in the way and want to immediately fill in the gaps, looking for the answer and reason to the problem. We'd rather have a quick answer rather than an open, unanswerable question. Well, come to find out, the study states the following:
The regression coefficients in the first row of Table 4 show that each increase of 1 unit in the four~category CP scale is associated with a decreased cognitive ability relative to other children of 1.3 points for children age 2-4 and a decrease of 1.1 points for children age 5-9. These are statistically significant but not large decreases in cognitive ability. This does not mean that spanked children became less cognitively adequate. Rather it reflects the fact that their cognitive ability was measured relative to the performance of other children of the same age. A cognitive ability score of 100 indicates a score at the mean for children of the same age. To maintain a score of 100 over a 4-year period, a child's cognitive ability must increase during those years at the average pattern. Thus, the decreases associated with CP do not indicate an absolute reduction in cognitive ability, only that CP is associated with failing to keep up with the average development of cognitive ability. (Straus and Paschall, 2009; pp 13-14)
To put it another way, the fact that the children scored lower on cognitive testing doesn't mean corporal punishment (CP) is what caused it, rather, that the very administration of CP was associated with a child's slower cognitive growth. In other words, a perfectly reasonable theory to posit with the data at hand is that parents were getting frustrated with their slow children, and punished them accordingly.
Kind of hard to swallow, isn't it? Yet, this is a perfect example of taking the results of a study that finds various correllations of phenomena and creating a message that it doesn't really support.
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daniel-p
Here's a link to the actual study: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CP51.pdf
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White Dove
I wish I never did. I never deserved what I got, which was beatings, not spankings. I would never spank, either. Never again.
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Gladring
I credit my dog to have enough intelligence, and have enough belief in my own training abilities, not to hit my dog. If my dog misbehaves, it's my fault.
My child is more intelligent than my dog.
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lisavegas420
This is what my dad had in his bookbag/briefcase, or my mom put in her purse...for spankings at the meeting..minus the ball.
and this is what I got when I got home...for falling asleep or being too wiggly...or having be taken out earlier during the meeting.
...........................On a side note....someone said something to my 12yr old granddaughter about "tanning yer hide" ..she had no idea what they were talking about. And was totally shocked when I explained what that meant.
lisa
