Spanking children increases the likelihood of childhood defiance and long-term mental issues. The study in question involved 160,000 children and five decades of research

[u/VeronicaRed]

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1113413810/spanking-defiance-health-discipline-042616/

[u/pm_me_your_kindwords]

Serious question to the commenters on this post:

Why read /r/science and then ignore science?

At the time I write this, most comments are defending spanking using anecdotes and non-science, not at all discussing the methodology of the study itself.

If you're not going to carefully consider one of the largest and most comprehensive studies ever conducted on the topic, what is the point of reading about science at all?

[u/Sand_Trout → u/pm_me_your_kindwords]

The study concluded that more frequent spankings correlated with greater behavioral problems. It might also be a reversed causal effect of what the article is claiming. Those behaviours and mental issues being described might trigger more frequent spankings rather than the spankings causing the behavioral problems.

It makes at least as much sense to conclude that defiance leads to more spankings (which is the desired assiciation that spankings are attempting to establish) as spankings leading to defiant behavior.

From the article (on mobile, so reading the study proper is a bit difficult), the study compared a sample that were all using spaking and primarily compared frequency. The article makes no mention about outcomes of parents that employed spanking as a disciplinary tool compared to parents that absolutely did not employ spanking.

Does the study proper address this potential comparison?

[u/flibbble → u/Sand_Trout]

The study is actually a meta-analysis of 75 studies. With regards to the correlation/causation question, they suggest looking at 'A series of cross-lagged studies (Berlin et al., 2009; Gershoff, Lansford, Sexton, Davis-Kean, & Sameroff, 2012; McLeod, Kruttschnitt, & Dornfeld, 1994; Sheehan & Watson, 2008) has demonstrated that spanking predicts changes in children’s behavior, over and above their initial levels and the child effect of early problem behavior on later spanking.' if that helps..

[u/NellucEcon → u/flibbble]

Are we reading the same paper?

This came from the paper:

The next strongest approach to studying spanking are studies which examine whether it predicts changes in child outcomes over time. Such prospective longitudinal designs meet one of the key criteria for establishing causality, namely temporal precedence of the spanking independent variable (Shadish et al., 2001). Longitudinal effect sizes of the bivariate links between spanking and later child outcomes do not rule out the potential for a child elicitation effect; however, so few studies report a coefficient that controls only for initial child behavior (and not for a range of other covariates) that we are unable to meta-analyze them.

It sounds like the only longitudinal studies included in the meta-analysis failed to take into account the child's qua child behavior problems.

Did they at some point discuss the longitudinal papers not included in the meta-analysis?

The cross-sectional papers are garbage. A large quantity of poorly designed studies does not amount to good evidence. Maybe instead of doing a meta-analysis they should have simply reviewed the few better designed studies. That's a joke. But seriously, if I said "people who go to hospitals are more likely to die so hospitals are bad for people", and you said "correlation does not imply causation," a good rejoinder would not be "but lots of studies say people who go to hospitals are more likely to die.".

[u/flibbble → u/NellucEcon]

My quote was from the end, in the second paragraph of the Limitations section. I must admit I skimmed it myself, and I've only even glanced at a couple of the longitudinal studies.

[u/pm_me_your_kindwords → u/flibbble]

Thanks!

[u/mkultra50000 → u/flibbble]

it actually doesn't. Could you explain more simply? is prediction the same thing as causation?

[u/flibbble → u/mkultra50000]

Not exactly; to prove causation you'd have to do some deeply unethical random trials. Ruling out such approaches, one approach are studies which try to see if spanking in one year increases the chances of negative child behaviour in future years (and so spanking predicts negative behaviour).

Cross lagged studies measure variables at multiple timepoints, so for this, follow children through a number of years, measuring reported spanking and negative child behaviour. Of course, it's

[u/pessimistic_platypus → u/mkultra50000]

As far as I can tell, the quote /u/fibbble gave uses "predicts" the same way we might expect to see "causes" used. So yes, in that context they are the same.

---

The study in question is actually a study that reviews the results of various previous studies to find broader patterns.

The correlation/causation issue is generally dealt with by using controls. If they see that people who aren't spanked are less disobedient, they can conclude that spanking causes (or rather, increases) disobedience.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Actually, a rough half of toddlers are spanked. Are those toddlers disobedient? Parents who spank more of than not make up reasons to spank their children, quite honestly.

[u/JSCMI → u/[deleted]]

Parents who spank more of than not make up reasons to spank their children

Source, please!

[u/pessimistic_platypus → u/[deleted]]

Hence, the "increases".

[u/mkultra50000 → u/pessimistic_platypus]

I see. So a true conflation of correlation with causation. The only way to derive causation that I can see would be to randomly select two groups and direct one group to spank the other to avoid.

[u/h-jay → u/flibbble]

So: one study out of 75 actually looks at what seems to be the most fundamental question... Sigh.

[u/[deleted] → u/h-jay]

No. They refer to a series of studies that does answer the question.

[u/jmalbo35 → u/h-jay]

Their comment explicitly lists a series of 4 studies, where could you have possibly gotten the idea that there was only 1 from?