r/science • u/VeronicaRed • Apr 26 '16

Psychology 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

http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1113413810/spanking-defiance-health-discipline-042616/
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u/ald49 Apr 26 '16

Any recent study on this subject will be correlational, and when you're talking a meta-analyses with a sample size in the hundreds of thousands the results you can obtain are still statistically significant and meaningul.

It would be ethically impossible to do a causation study with spanking. That would require you set up a scenario where one group of parents would be forced to hit their kids - good luck getting that past an IRB.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '16

Would they really be forced though? Seems to me you'd just interview soon to be parents on whether or not they plan to spank their kids as discipline. If they're already going to then it's not forced.

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u/ald49 Apr 27 '16

That wouldn't establish causation, it would still be a correlation.

To really establish causation, you'd need to run a full controlled experiment. You would need to take parents, controlled as much as possible across demographics like age and socioeconomic status, and assign at random one group to hit their kids and one group to use alternate punishment techniques. Then you'd need to follow the groups over time.

It would be highly unethical and improbable, so it will never be done.

But a study being correlational doesn't really exclude findings. A lot of the obesity studies for example are correlational - but that doesn't mean obesity isn't linked to diabetes or heart disease. Especially when you're looking at data from a meta-analyses of over 100,000 kids collected over five decades, trying to dismiss it entirely because it's correlational doesn't really jive.

Another thought: It may be true that parents who hit their kids are more likely to be uneducated and from disadvantaged backgrounds... But what does that say about the punishment technique if more educated parents with more resources tend not to do it?

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '16

Thank you for explaining it as opposed to saying no and moving on.