Department of Human Development and Family Science, 233 HES Bldg,, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA.
BMC Pediatr. 2010 Feb 22;10:10. doi: 10.1186/1471-2431-10-10.
The strongest causal evidence that customary spanking increases antisocial behavior is based on prospective studies that control statistically for initial antisocial differences. None of those studies have investigated alternative disciplinary tactics that parents could use instead of spanking, however. Further, the small effects in those studies could be artifactual due to residual confounding, reflecting child effects on the frequency of all disciplinary tactics. This study re-analyzes the strongest causal evidence against customary spanking and uses these same methods to determine whether alternative disciplinary tactics are more effective in reducing antisocial behavior.
This study re-analyzed a study by Straus et al.1 on spanking and antisocial behavior using a sample of 785 children who were 6 to 9 years old in the 1988 cohort of the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The comprehensiveness and reliability of the covariate measure of initial antisocial behavior were varied to test for residual confounding. All analyses were repeated for grounding, privilege removal, and sending children to their room, and for psychotherapy. To account for covarying use of disciplinary tactics, the analyses were redone first for the 73% who had reported using at least one discipline tactic and second by controlling for usage of other disciplinary tactics and psychotherapy.
The apparently adverse effect of spanking on antisocial behavior was replicated using the original trichotomous covariate for initial antisocial behavior. A similar pattern of adverse effects was shown for grounding and psychotherapy and partially for the other two disciplinary tactics. All of these effects became non-significant after controlling for latent comprehensive measures of externalizing behavior problems.
These results are consistent with residual confounding, a statistical artifact that makes all corrective actions by parents and psychologists appear to increase children's antisocial behavior due to child effects on parents. Improved research methods are needed to discriminate between effective vs. counterproductive implementations of disciplinary tactics. How and when disciplinary tactics are used may be more important than which type of tactic is used.
习惯打屁股会增加反社会行为,这方面最强的因果证据来自于控制了初始反社会差异的前瞻性研究。然而,这些研究中没有一项调查父母可以替代打屁股而使用的其他纪律策略。此外,由于残余混杂,这些研究中的小效应可能是人为的,反映了孩子对所有纪律策略的频率的影响。本研究重新分析了针对习惯打屁股的最强因果证据,并使用相同的方法来确定替代纪律策略是否更有效地减少反社会行为。
本研究重新分析了 Straus 等人关于打屁股和反社会行为的研究 1,使用了美国纵向青年研究 1988 年队列中 6 至 9 岁的 785 名儿童的样本。通过改变初始反社会行为的综合和可靠的协变量测量,以检验残余混杂。所有分析均针对罚站、剥夺特权和送孩子回房间以及心理治疗进行了重复。为了说明纪律策略的共同使用,首先针对报告至少使用过一种纪律策略的 73%的儿童进行了分析,其次通过控制其他纪律策略和心理治疗的使用进行了分析。
使用初始反社会行为的原始三分变量重新复制了打屁股对反社会行为的不良影响。罚站和心理治疗也表现出类似的不良影响,其他两种纪律策略部分表现出类似的影响。在控制外部行为问题的潜在综合测量后,所有这些影响均变得无统计学意义。
这些结果与残余混杂一致,这是一种统计假象,使父母和心理学家的所有纠正措施由于孩子对父母的影响,似乎都增加了孩子的反社会行为。需要改进研究方法,以区分纪律策略的有效和适得其反的实施。纪律策略的使用方式和时间可能比使用哪种类型的策略更为重要。