1. Research question and theory
Article 1
For a child’s well-being, support from their family and the community is necessary. “Building from a developmental ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 2005) as well as social disorganization theory (Wilson, 1987), studies provide strong evidence concerning the inter-relationships between neighborhood disadvantage, harsh and punitive parenting practices, and adverse child outcomes” (Ma, Grogan-Kaylor & Lee, 2017, pg. 106). This study will follow two variables, neighbourhood disorganization and maternal corporal punishment, and examine their effects on children. This study will use “using fixed effects regression, a statistically rigorous approach that addresses many of the limitations in prior research (Ma, Grogan-Kaylor & Lee, 2017, pg. 106). Research was gathered through a longitudinal model to see if parent-child relations may stagger the effects of neighbourhood conditions and parenting behaviors.
Article 2
A highly popular form of punishment for parenting in the United States is spanking. Current research is finding that spanking causes negative effects on a child’s development. Bullying has also been a very popular topic of discussion for researchers. Both spanking and bullying have been popular topics, but researchers still haven’t discussed the correlation between the two topics. “The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of spanking and the likelihood of bullying behaviors in early childhood” (Turns and Sibley, 2018, pg. 2824).
2. Literature review (prior research)
Article 1
Not Stated
Article 2
According to Turns and Sibley 2018, on the topic of spanking conclude that physical punishment is ineffective and harmful. Previous studies have found that children who were spanked at the age of 5 were found to have aggressive behaviours and outburst at the age of 9. Despite all the research that has stated that spanking is harmful for children’s development, high amounts of American’s still hit or commit corporal punishment on their children.
3. Hypotheses (expected outcomes)
Article 1
According to Ma, Grogan-Kaylor and Lee 2017, in the United States, about 70% of parents have used corporal punishment. According to previous research, child development is impacted negatively by spanking, which is the most popular form of corporal punishment. Many people believe that due to unobserved variables, there is an increased degree of relations between corporal punishment and child behaviour. “For example, other elements of parenting style that are correlated with but distinct from use of CP, such as the use of verbal threats, shaming, and poor parental anger management, may account for the observed associations among parental use of CP and negative child outcomes” (Ma, Grogan-Kaylor & Lee, 2017, pg. 107). Stated by Ma, Grogan-Kaylor and Lee 2017. research has suggested that occasionally, non-frequent, corporal punishment harm may diminish or disappear. “Using indicator variables, researchers found similar associations of both infrequent and frequent use of CP with negative outcomes, such that the negative effects of CP on children strengthened when it was used more frequently” (Ma, Grogan-Kaylor (G-K) & Lee, 2017, pg. 107). Past research has suggested that even in different cultures and countries around the world, there are negative effects on childhood development through corporal punishment, as stated by Ma, G-K and Lee 2017.
Article 2
The relationship between spanking and bullying still has not been studied. In previous research, most studies examined child aggression using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL). “The current study is investigating one specific form of childhood aggression, bullying. It has previously been hypothesized that spanking could lead children to physically harm their peers because it models aggression” (Turns and Sibley, 2018, pg. 2825).
4. Population, sample, site, participant protection
Article 1
According to Ma, G-K and Lee 2017, the data was collected by a birth cohort study of 4, 898 families and their children, which was gather by the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (FFCWS). Through stratified random sampling, sampled children born in unmarried parents during a span of two years; 1998-2000. The researchers had 5 waves of interviews with the mothers at different stages of their child’s life. Mothers who made it to waves 3 and 4 of the process were invited to be a part of a In-Home Longitudinal Study of Pre-School Aged Children. From the original 4, 898 families, who participated in the first wave of interviews, only 2, 472 families participated in the In-Home studies. “Independent sample t-tests showed that participants in the current study reported more frequent use of spanking in the past year, were living in Census Tracts with lower median household income, and had older children at Wave 4 compared with non-participants. No significant differences were found in any other variables between study participants and non-participants” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 109).
Article 2
The population of this study consisted of 52.5% of males and 47.5% were females. The mothers were selected by choosing biological mother’s that were married to the child’s biological father at the age of 9. Majority of the population identified themselves as white (46.9%). The level of education of the mother’s examined were fairly diverse, as stated by Turns and Sibley, 2018.
5. Methods, including instrument
Article 1
According to Ma, G-K and Lee 2017, during the In-Home studies, the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) was used to measure aggressive behaviour of children at the ages of 3 and 5. From the children at the ages of 3, mothers were asked to rate their child’s behaviour based off of 15 items from the CBCL. From children at the ages of 5, mothers were asked to rate their child’s behaviour based off of 20 items from the CBCL, using a likert scale. Past use of the CBCL has shown stability over time in behavioural issues.
During the In-Home assessment, the mothers of the children were subjected to respond to their past year’s use of spanking. “Mothers were asked the following question from the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) when the focal child was 3 and 5 years of age (Straus, Hamby, Boney-McCoy, & Sugarman, 1996), “How many times in the past year did you spank your child on the bottom with your bare hand?” (0 = this has never happened, 1 = once, 2 = twice, 3 = 3–5 times, 4 = 6–10 times, 5 = 11–20 times, 6 = more than 20 times, 7 = yes but not in the past year). In the present study, responses to this variable were recoded into a five-level ordinal variable to represent a more intuitive frequency of mother’s spanking in the past year. As this item asked mother’s use of spanking in the “past year”, the last response option (7 = yes but not in the past year) was recoded to 0. The final categories of this variable were 0 = never, 1 = once or twice, 2 = 3-10 times, 3 = 11-20 times, 4 = more than 20 times” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 110).
“During the In-Home assessments at Wave 3 (age 3) and Wave 4 (age 5), interviewers observed mother-child interactions and reported mother’s warmth using the Warmth/Responsivity subscale of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Inventory (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984). Mother’s warmth at age 3 was the average of five questions (0 = no, 1 = yes), for example: “Parent spontaneously praised the child at least twice” and “Parent conveyed positive feelings toward the child through her tone of voice” (α = .72). Mother’s warmth at age 5 was the average of nine items such as: “Parent encourages child to contribute to conversation during visit” and “Parent helps child demonstrate some achievement or mentions a particular skill, strength, or achievement during visit” (α = .80).” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 110-111).
Article 2
All data used for this studied were from Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). This study was a longitudinal study that followed the children at four points of their lives; 1 years old, 3 years old, 5 years old and 9 years old. At the 1 year, 3-year and 5-year mark, the mothers were asked two questions. The first question was whether they ever spanked their children and the second question asked how often the mothers hit their children. Ranging from every day to only once or twice. In year 9, the question was altered to see the frequency of the hits, on each occasion, when the parent is giving their punishment. “Childhood bullying was measured using three items on the Child Care Center Survey (Year 3) and Kindergarten Teacher Survey (Year 5)” (Turns and Sibley, 2018, pg. 2827).
6. Results
Article 1
The characteristics from the In-Home results and the results from the t-tests are compared on Table 1. The average level of aggressive behaviour was shown to decrease from the age of 3 to 5. It dropped from 0.65 to 0.54.” On average, mothers reported more frequent use of spanking in the past year when their child was age 3 than age 5 (p < .001)” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 111).
“All levels of maternal spanking in the past year were linked to higher levels of aggressive behavior, net of neighborhood conditions, covariates, and other characteristics of study participants that were consistent over time. The magnitude of this association was stronger as the frequency of maternal spanking in the past year increased. Compared to never spanking in the past year, even infrequent spanking (i.e., once or twice in the past year) was associated with higher aggressive behavior by 0.032 units (p < .05). Mother’s report of frequent spanking (i.e., more than 20 times in the past year) predicted higher levels of aggressive behavior by 0.154 units (p < .001)” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 112).
Article 2
According to Turns and Sibley 2018, an autoregressive cross-lagged model was used for the analysis to compare how spanking and bullying are interrelated across different developmental time periods. For both the males and the females, spanking at age 1 led to spanking at age 3, which led to spanking at age 5. Also, when examining years 5 and 9, year 5 spanking did not indicate year 9 spanking for both genders. For bullying, children who bullied at age 3 predicted bullying at age 5 for both genders.
7. Discussion
Article 1
The link between spanking and child behavioural problems are established in literature. In recent studies, there is a lack of inter-relationships between neighbourhood influence, parenting and child behaviour. This study was able to examine both variables separately and inter-connected. After examining the results, the data supports the hypothesis that neighbourhood disorganization and maternal spanking impact a child’s development and aggression. “We note that our findings are likely to be an under-estimate of the true causal effects of neighborhood violence and CP on aggression because fixed effects regression exploits only within-individual variance over time, while differences across individuals are not used in the estimates” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 113).
Article 2
Similar to previous research, spanking at age 1 predicted spanking at age 3, which predicted spanking at age 5. This shows that spanking is common when a child is young. Parents should be taught more affect and less harmful punishment tactics, such as, rewarding positive bahaviour or removing a toy when the is doing something wrong. It is concerning that some parents are physically hitting a child beginning at age 1, as stated by Turns and Sibley, 2018.
8. Limitations
Article 1
There are several limitations to be reported from research. The analysis was based on the mother’s self-report on their neighbourhood conditions and corporal punishments, meaning that some mother’s may have underreported their answers. “Another limitation is that the fixed effects model does not provide parameter estimates for time-invariant characteristics, such as mother’s education and race and ethnicity; thus, we are not able to directly estimate the association of these time-invariant factors with child behavior problems” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 113). Another limitation stated by Ma, G-K and Lee 2017, was that majority of cases reported of child spanking is done by care givers such as father’s or men but this study only focused on one gender; which was women. “Our rationale for the focus on maternal spanking was two-fold. First, we did not have comparable measures of parental warmth for fathers. Second, mothers use spanking and physical discipline more frequently than fathers” (Ma, G-K & Lee, 2017, pg. 114).
Article 2
There has been a popular question that many researchers have been discussing; Are boys spanked more because they are aggressive or are they more aggressive because they are spanked more, as stated by Turns and Sibley, 2018. This study is focused around this idea and trying to solve the question. As stated by Turns and Sibley 2018, the current study provides several research implications for the mental health field. This is a broad statement; no specific limitations were listed.
9. Recommendations
Article 1
Not Stated
Article 2
According to Turns and Sibley 2018, although this study did not have enough participants to include this variable in the model, future studies should investigate the relationship between bullying and parent’s domestic violence. Also, the Social Learning Theory says that learn majority of their behaviours from their parents. Therefore, researchers should focus on understanding how children interpret the behaviours and how it is linked to bullying.
Bibliography
Turns, B.A. & Sibley, D.S. J Child Fam Stud (2018) 27: 2824. https://doi- org.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/10.1007/s10826-018-1129-x
Associations of neighborhood disorganization and maternal spanking with children's aggression: A fixed-effects regression analysis
Ma J., Grogan-Kaylor A., Lee S.J.
(2018) Child Abuse and Neglect, 76 , pp. 106-116.