Severity and Justness Do Not Moderate the Relation Between Corporal Punishment and Negative Child Outcomes: A Multicultural and Longitudinal Study.
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2017-07
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There is strong evidence of a positive association between corporal punishment and negative child outcomes, but previous studies have suggested that the manner in which parents implement corporal punishment moderates the effects of its use. This study investigated whether severity and justness in the use of corporal punishment moderate the associations between frequency of corporal punishment and child externalizing and internalizing behaviors. This question was examined using a multicultural sample from eight countries and two waves of data collected one year apart. Interviews were conducted with 998 children aged 7-10 years, and their mothers and fathers, from China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, and the United States. Mothers and fathers responded to questions on the frequency, severity, and justness of their use of corporal punishment; they also reported on the externalizing and internalizing behavior of their child. Children reported on their aggression. Multigroup path models revealed that across cultural groups, and as reported by mothers and fathers, there is a positive relation between the frequency of corporal punishment and externalizing child behaviors. Mother-reported severity and father-reported justness were associated with child-reported aggression. Neither severity nor justness moderated the relation between frequency of corporal punishment and child problem behavior. The null result suggests that more use of corporal punishment is harmful to children regardless of how it is implemented, but requires further substantiation as the study is unable to definitively conclude that there is no true interaction effect.
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Alampay, Liane Peña, Jennifer Godwin, Jennifer E Lansford, Anna Silvia Bombi, Marc H Bornstein, Lei Chang, Kirby Deater-Deckard, Laura Di Giunta, et al. (2017). Severity and Justness Do Not Moderate the Relation Between Corporal Punishment and Negative Child Outcomes: A Multicultural and Longitudinal Study. Int J Behav Dev, 41(4). pp. 491–502. 10.1177/0165025417697852 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15811.
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Jennifer Godwin
Jennifer Godwin is a research scientist at the Center for Child and Family Policy. She joined the Center in 2003 to provide statistical expertise for various projects. Currently, she works on the Fast Track and Childhood Risk Factors and Young Adult Competence projects, providing statistical analyses. She has extensive programming experience in SAS, Stata and MPlus, including survival analysis, mediation models, and multilevel models for continuous and categorical dependent variables.

Ann Skinner
Ann Skinner joined the Center in 2001 and is a Research Scientist with Parenting Across Cultures (PAC) and C-StARR. She is also the Principal Investigator for a study examining the effects of the war on young people and their families in Ukraine.
Her research focuses on the ways in which stressful community, familial, and interpersonal events impact parent-child relationships and the development of aggression and internalizing behaviors in youth. She has extensive experience in data management of multisite projects and in supervising teams for school- and community-based interventions and data collection.
Skinner is a former supervisor in the Junior Researcher Programme, where she led a group of junior international scholars exploring the impact of COVID-19 on adolescent and young adult development. She is currently a 2022-23 fellow with the ICDSS COVID-19 Global Scholars Program.
Prior to her work with Parenting Across Cultures, Skinner was a senior school specialist and research analyst on the GREAT Schools and Families middle school violence prevention project at the Center, as well as Project CLASS.
Skinner has a Ph.D in developmental psychology from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, a master's degree in education, and B.A. in psychology, both from the College of William and Mary, with a focus on teaching students with emotional and learning disabilities. Before joining the Center, she worked as a special education teacher, trainer, and supervisor in the North Carolina public schools and at residential facilities for at-risk youth in Rhode Island and North Carolina.
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