Examples of In-text Citations in APA Style
Corporal punishment is widely practiced by parents in the United States (Straus,
2001). While the commonality of its use cannot be disputed, the causal relationship
between corporal punishment and various negative child outcomes continues to be
debated. Despite the growing body of research that has emerged on this topic, few studies
have examined the experience of corporal punishment from the child’s perspective.
Furthermore, only a few studies have examined how the emotions children experience
following the receipt of corporal punishment are linked to child outcomes. This neglected
area of research is of critical importance. Children’s perceptions of the punishment they
receive from their parents could put the relationship between the child and the punishing
parent at risk (Mulvaney & Mebert, 2010). Similarly, emotions experienced by children
following the receipt of corporal punishment might cause children to distance themselves
from their parents, thus negatively affecting parent-child attachment quality (Gershoff,
2002).
The socioeconomic status of the family is related to parents’ use of corporal
punishment. Pinderhughes et al. (2000) found that “. . . low-income parents tend to endorse
more harsh discipline responses in part because they held stronger beliefs about the value
of spanking, and they experienced higher levels of stress” [than higher-income parents] (p.
393). Similarly, fathers of lower socioeconomic status have been found to administer more
frequent corporal punishment and verbal punishment to children than fathers of higher
socioeconomic status (Burbach et al., 2004). Moreover, parents with both lower income
and lower education have been found to administer more severe forms of corporal
punishment than parents with higher education and income (Dietz, 2000).
Mothers have been found to use more harsh punishment than fathers
(Pinderhughes et al., 2000) perhaps because women experience stressors that may not
affect men to the same degree (e.g., unplanned pregnancy, single-parent status). In
addition, mothers may be under more role strain than men because most mothers spend
more time in child caretaking activities and household chores than fathers (Bianchi, Milkie,
Sayer, & Robinson, 2000; Bird, 1999).
Roche et al. (2005) found gender differences in how corporal punishment is linked
to children’s development. In particular, they found that Black female adolescents who
received corporal punishment were more likely to report depressive symptoms than Black
female adolescents who did not receive corporal punishment. In contrast, Black male
adolescents who had received corporal punishment actually engaged in fewer behavior
problems than those who did not receive corporal punishment. These findings suggest that
children from different racial groups and gender groups may be affected differently by the
experience of corporal punishment.
In a study of over 6,000 families in the National Family Violence Survey, Straus and
Kantor (1994) found roughly half of participants recalled receiving corporal punishment
during their teenage years. Participants who recalled receiving corporal punishment when
they were teenagers were also more likely to report problems such as depression, suicidal
ideation, and alcohol abuse than participants who did not recall receiving corporal
punishment as teenagers. Participants were also more likely to report abusing their
children and, if they were male, to report abusing a female spouse if they recalled receiving
corporal punishment as teenagers.
The primary reason for choosing the latent variable approach over traditional SEM
is because the dependent variables, depressive symptoms in young adulthood and
externalizing behavior problems, did not have multiple indicator variables. Multiple
indicators for the variables of interest are necessary to conduct a traditional SEM
(Schumacker & Lomax, 2004). Some investigators attempt to divide items on a scale
associated with a single indicator variable as a way to create multiple indicator variables;
however, this is not the recommended method for dealing with variables with single
indicators (J. DeCoster, personal communication, February 2, 2010). Conducting a path
analysis is another option for including variables with single indicators, but a major
assumption of path analysis is that variables have very little multicollinearity, and this is
particularly the case when testing interaction effects (Schumacker & Lomax, 2004).
Defining and operationalizing corporal punishment is a major challenge to
conducting research on the influence of parents’ use of physical discipline on children.
Several definitions are provided by professional organizations such as The American
Academy of Pediatrics and The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Neither of the definitions provided by these organizations distinguishes between
normative physical discipline that is commonly practiced by parents and non-normative
physical abuse. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics (1998) defined corporal
punishment broadly as
the application of some form of physical pain in response to undesirable [child]
behavior. Corporal punishment ranges from slapping the hand of a child about to
touch a hot stove to identifiable child abuse, such as beatings, scaldings, and
burnings. (p. 725)
Similarly, The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (1988) defined
corporal punishment as a “discipline method in which a supervising adult deliberately
inflicts pain upon a child in response to a child’s unacceptable behavior and/or
inappropriate language” (p. 1). This latter definition neither includes nor excludes physical
abuse as a form of corporal punishment. Many research investigations on the topic rely on
the following definition which explicitly excludes physical abuse. Corporal punishment is
the “intentional use of physical force to inflict pain, but not injury, for the purpose of
correcting or controlling a child’s behavior” (Straus, 1994, p. 4). This includes spanking, or
hitting a child on the buttocks, as well as slapping the child on the legs or arms, and hitting
a child with an object, such as a paddle, belt, or brush. These forms of corporal punishment
are legal, normative or commonly practiced, and socially permissible (Straus & Mathur,
1996). For the purposes of this paper, this latter definition of corporal punishment will be
used because it reflects the type of physical punishment used by most American parents.