Background and Objective:

Sixty countries worldwide have banned the use of physical punishment, yet little is known about the association of physical and nonphysical forms of child discipline with child development in a global context. The objective of this study is to examine whether physical punishment and nonphysical discipline are associated with child socioemotional functioning in a global sample of families from 62 countries and whether country-level normativeness of physical punishment and nonphysical discipline moderated those associations.

Methods:

Data for this study are from 215,885 families in the fourth and fifth rounds of the United Nations Children’s Fund Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. Bayesian multilevel logistic models were used to analyze the associations of physical punishment and nonphysical discipline (i.e., taking away privileges and verbal reasoning) with three different outcomes representing children’s socioemotional functioning: getting along well with other children, aggression, and becoming distracted.

Results:

The use of physical punishment was not associated with getting along with other children, was associated with increased aggression, and was associated with increases in distraction. Taking away privileges was associated with lower levels of getting along with other children, higher levels of aggression, and higher levels of becoming distracted. Verbal reasoning (i.e., explaining why a behavior was wrong) was associated with higher levels of getting along with other children, higher levels of aggression, and higher levels of becoming distracted. Country-level normativeness moderated some of these associations but in general the direction of effects was consistent.

Conclusions:

Results suggest that eliminating physical punishment would benefit children across the globe and align with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls for all children to be free from physical violence. More attention needs to be focused on the associations of nonphysical forms of discipline with child functioning across the globe.

中文翻译：

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物理和非物理学科的全球观点：贝叶斯多层次分析

背景与目的：

全世界有60个国家禁止使用体罚，但在全球范围内，关于儿童纪律的身体和非身体形式与儿童发展的关联知之甚少。这项研究的目的是研究在来自62个国家的全球样本中，体罚和非体罚是否与儿童的社会情感功能有关，以及体罚和非体罚的国家层面规范是否主持了这些协会。

方法：

这项研究的数据来自联合国儿童基金会多指标类集调查的第四轮和第五轮的215885个家庭。贝叶斯多级逻辑模型用于分析体罚与非体罚（即，剥夺特权和口头推理）的关联，其三种不同的结果代表了儿童的社会情感功能：与其他儿童相处融洽，攻击性和分心。

结果：

体罚的使用与与其他孩子的相处无关，与攻击性增加有关，与分心的增加有关。剥夺特权与与其他孩子相处的程度较低，侵略性较高以及分心的程度较高有关。言语推理（即解释行为错误的原因）与更高水平的与其他孩子的相处，更高水平的攻击性和更高水平的分心有关。国家一级的规范性减轻了其中一些协会的影响，但总的来说效果的方向是一致的。

结论：

结果表明，消除体罚将使全球儿童受益，并符合《联合国儿童权利公约》的要求，该公约呼吁所有儿童免遭人身暴力。需要将更多的注意力集中在非物理形式的学科与全球儿童功能的联系上。