Study makes a case against paddling, finds link between corporal punishment, failure to graduat

[d_r]

15. it doesn't directly answer your question

but there were two parts to the study, and only one is reported on. In the first, children's externalizing scores (aggressive, defiant, acting out sorts of behavior) were predicted each year grades 2-9 from the previous year's externalizing scores and the experience of corporal punishment in school. So, this is controlling for previous externalizing behavior, predicting change in externalizing behavior from year to year. School-based corporal punishment predicted increases in externalizing behavior in grades 2,3,4,5,7,8 and conduct reports from grade 9. This means that the school-based corporal punishment was predicting increases in externalizing behvior beyond what would be expected.

For the high school graduation rates, each child who received corporal punishment was matched statistically do a child who did not, based on the children's maternal-rated temperament at age 4.5 (the summer before kindergarten), parental use of corporal punishment, socioeconomic status, sex, and race. Basically, this treats it like a quasi-experimental design to control for those variables - you could think of it as a treatment group who received corporal punishment in school and matched with a control group who did not. The graduation comparison is based on this design to control for those variables.