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Corporal punishment bans and physical fighting in adolescents : an ecological study of 88 countries

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Elgar_2018_Corporal_punishment_bans_BMJOpen_e021616.pdf (662.5Kb)
Date
16/10/2018
Author
Elgar, Frank J
Donnelly, Peter D
Michaelson, Valerie
Gariépy, Geneviève
Riehm, Kira E
Walsh, Sophie D
Pickett, William
Keywords
Adolescent
Adolescent Behavior
Aggression
Female
Global health
Health surveys
Humans
Male
Middle East
Punishment
Schools/legislation & jurisprudence
Violence/legislation & jurisprudence
HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
RJ Pediatrics
3rd-DAS
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Abstract
Objective: To examine the association between corporal punishment bans and youth violence at an international level. Design: Ecological study of low-income to high-income 88 countries. Setting: School-based health surveys of students. Participants: 403 604 adolescents. Interventions: National corporal punishment bans. Primary outcome measure: Age-standardised prevalence of frequent physical fighting (ie, 4+ episodes in the previous year) for male and female adolescents in each country. Results: Frequent fighting was more common in males (9.9%, 95% CI 9.1% to 10.7%) than females (2.8%, 95% CI 2.5% to 3.1%) and varied widely between countries, from 0.9% (95% CI 0.8% to 0.9%) in Costa Rican females to 34.8% (95% CI 34.7 to 35.0) in Samoan males. Compared with 20 countries with no ban, the group of 30 countries with full bans (in schools and in the home) experienced 69% the rate of fighting in males and 42% in females. Thirty-eight countries with partial bans (in schools but not in the home) experienced less fighting in females only (56% the rate found in countries without bans). Conclusions: Country prohibition of corporal punishment is associated with less youth violence. Whether bans precipitated changes in child discipline or reflected a social milieu that inhibits youth violence remains unclear due to the study design and data limitations. However, these results support the hypothesis that societies that prohibit the use of corporal punishment are less violent for youth to grow up in than societies that have not.
Citation
Elgar , F J , Donnelly , P D , Michaelson , V , Gariépy , G , Riehm , K E , Walsh , S D & Pickett , W 2018 , ' Corporal punishment bans and physical fighting in adolescents : an ecological study of 88 countries ' , BMJ Open , vol. 8 , no. 9 , e021616 . https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-021616
Publication
BMJ Open
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-021616
ISSN
2044-6055
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2018. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0.
Description
Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR; grant numbers MOP133519, MOP341188), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (grant number 435-2014-2160) and Canada Research Chairs programme.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/21786

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