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Author: Cox, Ronald B. Jr.
Resulting in 3 citations.
1. Larzelere, Robert E.
Cox, Ronald B. Jr.
Danelia, Ketevan
Mandara, Jelani
Do Child Outcomes of All Disciplinary Enforcements Vary By Ethnicity?
Presented: Little Rock, AR, Annual Conference of the National Council on Family Relations, November 2008
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: National Council on Family Relations
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Discipline; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Parents, Behavior; Punishment, Corporal

The association of spanking with externalizing behavior problems varies by ethnicity in many studies comparing Black and White Americans. This study investigates whether the outcomes of other disciplinary enforcements also varies by ethnicity in 7- to 11-year-olds. Ethnic interactions were found for spanking, privilege removal, grounding, and, marginally, for sending children to their room. The significant simple effects were never detrimental for Hispanics or Blacks and never beneficial for Whites. At these ages, privilege removal appeared effective except for Whites and grounding was effective for Hispanics. Spanking and sending children to their room showed opposite effects for Blacks and Whites. This study uses data from two waves (1996 & 1998) of the well-known National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The children were 7.5 to 11.4 years olds in 1996 and included 53% boys. The NLSY oversampled ethnic minorities, yielding 22% Hispanic-Americans (HAs), 27% African-Americans (AAs), and 51% European-Americans (EAs). The sample size was 868 for most analyses after dropping cases with missing data.
Bibliography Citation
Larzelere, Robert E., Ronald B. Jr. Cox, Ketevan Danelia and Jelani Mandara. "Do Child Outcomes of All Disciplinary Enforcements Vary By Ethnicity?." Presented: Little Rock, AR, Annual Conference of the National Council on Family Relations, November 2008.
2. Larzelere, Robert E.
Cox, Ronald B. Jr.
Smith, Gail L.
Do Nonphysical Punishments Reduce Antisocial Behavior more than Spanking? A Comparison Using the Strongest Previous Causal Evidence Against Spanking
BMC Pediatrics 10,10 (February 2010): 1-17.
Also: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/10/10
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: BMC - BioMed Central
Keyword(s): Behavior Problems Index (BPI); Behavior, Antisocial; Behavioral Problems; Discipline; Ethnic Groups/Ethnicity; Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); Parents, Behavior; Punishment, Corporal; Socioeconomic Status (SES); Statistics

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

Background: The strongest causal evidence that customary spanking increases antisocial behavior is based on prospective studies that control statistically for initial antisocial differences. None of those studies have investigated alternative disciplinary tactics that parents could use instead of spanking, however. Further, the small effects in those studies could be artifactual due to residual confounding, reflecting child effects on the frequency of all disciplinary tactics. This study re-analyzes the strongest causal evidence against customary spanking and uses these same methods to determine whether alternative disciplinary tactics are more effective in reducing antisocial behavior.

Methods: This study re-analyzed a study by Straus et al.[1] on spanking and antisocial behavior using a sample of 785 children who were 6 to 9 years old in the 1988 cohort of the American National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The comprehensiveness and reliability of the covariate measure of initial antisocial behavior were varied to test for residual confounding. All analyses were repeated for grounding, privilege removal, and sending children to their room, and for psychotherapy. To account for covarying use of disciplinary tactics, the analyses were redone first for the 73% who had reported using at least one discipline tactic and second by controlling for usage of other disciplinary tactics and psychotherapy.

Results: The apparently adverse effect of spanking on antisocial behavior was replicated using the original trichotomous covariate for initial antisocial behavior. A similar pattern of adverse effects was shown for grounding and psychotherapy and partially for the other two disciplinary tactics. All of these effects became non-significant after controlling for latent comprehensive measures of externalizing behavior problems.

Conclusions: These results are consistent with residual confounding, a statistical artifact that makes all corrective actions by parents and psychologists appear to increase children's antisocial behavior due to child effects on parents. Improved research methods are needed to discriminate between effective vs. counterproductive implementations of disciplinary tactics. How and when disciplinary tactics are used may be more important than which type of tactic is used.

Bibliography Citation
Larzelere, Robert E., Ronald B. Jr. Cox and Gail L. Smith. "Do Nonphysical Punishments Reduce Antisocial Behavior more than Spanking? A Comparison Using the Strongest Previous Causal Evidence Against Spanking." BMC Pediatrics 10,10 (February 2010): 1-17.
3. Larzelere, Robert E.
Knowles, Sada J.
Adkison-Johnson, Carla
Cox, Ronald B. Jr.
Lin, Hua
Mandara, Jelani
Ethnic Differences in the Effects of Five Disciplinary Techniques on Subsequent Externalizing Behavior Problems
Marriage and Family Review 59,8 (30 Nov 2023).
Also: https://doi.org/10.1080/01494929.2023.2199732
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79
Publisher: Haworth Press, Inc.
Keyword(s): Behavioral Problems; Child Development; Children; Children, Behavioral Development; Disciplinary Techniques; Discipline; Ethnic Differences; Grounding; Parenthood; Parenting Skills/Styles; Parents, Behavior; Privilege Removal; Spanking

To identify disciplinary alternatives to replace spanking, this study investigated ethnic differences in the associations of five disciplinary techniques with subsequent externalizing behavior problems in a national sample of 7- to 11-year-olds with ANCOVAs and difference-score analyses. Most techniques led to significant reductions in externalizing problems for African Americans or Hispanics, but only after overcoming known biases in ANCOVA and not for other European Americans. Privilege removal had the most significantly effective results, followed by grounding. Sending children to their room and spanking significantly reduced externalizing problems only in one or two analyses for African Americans, whereas removing children’s allowance was significantly effective in one overall analysis. Parenting research needs to distinguish between more vs. less effective use of all disciplinary techniques across multiple situational and cultural contexts.
Bibliography Citation
Larzelere, Robert E., Sada J. Knowles, Carla Adkison-Johnson, Ronald B. Jr. Cox, Hua Lin and Jelani Mandara. "Ethnic Differences in the Effects of Five Disciplinary Techniques on Subsequent Externalizing Behavior Problems." Marriage and Family Review 59,8 (30 Nov 2023).