Poster #148 - Early Childhood Exposure to Non-Violent Discipline and Physical and Psychological Aggression in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - International Section

Integrative Statement

A large body of research has shown that physical and psychological aggression are harmful to children’s development and wellbeing (e.g., Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016; Kairys & Johnson, 2002) and may have even more detrimental effects in the earliest years of life when children’s brain architecture is actively developing (Black et al., 2017). UNICEF (2010, 2014, 2017) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (1998, 2014), among other professional organizations, have focused on the promotion of non-violent disciplinary methods while recommending the elimination of physical and psychological aggression as punishment methods. Indeed, the protection of children from all forms of violence – including violent discipline – has long been a priority for the international community, as established in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC; United Nations, 1989) and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; United Nations, 2016). Yet, to date little is known about the methods caregivers use to discipline or punish their children, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
The aim of this study is to estimate the number of 2- to- 4- year-olds living in LMICs who are exposed to various disciplinary practices in their homes. To obtain national, regional, and global prevalence estimates, we employ predictive modeling, based on the best-fitting model according to cross-validation techniques (see Arlot & Celisse, 2010; McCoy et al., 2016) for a sample of 49 LMICs from UNICEF’s Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) using country-level socioeconomic characteristics as predictors. Specifically, we employed Leave-One-Out-Cross-Validation (LOOCV) and k-fold CV to split the data into a training set, for estimating coefficients, and one testing or validation set to assess the accuracy of prediction of the model based on the average root mean square error (RMSE) and the pseudo-R square (Arlot & Celisse, 2010; James et al., 2013). In doing so, we are able to estimate the number and proportion of 2- to- 4-y-olds exposed to non-violent discipline and physical and psychological aggression in 2013 for 131 LMICs, as well as to provide 95% confidence intervals (CI) around these estimates.
We estimate that 296.2 million 2- to- 4-y-olds (95% CI 256.9, 300.9) were exposed to non-violent discipline, which corresponds to 83.9 percent of the population. Furthermore, 220.4 million (95% CI 138.1, 283.7) and 230.7 million (95% CI 128.4, 300.6) children were exposed to physical and psychological aggression in 2013, respectively, which corresponds to prevalence of 62.5 and 65.4 percent, respectively. We also identify a high heterogeneity in the estimates across and within regions, finding a higher prevalence of both physical and psychological aggression in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (see Table 1 and Figure 1 as examples). As such, this study seeks to make visible how children are disciplined and punished during their first years of life, offering information to international organizations, governments, and professionals for the design and implementation of interventions, laws, and policies aimed at reducing physical and psychological aggression and fostering the use of non-violent discipline in LMICs.

Authors

• Jorge Armando Cuartas Ricaurte, Graduate School of Education, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Dana McCoy, Harvard Graduate School of Education
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maria Catalina Rey Guerra, Universidad de los Andes
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pia R Britto, UNICEF
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Beatriz, Massachusetts Department of Public Health
  Non-Presenting Author

• Carmel Salhi, Bouvé College of Health Sciences, Northeastern University
  Non-Presenting Author