Section 59 – Smacking Research

To anyone who has read Michael Drake’s booklet “by Fear and Fallacy“, the news over the weekend would not have come as a surprise in the slightest.

Let me point out some sections. From page 22& 23:

It gets even worse: the authors claim that any smack is abuse. By their own definition therefore, the 69% who smacked did not go on to abuse, they were “abusing” by way of smacking. Apart from their own prejudice, they do not establish a link between smacking and abuse. So they are not saying as Pritchard (following Durrant) claims, that 69% of parents who smacked went on to abuse their children, but that parents who smack their children, smack their children! It certainly does not prove there is a link between smacking and abuse. It gets yet still worse: the 2001 report has been superseded by a 2003 report.
In the 2003 report only 10% of all abuse is regarded as physical abuse. So why would Pritchard use the 2001 figures? Is it because they are more dramatic than the more recent and more accurate ones?

Finally in this section Pritchard openly quotes Durrant, but not to prove there
is a link between smacking and abuse. Instead, she replicates Durrant’s particular psychology of parenting in which she argues that parents don’t know what is right and wrong behaviour, that in fact there is no right and wrong behaviour, and that as parents try to cope with this they inevitably mutate into evil abusers. Admittedly that isn’t Durrant’s wording but when you cut through all the jargon (“desire for autonomy”, “drive for exploration”, “parents have little knowledge”, “parents often have unrealistic expectations” …) that is Durrant’s message, over and over again.

Pritchard provides no evidence for the absurd idea that smacking leads to
abuse. But constant repetition of the refrain, “Smacking leads to abuse”, and constant obeisance to the unspoken mantra, “Parents are ignorant, Durrant knows best” makes it look as if there is such a link. False information generates fear and a distortion of the truth – and paves the way for making safe, sensible smacking illegal.

Also, chapter 6 “Distortions in Advocacy Research”

One of Dobbs’ main findings is that children don’t like being smacked. This
led to the award of an MA from Otago University for Dobbs. The first statement is hardly surprising, but the second is. So what was her research about, and what is wrong with it? Here are some of the key criticisms:
· Dobbs set out to interview children about smacking. But in selecting her
“sample” she completely ignored accepted methods for randomly selecting
children to interview, selecting three schools where she had support. She then excluded a significant number of children because parents (wisely) didn’t want their children being interviewed. In fact Dobbs told a national seminar that she selected only “articulate” children for the study!73 At the outset the study failed to meet the basic standards of randomised sampling and therefore has no statistical validity (although it purports to produce valid statistics).
· Although children were given opportunity to withdraw, none did. When not a single respondent withdraws in a study that increasingly explored experiences respondents were said to find uncomfortable, the presumption of free participation is highly suspect. It appears that the children, knowing parents had consented and that their schools expected them to participate, felt a great deal of pressure to take part even if they did not want to. Claims that the children participated freely cannot be sustained.
· Dobbs interviewed the children herself instead of using independent interviewers unaware of the prejudice of the researcher. Further, when children did not spontaneously talk about smacking she deliberately directed them to. She explains she did this to satisfy her “specific focus on this topic”. She had previously identified this as a problem in a preliminary study where she reports children failed to report any form of discipline other than smacking “because the conversation was centred on smacking”74 but does nothing to correct this in her later study. She told the Stop it. It Hurts seminar that if she didn’t get the answer she wanted, she kept asking variations of the question until “I could get the information I wanted.”75 As a result none of her findings have the unbiased integrity required of independent research.
· Dobbs placed the children in “focus groups” where peer pressure influenced
individual responses. She recognises this by stating that the focus groups
“enabled children to assist each other to extend their thinking.” In other words, the focus groups helped children tell stories and report data they did not spontaneously recall. The children’s comments have no validity.
· None of the children’s comments were validated by cross-checking with other data or randomised review. There were no “controls” to validate the children’s comments or to determine the influence of peers present during interviews, or of parental or school influences (with the schools apparently also being antismacking advocates). The data collected has no validity.
· Most of the “results” she reports are reported in terms of percentages, but there is no measure of error nor are the numbers statistically valid. She frequently makes fine distinctions (eg between 32% and 40% of a sample of 28 – and in this case her maths appears faulty: 8/28 = 29% and 11/28 is 39%) when the sample is so small that a shift of just one respondent would all but eliminate the reported differentiation. Invariably these “results” are annotated with commentary that data do not establish. Perhaps the most direct manipulation of readers in the presentation of “results” is the inclusion of extensive quotations from children in support of Dobbs’ presuppositions with no indication as to the extent to which the quotations represent a common or eccentric viewpoint among the children, and almost total lack of quoting any differing views. The results have no scientific validity.

Translation: The oft quoted Canadian research assumed from the start that smacking was abuse. The Dunedin research picked a group most likely to give the “right” results, pushed for those results and didn’t get the results but reported them anyway. The results?

Children don’t like smacking.

Duh.