Somebody needs to do some research on spanking so the Brahmins will try a little tougher love on their kids. Read this sad tale of Peter Morse. Raised on “Peter, Paul and Marry” in an upscale neighborhood, Peter became a community organizer with a Ph.D. in History (he wrote his thesis on the Wobblies) and ran a clean needle exchange in Frisco. The poor bastard found do-gooding rather stressful and ironically overdosed himself on heroin. Could this tragedy have been avoided if his dad had given him a good thrashing once in a while?
Hard to say, but I spent five minutes on Google Scholar and found this spanking meta-analysis and the the anti-spanking data a little thin. Just like The Bell Curve only observational studies are used and no pseudo-causal methods (e.g., path analysis, propensity scores) are employed to account for other factors like SES. So correlation does not imply causality. Most studies used the Conflict Tactic Scale to measure behavior which I am pretty sure was developed useing the rubbishy method of factor analysis behind the “G-Factor.” Unlike the data in the The Bell Curve the studies are contradictory and the correlations are pretty low. So until there is further research, Statsquatch says spank away.
6 comments:
If there's no data either way, shouldn't you be agnostic?
I recall them frequently controlling for SES in the Bell Curve, though it was still correlation (analyzing traits of the parents seemed close to getting at causality).
I have a strong prior belief on spanking, but perhaps I was too hasty.
On the Bell Curve they control for SES in the standard way (via logistic an OLS regression) where you can infer causality only under very strong assumptions. For example there are no unmeasured imbalances like maybe an aspect of SES that is not measured. There are other newer methods to account for other variables like propensity score matching (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propensity_score_matching) where you can supposedly infer causality with weaker assumptions. I am still trying to figure understand these methods though.
This is one of the more useful criticisms of the Bell Curve put forward by Cosma Shalizi and better described in a paper by the statistician-philosopher Clark Glymour that I discussed here: http://statsquatch.blogspot.com/2008/09/g-factor-criticism-scary-but-hilarious.html. I am looking for applications of these methods to the NLSY data. I have found a few and I am also trying to have a go at it myself.
Bryan Caplan mentions some spanking studies here:
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=9QDTYF4nkhbjGhNgPsdhSpnTrjwzK5xK
Probably nothing new to you though.
Thanks TGGP,
I had not seen that Bryan Caplan article. I can't find the source he cites but I will keep looking.
He gives a cite here:
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2009/01/me_in_the_chron_1.html
I thought I read a comment by Malloy that the "authoritative" parenting style was seemed to have worse outcomes, even though it is attractive to those who emphasize the lack of discipline as the primary failure of public schooling.
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