Experimental designs in the social sciences have received increasing attention due to their power to produce causal inferences. Nevertheless, experimental research faces limitations, including limited external validity and unrealistic treatments. We propose combining qualitative fieldwork and experimental design iteratively--moving back-and-forth…

Although educational research and policymaking in the United States has generally framed LGBTQ youth and youth of color as mutually exclusive groups, LGBTQ youth of color are increasingly included in discourses surrounding school safety. These discourses tend to position youth as vulnerable, at-risk subjects who are passive victims of…

This study presents findings from an ethnographic content analysis of 15 chronological district-wide annual codes of student conduct from a large urban US school district. I frame policy creation and modification processes as reflections of societal shifts in perceptions of student behaviors. I looked to the policy documents to explore the…

Adults (n=801) were questioned about punishment they received as children and their own discipline practices. Analysis revealed that verbal and physical discipline were commonly used together. Respondents who were spanked and yelled at frequently as children were more prone to frequently spank and yell at their own children. (Author/DB)

A search of the literature to differentiate among definitions of physical discipline, corporal punishment, and physical child abuse identified five studies which revealed that abusive parents spanked their children more often than did nonabusive parents. Aggregated data from nonabusive parents suggested a "normal range" of daily spanking…

Much research has been conducted about how and when individuals allocate rewards, yet little research exists concerning the allocation of punishment. The process of allocating negative outcomes may be different from the decision making process for positive outcomes. To examine the decision making process for allocating rewards and punishment,…

A theory of the assignment of moral responsibility and punishment for harm was tested with 5- to 11-year-old children. Results indicated sophisticated use of moral concepts from 5 years. Developmental trends suggested increasing sensitivity to these concepts, greater tolerance for harm doing, and more emphasis on restitution than punishment.…

The article reviews various therapies for hyperactivity including pharmacological and behavioral therapies. The heterogeneous nature of this population suggests that punishment procedures used as part of a behavioral management intervention may be effective in establishing responsible behavior and warrant more research. (Author/DB)

This introduction to several articles on punishment in treating persons with mental retardation notes the ethical dilemmas involved and offers the editor's view that research on the side effects and relative efficacy of various treatments for reducing self-injurious behaviors should continue, and clinical practice should be guided by research…

Day care has a significant effect on children's conceptions of social rules that is not related to egocentrism or a lack of stimulus familiarity. Moral transgressions were regarded as equally serious by veterans and newly enrolled, while the distinction between morality and convention was unclear for the newly enrolled. (RH))

This article discusses problems inherent in the analysis of automatically reinforced behaviors, which are behaviors that are maintained by operant mechanisms independent of the social environment. Four classes of treatment that are compatible with automatic reinforcement are reviewed, including manipulations of establishing operations, sensory…

To compare disciplinary techniques within families spanning three generations, 24 maternal grandmothers and 24 mothers independently selected rewarding and punishing consequences for their children's correct and incorrect responses on an age-appropriate learning task. The children's behaviors were experimentally controlled so that performances…

A study was conducted to investigate the influence of systematic trends in the successfulness of children's performance upon subsequent parental disciplinary actions. A total of 30 mothers 24 to 45 years of age and their sons, ages 4 to 7.5 years, participated. Mothers were provided with predetermined sequences of trial-by-trial information about…

The similarity between rules used by mothers and those used by sons was extensive. Results suggest that research should emphasize the process by which children come to employ multidimensional rules and the role of parental models in this process. Current research in moral judgments largely ignores the rule-governed nature of children's judgments.…

The conflict between viewing aversive therapeutic interventions with mentally retarded persons from either an ideological or scientific perspective is examined. It is concluded that some of those who reject aversive therapeutic interventions do so out of a poor understanding of behavioral science and a primarily ideological frame of reference.…