Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

48 J.J.H. Dekker
a cohort study that uses the method of self-report), Hussey et al. conclude that
“self-reported childhood maltreatment was common”, while “each type of maltreatment
was associated with multiple adolescent health risks”. Although the authors
warn against making sweeping general statements, because “[d]espite 40 years of
sustained research on child abuse and neglect, we are still struggling to answer
these basic questions”, they conclude that “childhood maltreatment is prevalent,
and its adverse consequences are many. Conservative estimates place the number
of US children victimized by maltreatment each year at close to 1 million and the
annual number of child deaths caused by abuse or neglect at nearly 1500” (Hussey,
Chang, & Kotch, 2006, pp. 934, 940). This conclusion confirms the figures generated
by Finkelhor. Moreover, they fit the already mentioned alarming “generation
at risk” thesis put forward by Amato and Booth. Their book (based on a longitudinal
life course Study of Marital Instability beginning in 1980 with interviews of ca.
2000 persons, and repeated in 1983, 1988, and 1992), concludes that “parental marital
quality is the key variable” for the well-being of their offspring. Declining marital
quality tilted “the balance for offspring making the transition to adulthood [...]in
a negative direction”. This meant that, “the outlook for future generations of youth
may be even more pessimistic”. Therefore, Amato and Booth recommend family
policy that should “be based on creating incentives for parents to act in the best
interests of their children” (Amato & Booth, 1997, pp. 215, 221, 223, 239). Studies
on other countries, such as Great Britain, resulted in figures comparable to the
American ones (Sidebotham & Golding, 2001, pp. 1177–1178, 1189, 1196–1197).
Comparative research published in 2006 by E. Douglas and M. Straus was conducted
with university students in 19 countries in which they were asked about their
childhood experiences of corporal punishment. This resulted in the conclusion that
“over half of the students did not ‘strongly disagree’ that they were ‘spanked or hit
a lot’ by their parents as child (under age 12)”. It should be noted that this figure
does not account for major differences occurring among the 19 countries studied. In
Washington DC, 72.6% of the students did not strongly disagree with that statement.
In Dutch Amsterdam the figure was only 19.7%. The arcadia for children, according
to this study, seemed to be Belgium, or precisely Flanders, with only 12.9% not
strongly disagreeing. On the other hand, in Freiburg, the percentage was 61.5 and
in Leicester, 53.7. It is a matter of fact that major differences were found between
university cities. Such differences could also be found within single countries. Let
us take Canada as an example. While in Winnipeg, the percentage was 66.5, thus
almost the same as in Washington, in Montreal a percentage of 27.3 was found. In
other words, according to this comparative study, child maltreatment is particularly
prevalent in the USA. Despite the “large differences between the 36 university sites
in the prevalence of CP”, whereby the “the median rate (56) was high”, the authors
nevertheless came to the conclusion that “these findings point to an important public
health and crime problem among youth from relatively privileged segments of the
nineteen countries in this study”. They recommend “increased efforts to end all use
of CP by parents”, consisting of “a change in parent education efforts in the form
of unequivocal advice to never smack, analogous to the unequivocal advice to never
smoke” (Douglas & Straus, 2006, pp. 293, 302, 303, 311, 314).