The intersection of school corporal punishment and associated factors: Baseline results from a randomized controlled trial in Pakistan

Abstract

Violence against youth is a global issue; one form of youth victimization is school corporal punishment. We use baseline assessments from a cluster randomized controlled trial to examine the prevalence of school corporal punishment, by gender, and the relationship to levels of peer violence at school, parent corporal punishment, youth food security and youth academic performance and school attendance in Pakistan. Forty homogenous public schools in the urban city of Hyderabad, Pakistan were chosen for randomization into the trial evaluating a youth violence prevention intervention. 1752 6th graders, age 11–14 years, were selected as the target population. Since schools are segregated by gender in Pakistan, data are from interviews in 20 boys’ schools and 20 girls’ schools. Overall, 91.4% of boys and 60.9% of girls reported corporal punishment at school in the previous 4 weeks and 60.3% of boys had been physically punished at home in the past 4 weeks compared to 37.1% of girls. Structural equation modeling revealed one direct pathway for both boys and girls from food insecurity to corporal punishment at school while indirect pathways were mediated by depression, the number of days missed from school and school performance and for boys also by engagement in peer violence. Exposure to corporal punishment in school and from parents differs by gender, but in both boys and girls poverty in the form of food insecurity was an important risk factor, with the result that poorer children are victimized more by adults.

Children's peer violence perpetration and victimization: Prevalence and associated factors among school children in Afghanistan

“…The study also suggests that children who had been victimized and who had perpetrated violence in the past month were significantly more likely to have experienced any corporal punishment by teachers at school. These findings are in line with other studies that highlight the importance of exposure to family violence in the perpetration of peer violence [ 27 , 30 ], and a link between children’s experiences of school-based corporal punishment and perpetration of peer violence [ 40 , 41 ]. As a consequence, although peer violence prevention interventions working with children are important, they should be complemented with interventions that target broader violence-supportive norms and practices at the household, community and school levels.…”

Peer violence perpetration and victimization: Prevalence, associated factors and pathways among 1752 sixth grade boys and girls in schools in Pakistan

“…One response from schools in this setting is corporal punishment. We show elsewhere connections between hunger, peer violence, poor academic performance and corporal punishment [ 32 ].…”

Right To Play’s intervention to reduce peer violence among children in public schools in Pakistan: a cluster-randomized controlled trial

“…We evaluated the intervention in 40 public middle schools in the Hyderabad district of Sindh province, in classes from grades 6–8 between December 2015 and January 2018. A full account of the methods [ 19 ] and analyses from baseline data [ 9 , 20 – 22 ] are published elsewhere.…”

“…Secondary outcomes were gender attitudes, roles and norms [ 22 ], school corporal punishment [ 21 ], experience of physical punishment of at home, witnessing their father or another relative hitting their mother, witnessing their father fighting with other men, self-rated school performance, number of school days missed, and preparations for marriage ( Table 1 ). We assessed the social and demographic characteristics of the children (see Table 1 ).…”