TITLE:
Correlates of Parental Choice of Child Discipline Methods in Ghana: A Multilevel Modeling Approach
AUTHORS:
Stephen Kwaku Amoah, Ezekiel Nii Noye Nortey, Abukari Alhassan
KEYWORDS:
Child Discipline, Physical Discipline, Non-Physical Discipline, Psycho-logical Aggression Discipline, Multilevel Multinomial Logit Model, Hier-archical Structured Data, Nested Data
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Applied Sciences,
Vol.10 No.3,
March
19,
2020
ABSTRACT: This study applied multilevel modeling to investigate the impact of
observed predictors and different levels or groups that households belong, on
parents’ choice of discipline methods using data from 8156 households derived
from a nationwide survey by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in 2011. The
aim of the study is to provide in-depth information on why parents choose
particular discipline methods as corrective measures to reduce unwanted child
behaviour in the present and to increase desirable ones in the future. The
results of the study show that, religion and age-group of household heads have
significant effect on household’s likelihood to choose physical discipline
methods whereas the wealth index of a household and ethnicity of the household
head, have significant effect on households’ likelihood to choose non-physical
and psychological aggression methods. The results further show significant
contextual effect on the differences in choices of parents at the household and
regional levels. The choice of physical discipline methods by parents was
consistent across households and regional levels unlike non-physical and
psychological aggression methods whose application varied across the regions.
Households in the Northern, Eastern and Volta regions mostly chose to apply
physical discipline methods whereas in the Upper West, Western and Northern
regions the most chosen discipline methods were non-physical discipline
methods. Psychological aggression discipline methods were predominantly applied
in the Upper East, Central and Northern regions of the country.