Peer-reviewed article
Perceived norms, social network exposure, and physical discipline of children: Sociocentric network study of caregivers in rural Uganda.
Emily N Satinsky, Bernard Kakuhikire, Charles Baguma, Sarah Sowell Van Dyk, Elizabeth B Namara et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how caregivers' beliefs about whether other caregivers use physical discipline on children relates to their own use of physical discipline in rural Uganda. The research found that most caregivers wrongly believed that physical discipline was more common among their peers than it actually was. Caregivers who held this mistaken belief were significantly more likely to physically discipline their own children. The study suggests that correcting these false perceptions could be an approach to reduce physical discipline.
Key points
- Most caregivers overestimated how often other caregivers in their villages used physical discipline
- Women who perceived physical discipline as normative were nearly twice as likely to use it themselves (aRR = 1.97)
- Direct exposure to others in social networks who used physical discipline was not associated with increased use among women and was negatively associated with use among men
- Misperceived norms about physical discipline were more influential than actual social network exposure in predicting caregivers' behavior
Limitations
This cross-sectional study cannot establish causation and relies on self-reported behavior, which may be subject to social desirability bias. The findings describe associations rather than determining whether misperceived norms directly cause increased physical discipline use.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Physical discipline is associated with negative developmental, social, and emotional outcomes in children. However, social influences on caregivers' use of physical discipline, including perceived norms and social network exposure, remain understudied. OBJECTIVES: To assess whether caregivers' use of physical discipline was associated with perceived norms and social network exposure to physical discipline. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Adult caregivers (N = 1026) in rural Uganda. METHODS: In this sociocentric study, participants reported their past-week use of physical discipline and perceptions of how often most caregivers in their villages used physical discipline. Participants also named other caregivers with whom they interacted across life domains. We compared perceived norms with aggregated self-reports of behavior and used multivariable Poisson regression models with cluster-robust standard errors to estimate associations between perceived norms, social network exposure to caregivers who used physical discipline, and personal engagement in physical discipline. RESULTS: Most caregivers overestimated the prevalence and frequency of physical discipline among other caregivers in their villages. Misperceiving physical discipline as normative was positively associated with personal physical discipline behavior. For example, women who (mistakenly) perceived that most other women used physical discipline multiple times in the past week were almost twice as likely to use physical discipline themselves (adjusted relative risk [aRR] = 1.97, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.40-2.77, p < .001). Network exposure to caregivers who used physical discipline was not associated with physical discipline use among women and was negatively associated with physical discipline use among men. CONCLUSIONS: Interventions that correct misperceived norms may be used to reduce physical discipline behaviors.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Perceived norm correction (identified as potential intervention through demonstrating that misperceived norms drive behavior)
- Population
- Adult caregivers (N=1026) in rural Uganda
Key finding
Women who perceived most other women used physical discipline multiple times weekly were 1.97 times more likely to use it themselves (95% CI 1.40-2.77, p<0.001)