Adults' attitude towards corporal punishments as a pedagogical means correcting behaviour

Adults have a lot of means to correct negative behaviour of a child. They can explain to the child patiently why his actions are wrong and what kind of behaviour they expect from their child or use various punishments without comments. In this study we will only deal with the discussion about corporal punishments because there is no unanimous opinion of scientists about the consequences of these punishments concerning the development of the child’s personality while adults use them especially often to correct the child’s behaviour. The purpose of the study was to analyze adults’ attitudes towards corporal punishments as pedagogical means correcting behaviour. 100 respondents (50 men and 50 women) were questioned. The sample was selected in a convenient way. We made up a questionnaire on the basis of the methodology used by the public opinion research centre and the market research centre “VILMORUS” to ask the inhabitants about violence against children (1999). The findings were processed applying methods of mathematical statistics. Reliability of the difference between the results obtained was estimated according to the criterion of the chi square (χ²) which is used for checking hypotheses about distribution of variables in the population. The reliability level chosen is α = 0.05. The difference between the results was supposed to be meaningful if p < 0.05. It was established that most parents used corporal punishments (52% of fathers and 78% of mothers respectively) (p <... [to full text