Lau (2010) Examined the Phenomenon

¶ … Lau (2010) examined the phenomenon of physical discipline in Chinese-American immigrant families. The research question asked; can the use of physical discipline be predicted by cultural values, contextual stressors, and their interactions? To this end, the author employed the following four hypotheses:

"Beliefs about the importance of strict parental control increase risk of physical discipline"

Values promoting emotional restraint reduce the incidence of physical discipline.

Acculturative stress, parent -- child acculturation conflicts, and school problems increase the risk of physical discipline.

There is a potential interaction between values and stressors on Chinese-American parents' use of physical discipline.

The author employed a purposive sample of 107 parents chosen from a larger group of 147 Chinese-American parents. The parents had children between the ages of 4 to 16. Parents with children between the ages of 4 and 8 were omitted from the analysis because the key risk variables were not developmentally outstanding for this group of children. All of the parents were immigrants who self-identified as Chinese. The families were recruited with the assistance of community partners who identified families with a high usage of physical discipline for entrance into the study.

The survey engaged several measures that were previously determined to have high levels of reliability and validity. The instruments was translated and then backtranslated to ensure that the concepts were measured effectively. Following the acquisition of written consent the parents were surveyed via the audiocomputer assisted structured interview. Parent control values were measured using twelve-item measure; values for emotional expression were measured with the Emotional Self-Control items of the Asian Values Survey. Challenges of Acculturation were measured using the Societal Attitudinal Familial Environmental Acculturative Stress Scale.

The data were analyzed using Pearson's Product Moment Correlation and Multiple Regression. The author identified significant correlations in the expected directions for physical discipline and parent report of child school problems and cultural values regarding emotional restraint. The other relationships were not found to be significant. The model advanced by the researcher was found to explain only 17% of the variance observed in the dependent variable.

This particular study presented what might be considered a new approach to addressing the issue of physical discipline in immigrant communities. The deliberate use of a skewed population while it may amplify the effect of the phenomenon that is being studied weakens the generalizability of the study. Thus, the author's decision to employ a purposive sample design tremendously weakens the overall validity of the work. Additionally, because of using a non-probability type sample design the author is unable to determine effectively the quantum of error in the study this adds to the overall weakness of the approach (Kitson et al. 1982, p.967).