Reducing School Violence: The Corporal Punishment Scale and its Relationship to Authoritarianism and Pupil-Control Ideology

Abstract

Prevailing research indicates that corporal punishment in schools may aggravate the risk of violence among students. The authors hypothesized that personality characteristics of educational personnel may contribute to the risk that corporal punishment will be applied. Study 1 investigates the relationship between attitudes toward corporal punishment and two personality variables: authoritarianism and pupil-control ideology. Data were collected from 20 public schools and three parochial schools in Pennsylvania, Texas, and New Jersey. A total of 387 school personnel served as research participants for the study. The Corporal Punishment Scale (CPS) was used to measure the attitudes of school personnel toward corporal punishment. The CPS correlated positively with authoritarian personality traits (r = .78), and pupil-control ideology (r = .76). These findings support the convergent and concurrent criterion validity of the CPS. The predictive validity of the CPS is supported by a correlation with self-report of actual use ofcorporal punishment in Study 2 (r =.71). The authors conclude that the use ofthe CPS in screening school personnel may be important in preventive risk management with violent students.