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Pathways to Harsh Parenting: Testing a Social Information Processing Model of Child Abuse Using Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling

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A Correction to this article was published on 12 October 2022

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Abstract

Purpose

Social information Processing (SIP) biases have been associated with child abuse risk. However, little research was conducted with the purpose to evaluate the contribution of the SIP model in the prediction of child abuse risk, with most research testing SIP components independent from the model. This study aimed to extend the validity of the SIP model of parenting by employing factors across different stages of the theory in order to predict child abuse risk. We hypothesized that parental cognitive schema can influence abuse risk directly and indirectly through biased processing of information.

Methods

Results from 140 studies were integrated using a two stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling procedure. Studies were identified via three databases: The Psychological Abstracts International, ISI Web of Science and PubMed.

Results

Meta-analytic results indicate significant associations among all study variables, except for the one between perception of child adjustment and unrealistic expectations (r = .048, p > .05). Path analysis results lend evidence for the role of SIP variables in predicting child abuse risk (R2 = 0.22) and support the role of cognitive processing in the link between cognitive schema and child abuse risk.

Conclusions

Findings support the SIP model as a good framework to study child abuse risk and underscore the need to focus on SIP patterns when assessing and intervening with abusive families or families at high risk of abuse. Targeting cognitions related to children and child rearing in parenting interventions could influence the process and outcomes of such programs.

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Data Availability

All data created during this research is available upon request.

Change history

References

The references included in the meta-analysis are presented in Online Resource 3.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Ingrid Dănilă and Robert Balazsi contributed equally to this work.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ingrid Dănilă.

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Ethics Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Conflict of Interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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The original online version of this article was revised: The author contribution statement was missing in the published article.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (PDF 124 kb) Online Resource 1. Literature search criteria and keywords

Supplementary file2 (PDF 177 kb) Online Resource 2. Codebook of Study Characteristics

Supplementary file3 (PDF 574 kb) Online Resource 3. Summary of included studies, with reference list and forest plots

10896_2022_428_MOESM4_ESM.docx

Supplementary file4 (DOCX 1162 kb) Online Resource 4. Appendix A. Funnel plots with Egger`s test for publication bias. Appendix B. Forest plots of correlation coefficients

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Dănilă, I., Balazsi, R. & Băban, A. Pathways to Harsh Parenting: Testing a Social Information Processing Model of Child Abuse Using Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling. J Fam Viol 38, 1483–1497 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00428-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00428-z

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