- Name
- Proportion of children aged 1-17 years who experienced any physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers in the past month.
- Indicator purpose
- This indicator captures current levels of violent discipline used at the household level with children.
- Abstract
- Proportion of children aged 1-17 years who experienced any physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers in the past month is currently being measured by the Proportion of children aged 1-14 years who experienced any physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers in the past month.
- Contact organization / person
- Ministry of Human Development (MOHD)
- Unit of measure
- Percentage (%)
- Other characteristics
- All too often, children are raised using methods that rely on physical force or verbal intimidation to punish unwanted behaviours and encourage desired ones. The use of violent discipline with children represent a violation of their rights. Physical discipline and psychological aggression tend to overlap and frequently occur together, exacerbating the short- and long-term harm they inflict. The consequences of violent discipline range from immediate effects to long-term damage that children carry well into adulthood. Violent discipline is the most widespread, and socially accepted, type of violence against children.
- Classification used
- In Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), psychological aggression refers to the action of shouting, yelling or screaming at a child, as well as calling a child offensive names, such as ‘dumb’ or ‘lazy’. Physical (or corporal) punishment is an action intended to cause physical pain or discomfort, but not injuries. Physical punishment is defined as shaking the child, hitting or slapping him/her on the hand/arm/leg, hitting him/her on the bottom or elsewhere on the body with a hard object, spanking or hitting him/her on the bottom with a bare hand, hitting or slapping him/her on the face, head or ears, and beating him/her over and over as hard as possible.
- Disaggregation
- is by sex, age, income, place of residence, geographic location.
- Key statistical concepts
- Number of children aged 1-17 years who are reported to have experienced any physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers in the past month divided by the total number of children aged 1-17 in the population multiplied by 100.
- Recommended uses
- The indicator is used to measure the proportion of children aged 1-17 years who experienced any physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers.
- Other comments
- In the third and fourth rounds of MICS, the standard indicator referred to the percentage of children aged 2-14 years who experienced any form of violent discipline (physical punishment and/or psychological aggression) within the past month. Beginning with the fifth round of MICS (MICS5), the age group covered was expanded to capture children’s experiences with disciplinary practices between the ages of 1 and 14 years.
All the metadata shown in this document was gathered from United Nation Statistics Division. The metadata was extracted from https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/.
- Target 2020
- 2. End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children
