On the Conflict Tactics Scale (Straus, 1979) at age 5, mothers rated how often in the past year and in the first four years of the child’s life they and their spouses 1) threatened to spank their child, 2) spanked their child, and 3) spanked their child with something. Frequencies ranged from never (0) to almost every day (6). Spanking scores were averaged within parent then across parents, and then across time frames, and were only available for cohort 2. Alphas ranged from .76 to .80, depending on the year. Correlations between parents’ spanking ranged from .69 to .75 (p < .001).
