Abstract :
Sibling relationship is one of long lasting relationship in most of the people’s lives and one of the most important ones. Siblings may be particularly likely to influence each other’s behaviour positively or negatively. While a variety of family characteristics are recognized as risk factors for adolescent behaviour problems, the role of siblings has received much less attention. Thus, a sibling specific risk factor may operate across the family and peer domains during adolescence, making sibling influences on behaviour problem a vital area for research and prevention efforts. So, an attempt was made to study the sibling relationship and the influencing factors on sibling relationship among adolescents. The population for the study comprised of 192 school children from 5th to 10th grade where 96 students from urban and rural areas were drawn equally from Dharwad and Bagalkot districts of Karnataka. For the present study, the permission was sought from Block Education Officer and the Heads of the schools were contacted and permission was taken for conducting the study. From each class, based on teacher’s nomination, both high and low achievers were taken for the study. Sibling relationship questionnaire was used to assess the relationship status of siblings among adolescents. Socio-economic status was also assessed using Socio-economic status scale. Multivariate analysis and regression analysis indicated that there was significant interactional effect of age, gender and sibling constellation on the dimensions of relative status/power, sibling closeness, and sibling conflict and sibling rivalry. Sibling spacing also had a major impact where the siblings with less than one year spacing had lesser sibling relationship. Academic achievement influenced sibling relationship indicating better relationship among high academic achievers. With regard to familial factors, it was observed that mother’s education was positively correlated with sibling relationship indicating better relationship among students with mothers having higher education. On the other hand, parents’ occupation also had an impact where adolescents with parents working in public sector were said to have higher sibling relationship. However, family type was not associated with sibling relationship. Socio-economic status was also affecting sibling relationship among urban sample which was found that adolescents from lower income group had lower sibling relationship as opposed to high socio-economic group. This indicates that those influential factors which are found to lower the relationship status need to be corrected through educative programmes for adolescents and parents to enhance sibling relationship and reduce the problem behaviours among adolescents.
Keyword :
Sibling relationship, Child factors, Familial factors