engleski

Quality of sibling relationships and loneliness in an age heterogeneous sample of adults

This paper reports some results of a wider study that was aimed at exploring the quality of the sibling relationship and its associations with subjective well-being indicators in an age heterogeneous sample of adults. A total of 229 Croatian adults (35-72 years) completed a questionnaire package including the Adult Sibling Relationship Questionnaire (ASRQ, Stocker, Lanthier & Furman, 1995) and Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA, DiTommaso & Spinner, 1993). Half of the participants was assigned to report on an older sibling, and half was asked to report on a younger sibling. Within each of these subgroups, half of the participants rated their relationship with brothers, and the other half rated the relationship with sisters. The results showed that the the quality of adult sibling relationship, as assessed by the ASRQ scales, is most closely related to the social loneliness. Specifically, the SELSA Social Loneliness subscale correlated negatively with eight out of 14 ASRQ scales, all refering to the warmth dimension (intimacy, affection, knowledge, acceptance, similarity, admiration, emotional and instrumental support). The Romantic Loneliness subscale showed somewhat similar albeit less consistent pattern of correlations with same dimension, whereas the Family Loneliness subscale showed no significant correlation with the ASRQ scales. Neither of the loneliness scales correlated with the ASRQ scales assessing the conflict and rivalry dimensions of the sibling relationship. The results provide further support for the distinction between social and emotional loneliness, as well as for the distinction among three dimensions of the sibling relationship.

Adult Siblings; Social Loneliness; Emotional Loneliness

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