Undergraduate Honors Theses

Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Degree Name

BS

Department

Psychology

Faculty Mentor

Kimberly Zlomke

Abstract

Observing and analyzing the relationships between siblings can bring insight to what kinds of behaviors they will be inclined to have, as well has how prominent those behaviors will be. Specifically, it is important to analyze and compare levels of resilience, empathy, anxiety, and depression in individuals who have a sibling with a developmental disorder (DD) and those who have a typically developing (TD) sibling. This research looks to find out more information on college-aged individuals who have a sibling with a developmental disorder. There have been many studies that have conducted research to show how children and older adults have been impacted negatively and positively depending on if they have a sibling with a developmental disorder. However, the impact of having a sibling with a developmental disorder on college aged individuals has not been thoroughly evaluated. We predicted that college aged students who had a sibling with a DD would adjust more positively than students who had a TD sibling. However, after running independent sample T-tests at a 95% confidence interval, the results indicated no significant difference as each measure test had a p > .05. Out of 76 participants, only 13 reported having a sibling with a DD which limited not having a large enough sample of this test group. These findings suggest that in future research there needs to be a larger sample of individuals who have a sibling with a DD so that we can inquire more about the difference in positive and negative behaviors between those with siblings with DD and those with TD siblings.

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