About this paper symposium

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Panel information
Panel 9. Family Context & Processes

Paper #1
Latent Profiles of Sibling Relationship Qualities Among Mexican-Origin
Author information	Role
Yunyan Zhao, University of Notre Dame, United States	Presenting author
Jenny Padilla, University of Notre Dame, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Sibling relationships often involve a mix of positive and negative dynamics, frequently described as a "love-hate" relationship (Dunn, 1993). However, research indicates considerable variability across families in how these dynamics are balanced (McHale et al., 2007). Previous studies have identified three distinct profiles of sibling relationships based on reports of intimacy, negativity, and control in interactions (Killoren et al., 2017), highlighting the complexity of these dynamics. Social learning theory further underscores the importance of sibling relationship dynamics in modeling relational skills such as perspective-taking, negotiation, and problem-solving (Bandura, 1977). These skills not only shape sibling interactions but also influence youth's relationships with friends (Lam et al., 2021; Updegraff et al., 2016). To capture the full spectrum of sibling dynamics, a person-centered approach is essential. This method enables the identification of distinct relationship profiles, offering a more nuanced understanding of sibling interactions and their broader social implications. Thus, this study aimed to use Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to identify these sibling relationship profiles and to examine their association with the quality of their friendships. This preliminary work is part of a larger ongoing study involving 300 families, with current data from 86 sibling dyads from Mexican-origin families. Families were eligible if they had two adolescent siblings aged 12-18, a biological mother of Mexican origin, and a biological father living together. The average age of older siblings was 15.50 years (SD = 1.51), and younger siblings averaged 12.95 years (SD = 1.21). Both siblings completed measures assessing conflict and intimacy in their relationships with each other and with their best friends. For the first goal, Latent Profile Analysis identified five distinct sibling relationship profiles: high-warmth-low-conflict (20.73%), low-warmth-high-conflict (17.07%), low-warmth-low-conflict (6.10%), higher-warmth-lower-conflict older sibling (20.73%), and lower-warmth-higher-conflict older sibling (35.37%). ANOVA analyses revealed significant differences across profiles in sibling intimacy and conflict for both older siblings (F = 107.38, p < 0.001; F = 4.86, p < 0.01) and younger siblings (F = 87.16, p < 0.001; F = 2.80, p < 0.05). In the second goal, BCH analysis of distal variables indicated significant differences across profiles in friendship intimacy but not in friendship conflict (p > 0.05). Older siblings in the low-warmth-high-conflict profile (M = 3.05 ± 0.90) and low-warmth-low-conflict profile (M = 3.25 ± 0.67) reported significantly lower friendship intimacy compared to those in the high-warmth-low-conflict profile (M = 3.95 ± 0.51) and other higher-warmth sibling profiles (all p-values < 0.05). Similarly, younger siblings in the low-warmth-low-conflict profile (M = 2.80 ± 1.28) reported lower friendship intimacy compared to those in the high-warmth-low-conflict profile (M = 3.83 ± 0.51), p < 0.05. These findings underscore the influence of sibling relationships on friendship dynamics in Mexican-origin families. Adolescents with higher warmth and lower conflict in sibling relationships reported greater friendship intimacy, while those from low-warmth, high-conflict sibling relationships had lower friendship intimacy. Sibling dynamics did not significantly impact friendship conflict, suggesting that warmth is more influential in shaping friendships. This study highlights the importance of sibling relationships in adolescents' social development

Paper #2
“I don’t talk to my brother as much as I should”: Technology-mediated communication between siblings
Author information	Role
Yue Guo, University of Missouri, United States	Presenting author
Nicole Campione-Barr, University of Missouri, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
As adolescents mature into young adulthood, sibling relationships become more voluntary, less conflictual, and remain an important source of support for emotional well-being (Lindell & Campione-Barr, 2017). When one or more siblings are attending college, siblings often live apart from each other and communicate less frequently (Hamwey et al., 2018), making technology-mediated communication (TMC) methods more salient in maintaining closeness between siblings (Balayar & Langlais, 2021). The type of TMC and content of communication also affect sibling relationships, where methods that allow for higher-quality conversation improve the sibling relationship (Vaterlaus et al., 2022). Collecting information about TMC use with self-reports has the least logistical burden, but they tend to be less accurate for TMC (Subrahmanyam & Michikyan, 2022). However, daily diary reports allow for participants to report their TMC use every day, which lessens inaccuracies while still capturing changes over time. In the sibling context, there has been little research on the day-to-day variations in communication that affect how siblings feel about each other in the short-term. The present study investigates college students’ (N=116, 66% female, Mage=19.2) daily reports of using TMC with siblings, including the initiator, method, content, duration, quality of the communication, and overall feelings about the relationship. Data comes from a larger ongoing study on TMC with multiple close relationship partners; thus, findings about sibling relationships can be placed in context of a broader close relationship network. We will also discuss methodological and analytical challenges in working with online daily diary data from college students, such as handling participant or researcher errors and missing data. Preliminary data analysis finds that over 10 days, participants contacted mothers and best friends most frequently (5.7 and 4.9 days respectively) and siblings the least (2.9 days). With siblings specifically, texting was the most frequently used method of communication (1.7 days) followed by face-to-face interaction (0.9 days; 19.8% lived with or near their sibling). Most interactions with siblings lasted 30 minutes or less, but they were overall positive and had positive feelings about the sibling relationship (see Tables 1&2). Multilevel models showed that, while feelings about the relationship did not change over time, both texting (b=.29, p<.01) and face-to-face interactions (b=.58, p<.01) significantly predicted more positive feelings while other TMC methods (other than text-based social media) did not, likely due to lower usage overall. Both longer interactions (b=.18, p<.01) and more positive interactions (b=.42, p<.01) predicted more positive feelings as well. These findings demonstrate that although siblings may communicate less frequently during emerging adulthood, what communication does occur tends to happen over texting or face-to-face interactions, and the interactions are generally positive and beneficial for the sibling relationship. Thus, although emerging adulthood is characterized by greater autonomy and self-development, using TMC with siblings can help maintain the relevance and positivity of the sibling relationship for later in adulthood. Further analyses will confirm these preliminary findings after data collection is completed in December 2024, as well as investigate the role of moderators such as gender and birth order.

Paper #3
What predicts adolescent siblings’ drinking alcohol together: A weekend diary approach
Author information	Role
Weimiao Zhou, Utah State University, United States	Presenting author
Leslie Page, Utah State University, United States	Non-presenting author
Shawn D. Whiteman, Utah State University, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Extant research on adolescents’ participation in delinquent and other risky behaviors suggests that sibling similarities often result from brothers’ and sisters’ shared engagement in those activities (i.e., acting as “partners in crime”; Rowe & Gulley, 1991; Slomkowski et al., 2001). In the domain of substance use, sibling facilitation and co-use have been identified as critical social pathways of siblings’ influence (Samek et al., 2014; Whiteman et al., 2016). Despite the long-term implications of substance use during adolescence, little is known regarding the predictors of siblings’ co-use behaviors. To address this gap, using data from annual surveys and weekend diaries, the present study investigated the linkages between sibling relationship dynamics (including global and micro-socialization processes) and adolescent siblings’ co-use of alcohol. Importantly, the weekend dairies provided ecologically valid assessments of siblings’ shared activities and mutual engagement in alcohol use. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study focused on the connections between family relationship processes and adolescents’ health. In total, 682 families, including two-adolescent siblings and one parent (2,046 participants), from five midwestern states participated. Two data collection procedures were utilized: (a) annual assessments focused on global relationship qualities (e.g., sibling modeling, differentiation) and health; and (b) four consecutive weekend diaries assessing youths’ activities (including substance use) and companions. For this study, participants were limited to 107 older siblings (M = 17.60 years, SD = .80) and 53 younger (M = 15.25 years, SD = 1.17) siblings who reported drinking alcohol at least once across the four-weekend diary assessments in study year 3. In total, 26% of older siblings and 47% of younger siblings reported drinking with their target sibling. Logistic regression models were estimated separately for older and younger siblings. For older siblings’ co-drinking behaviors (see Table 1), results indicated that engagement in shared activities (i.e., percentage of time spent with younger sibling relative to time spent in all activities) with their younger siblings was associated with increased odds of co-using with their younger sibling. For younger siblings’ co-drinking behaviors (see Table 2), similar results for the proportion of time in shared activities emerged. Additionally, younger siblings’ efforts to differentiate from their older sibling was linked to lower odds of drinking together with their older sibling. There were no significant interactive effects between sibling dyad gender composition and shared activities in predicting either older or younger siblings’ reports of drinking together. Overall, findings underscore the significant role of adolescent siblings’ shared activities in shaping their co-drinking behaviors, echoing the notion that adolescent siblings act as “partners in crime” by engaging together in rule-breaking behaviors such as drinking alcohol (Whiteman et al., 2017) and can become socially contagious with high levels of time spent together on a daily basis. Younger siblings’ co-drinking was further shaped by sibling differentiation, highlighting that younger siblings who are more similar to their older sibling (i.e., report less differentiation) are at higher risk for social contagion of substance use (Rende et al., 2005).

Paper #4
LDA Topic Modeling Approach to examine Topic Trends in Sibling Research
Author information	Role
Karina Cahill, Arizona State University, United States	Presenting author
Kimberly Updegraff, Purdue University, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
The field of sibling research is interdisciplinary and evolving, highlighting the need to understand themes in sibling research, identify potential gaps in the field, and develop recommendation for future research. Recent efforts to illustrate capture the state of the field of sibling relationship and offer directions forward include an evidence and gap map of sibling research in the social, developmental, and health sciences (Holmes et al., 2024), a systematic review of the top six family science journals (Perez-Brena et al., 2022), and a review focused on adolescence and young adulthood (Jensen et al., 2023). To contribute to this discourse, our goal was to provide insights about themes and historical trends that characterize sibling research, with a focus on future directions for developmental science. Toward this end, this study applied a natural language processing approach using unsupervised machine learning to characterize sibling research. Specifically, we employed Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling to analyze a collection of articles over a period of four decades in a journal that has been impactful in the field of sibling research (i.e., the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships). LDA topic modeling is an exploratory data-driven text mining approach that uncovers latent themes from textual data (e.g., articles). The model allocates probabilities of a topic belonging to a document and words belonging to a topic (Blei et al., 2003). In this application, words are examined within a collection of articles to determine common themes across articles and characterize the historical trends. The 2,151 abstracts of published articles using the keyword ‘sibling’ were examined resulting in 242 article abstracts retrieved from the Sage journals website. A total of 201 articles were excluded because they did not focus on sibling research with human samples, leading to a final analytic sample of 41 articles. Textual data pre-processing included omitting terms with a length of less than two characters or less than two occurrences, stop word removal (e.g., the, and, or), removing punctuation, symbols, and numbers. In this study, the LDA topic model with a total of six topics representing two thematic clusters were identified (Figure 1). Figure 1 includes each of these themes along with the top 15 most frequent words associated with each theme. The first three topics represented specific groups studied in sibling research, including twins, family systems, and emerging adults. The second set of three topics captured content areas, specifically, connectedness, behaviors, and other interpersonal relationships as they are connected to sibling relationships. Historical trends revealed variation in the salience of topics at different timepoints over the past four decades (Figure 2). Recommended future directions based on the results of this study include the need for measures that can be applied to research on sibling relationships across the lifespan, and the importance of including people from different age groups, backgrounds, circumstances, and ecologies in sibling research. Discussion will consider how language processing models can be applied to advance research in sibling relationships and developmental science and recommend directions for future applications of LDA topic modeling.

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