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Hello there,
a friend of mine is making a school research paper on psychology topic, regarding the effect of number of person's siblings to depression rate.
So far the results show the following :
- If you exactly two siblings, the average rate of depression is the lowest.
- If you have no siblings the rate of depression is higher.
- The highest depression rate is found when people have exactly one sibling.
Side-notes :
- the sample people were psychology students(mostly women)
- Results for people with more than two siblings are incomplete and not significant because the quantity in this group was too low.
- The results do not take into account or no relation was found between age(older sibling/younger sibling).
How would you interpret these results?
By your observation do you find the results to be true?
Why is the person with exactly 1 sibling most prone to depressions?
 
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Surveys are pretty unreliable. Since there is no information on age, I have to ask if there is information on sex?
Also, on depression, I don't suppose there's a time frame they asked when the subject's depression occured?
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I think your friend should read a good nationwide study done by people with experience in the field, before interpreting results from a small sample that could be entirely wrong.
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How would you interpret these results?
I think the only reason that the one sibling person is more depressed is because they only have one person to compare their achievements (i.e. grades, sports, girlfriends/boyfriends) with, so they really don't have a solid view of what is good and what is bad. This said, the only reason that children without siblings are less prone to depression is because they lack a reference point, so they are ignorant compared to children with siblings, and are left to fend with their own intellect alone. Any child with 2 or more siblings will have more reference points, therefor they will have sharper comparisons (although I would have thought that having multiple "better" siblings would only make you feel more depressed).
By your observation do you find the results to be true?
Yes, I find them to be true (although every case differs, and I think raw data regarding psychology is unreliable).
Why is the person with exactly 1 sibling most prone to depressions?
As stated in response to your first question, they have less refined self confidence derived from inferior reference points compared to those held by children with 2+ siblings.
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What is this supposed to be useful for at this point? Encourage parents to get 3 kids?
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2 siblings + 1 you = 3 races of StarCraft
Any less, something is missing. Any more, someone is bound to play your race.
And now for serious business:
Basically agree with Endymion. With only 1 sibling, you don't have enough info to get proper world picture. If you get compared to your sibling and you come short, you might interpret it in a self-defeating way, but when you see that same sibling compared to the other sibling in the same way, you see that that's just how things go.
I'd also like to point out that 4+ siblings probably again leads to increase in depression rates, because there's simply not enough parenting to fill everyone's needs.
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On June 03 2010 18:54 niteReloaded wrote:
2 siblings + 1 you = 3 races of StarCraft
Any less, something is missing. Any more, someone is bound to play your race.
And now for serious business:
Basically agree with Endymion. With only 1 sibling, you don't have enough info to get proper world picture. If you get compared to your sibling and you come short, you might interpret it in a self-defeating way, but when you see that same sibling compared to the other sibling in the same way, you see that that's just how things go.
I'd also like to point out that 4+ siblings probably again leads to increase in depression rates, because there's simply not enough parenting to fill everyone's needs.
well the last case wouldn't be necessarily true.
We are 5 kids in the family (2 boys 3 girls), my mom does not work in an office (she takes care of fam. business) so she gets to stay with us most of the time. Of course she couldn't check up on us 24/7 so we step in to fill the needs of our younger siblings..:D Actually my youngest sister (7) has been the most independent of us 5..
Maybe it's a case to case basis though..:D
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On June 03 2010 18:41 Endymion wrote:
How would you interpret these results?
I think the only reason that the one sibling person is more depressed is because they only have one person to compare their achievements (i.e. grades, sports, girlfriends/boyfriends) with, so they really don't have a solid view of what is good and what is bad. This said, the only reason that children without siblings are less prone to depression is because they lack a reference point, so they are ignorant compared to children with siblings, and are left to fend with their own intellect alone. Any child with 2 or more siblings will have more reference points, therefor they will have sharper comparisons (although I would have thought that having multiple "better" siblings would only make you feel more depressed).
You came so close to an epiphany then missed it.
If you have one sibling... one is better one is worse. 50% is happy 50% is unhappy.
If you have two or more siblings... one is the worst and the others are happy..
66% happy 33% happy..
People with more than 1 sibling will seem to be happier because 2/3 times you are getting the non-crappy siblings 
For having no siblings people always doubt themselves and you would be lonely too so it's natural that they would be kinda depressed, but not I have 1 sibling who is better than me 100% concrete yes I'm depressed.
I'm not saying people are better than each other I'm just crudely referring to the bold text above.
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On June 03 2010 18:39 Sadistx wrote:
I think your friend should read a good nationwide study done by people with experience in the field, before interpreting results from a small sample that could be entirely wrong.
this
pretty hard to reliably interpret results for a study like this with anything but a huuuge sample
it really also depends on your measure of depression and what not
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Belgium9949 Posts
Yeah, cause doing a depression study on psychology students is reliable. Half of them are studying it to help themselves, not other people.
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- The two siblings kind of makes sense because more company means less loneliness.
- The one sibling I have no idea.
- The fact that they were psych majors AND mostly women probably makes the results pretty much useless (should have a wider variety as far as using them for test samples - men and students in other majors).
On a side note, I have one younger brother and I haven't been depressed about anything, angry, yeah for sure, but never depressed.
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On June 03 2010 21:33 RaGe wrote:
Yeah, cause doing a depression study on psychology students is reliable. Half of them are studying it to help themselves, not other people.
Yeah I kind of agree with you.
Though it's just a school paper and the pop. sample, diversity is limited, interesting results may be found. And these results may thereafter be observed on a larger scale and tested whether or not it works like this in general(for specific population).
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Very, very surprised that one sibling is most likely to be depressed. I would think either no siblings (lonely) or too many (not enough attention, disconnected) would be the problem. Myself and my brother are very close and it's great 
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Considering that it's a survey of only psychology students and it is done probably by an undergraduate psychology major, you can pretty much just completely ignore the results.
Assuming the results are accurate, perhaps depressed people are most likely to have 2 children for whatever reason.
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Well i had 1 sibling(older, sister) - and I suffered from depression a lot.
However, my sister did not - and clearly she also had 1 sibling.
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I have one sister and she had clinical depression. I turned out fine I dont know what the fuck is wrong with her, all she does is bitch and whine and cry. She's 5 years older than me. We fought pretty much non stop while growing up.
My guess is people with one sibling are more likely to feel they are the "least" liked or "worst" sibling because there is only one person for comparison, whereas if you there is more than 2 there are more points of reference so you are less likely to feel that way.
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On June 03 2010 18:41 Endymion wrote:
How would you interpret these results?
I think the only reason that the one sibling person is more depressed is because they only have one person to compare their achievements (i.e. grades, sports, girlfriends/boyfriends) with, so they really don't have a solid view of what is good and what is bad. This said, the only reason that children without siblings are less prone to depression is because they lack a reference point, so they are ignorant compared to children with siblings, and are left to fend with their own intellect alone. Any child with 2 or more siblings will have more reference points, therefor they will have sharper comparisons (although I would have thought that having multiple "better" siblings would only make you feel more depressed).
By your observation do you find the results to be true?
Yes, I find them to be true (although every case differs, and I think raw data regarding psychology is unreliable).
Why is the person with exactly 1 sibling most prone to depressions?
As stated in response to your first question, they have less refined self confidence derived from inferior reference points compared to those held by children with 2+ siblings.
I'm sorry to pick on you because almost everyone else in the thread is going along the same lines of thought.
However, consider this:
1. How many people have more than one sibling?
2. How many people have 0 siblings? Probably more than in 1.
3. How many people have exactly 1 sibling? Probably more than in 2.
In other words, my skeptical side says that the sibling-only correlation is not strong enough in itself to suggest the conclusions reached. If you have a certain sample of students with 10% belonging to 1, 30% belonging to 2, and 60% belonging to 3, results could easily be skewed by the distribution properties. You have to consider each set (1,2,3) as statistically independent and need a proper sample size for each individual set.
Just a thought.
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I get depressed when I'm not making good grades or have to pay $640 for a month's rent and then $130 for the electric bill T_T FML
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As an aspiring research psychologist (~2 months from my MA), I wonder what the effect size is for that. Also, if the people who participated were in a specific psychology class (such as developmental) that would almost certainly bias the sample. I'm guessing the measure used was the BDI (pretty much the standard). Personally, I wouldn't take these results as meaningful until this was replicated on a more general sample, such as intro psych students (research has shown they're good enough for stuff like this). Also, group size factors could play into this. If the sample was 30 and only a few people fell into one category, you can't make any real conclusions. Finally, trying to attribute causation is pretty much pointless without having more data. Constructing testable models of causality are not a trivial task. If you can link to the paper (or even better, the dataset), I would love to take a look at it.
Don't take this post the wrong way, it sounds like this was a well done study for undergraduate research. I'm more trying to explain some of the shortcomings to people not familiar with psychological research.
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8 siblings and am like never ever depressed.
Like I'm a very happy person for no real reason.
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On June 04 2010 06:17 punkideas wrote:
As an aspiring research psychologist (~2 months from my MA), I wonder what the effect size is for that. Also, if the people who participated were in a specific psychology class (such as developmental) that would almost certainly bias the sample. I'm guessing the measure used was the BDI (pretty much the standard). Personally, I wouldn't take these results as meaningful until this was replicated on a more general sample, such as intro psych students (research has shown they're good enough for stuff like this). Also, group size factors could play into this. If the sample was 30 and only a few people fell into one category, you can't make any real conclusions. Finally, trying to attribute causation is pretty much pointless without having more data. Constructing testable models of causality are not a trivial task. If you can link to the paper (or even better, the dataset), I would love to take a look at it.
Don't take this post the wrong way, it sounds like this was a well done study for undergraduate research. I'm more trying to explain some of the shortcomings to people not familiar with psychological research.
He is well aware of most of these things, it's the stuff learned in methodology classes.
I'll try to ask him for the data, if I get them I'll give you a look.
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On June 04 2010 00:57 travis wrote:
Well i had 1 sibling(older, sister) - and I suffered from depression a lot.
However, my sister did not - and clearly she also had 1 sibling.
yea I'm curious about this too. If the position(eldest,middle, youngest etc) is a significant factor. Or say, difference in age between siblings.
As for the original q, Im gonna totally guess the following "possible effects":
More Siblings
-more companionship
-maybe correlation of rich people->better quality of life (ie they can afford kids)
Or maybe its people that can't afford it that had an accident->miserable +underfunded.
Less Siblings
happy:
-undivided parents' attention/resources. Could be good, or could cause more pressure.
- need to develop social skills to make external friends-> variety of friends.
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If you honestly think you are depressed you are a sissy.
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I have 3 siblings, are we imaginary or is this survey incomplete?
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EPT
