‘I Felt they were Ganging up on me’: Interviewing Siblings at Home

Abstract

The paper explores the methodological implications and some of the intergenerational and intra-generational power relations involved when carrying out research with children at home. It draws on data from individual and group interviews about children's experiences of sibling relationships and birth order. The study was conducted with 90 children between the ages of 5 and 17, from 30 families of mixed socio-economic backgrounds in central Scotland with three siblings within this age range. The paper discusses some task-based interview techniques as well as the advantages and disadvantages of interviewing siblings individually and in groups within the home setting.

Individual and Sibling Characteristics: Parental Differential Treatment and Adolescent Externalizing Behaviors

“…Further, older and younger siblings have been shown to be unique populations with differences in perception and sensitivity to parental differential treatment (Feinberg et al, 2000), and so we examined older and younger siblings separately. Finally, because sibling relationships are often characterized by both closeness and conflict simultaneously (Kramer, 2010; Punch, 2007), and to enhance interpretability of multiple moderators, we created a categorical variable for sibling relationship quality that included a) high affect marked by high closeness and high conflict, b) primarily positive marked by high closeness and low conflict, c) primarily negative marked by low closeness and high conflict, and d) low affect low closeness and conflict, and conducted models separately for each type of sibling relationship.…”

`Barter', `Deals', `Bribes' and `Threats'

“…This stage informed the design of semistructured interviews and, along with some additional snowballing, enabled access to be negotiated with 30 families. Each of the 90 siblings were interviewed individually in their homes, followed by 30 focus group interviews with all three siblings together, using a range of brainstorming tools including 4 spider diagrams, lists and ranking exercises (see Punch, 2007). The key themes explored were the positive and negative aspects of sibship and their birth order position, shared activities, household responsibilities, coping with conflict and parental interventions, and comparing sibling relations with friendship and the child-parent relationship.…”

Reflections on Researching With Children Using “Family Group Interviews” as Part of a Qualitative Longitudinal Study

“…(Anna). As other researchers have found in similar situations (Bushin, 2009;Punch, 2007), AM found it difficult to take control in order to redress the power imbalance without this perhaps being interpreted as undermining the parents. On another occasion, a father commented on how AM was facilitating the group, telling her that she should give the children more direction.…”

“…Specifically, there is a concern that interviewing children with parents present may result in a silencing or a dilution of children's voices. Punch (2005) highlights how, within everyday family life, differential power relations exist between children and parents as compared to children and siblings, contributing to children exerting more selfcontrol and demonstrating greater respect within the context of parental relationships while sibling relationships, albeit still characterized by power dynamics (Punch, 2007), enable a more open expression of thoughts and feelings. Thus, an attempt to guard against the potential overpowering and policing of children's voices by parents or other adult family members underlies the lack of research conducted with children and parents together (Holland et al, 1996).…”

“…It is impossible to know whether these "questions" would have been asked in the course of day-to-day family life and if they would have been asked in the same ways, or if the family interviews gave children and parents a space in which to raise these issues. Nevertheless, these interactions provided us with a different perspective, which we would not have accessed had we only conducted individual interviews (Bushin, 2009;Eggenberger & Nelms, 2007;Irwin & Johnson, 2005;Punch, 2007).…”