Differential sibling environments and their influences on educational attainment

Abstract

Four-hundred and eighteen female and male adult offspring completed the Sibling Inventory of Differential Experience (SIDE), by reporting average differences and similarities between themselves and their sibling in their growing up and living at home experiences, as well as responded to measures of personality and demographic information. High alpha reliabilities were obtained for the SIDE (ranging from 0.67 to 0.90). No significant associations of gender, age, birth-order, test site, marital status, or ethnic group with responses to the SIDE were noted. Only 202 of the initial 418 participants had also responded to measures of cognitive abilities. Only these 202 individual offspring had provided sufficient data for further analyses. Thus, hierarchical multiple regression analysis procedures were utilized for these participants to study the effects of perceived differential environmental influences on attainment levels. First the effect of parental influence was partial led out, followed by the effects of offspring's cognitive abilities and personality, and lastly the effect of the SIDE measure was accounted for in the model. The overall results indicate that about 27% of the variance in offspring educational attainment level was accounted for by the linear combination of parental variables, cognitive abilities and personality, and SIDE measure. The SIDE measure's individual contribution to the model accounted for about 8% of the variance over and above parental influences, own cognitive abilities and personality influences. Correlates of attainment were found to differ between ethnic and gender groups. Parental variables had more significant effects on Japanese offspring attainment than for Caucasian offspring. While the SIDE accounted for more explained variance in the Japanese group, own cognitive abilities and personality accounted for more variance in the Caucasian group. Gender differences were also noted in a greater influence of parental variables for female than male attainment. SIDE accounted for more variance in female attainment level, while own cognitive abilities and personality accounted for more variance in male attainment.