SIBLING RELATIONSHIP WITH AUTISTIC SPECTRUM DISORDER AND EMOTIONAL & HUMAN DEVELOPMENT

This study focused on the sibling relationship with autism and the emotional and behavioral development of the typically developed sibling and how the strength of the sibling relationship give impacts towards the emotional and behavioral development. A total of 64 respondents of sibling with autism across Sabah had participated in this study by using the purposive sampling. In this study, siblings with autism across Sabah completed self-reported questionnaires which is the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. The Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression were conducted to analyse the collected data. The results showed that emotional and behavioral difficulties such as internalization and externalization were significantly correlated with strength of the sibling relationships (both positive and negative relationship). In addition, negative relationship of the sibling also shown to be more dominant in giving impact on the emotional and behavioral development of the typically developed sibling. It is recommended that this study is to be conducted using a qualitative method and added more variables to enhance the findings of this study