A Systematic Review of the Literature on Sibling Violence and Peer Victimization

Background

Despite estimates indicating that sibling assault impacts approximately 30% of children every year (Finkelhor, Turner, Shattuck, & Hamby, 2015), research on the topic is lacking. The amount of research and literature on physical and emotional sibling violence is far outnumbered by the amount of research and literature on peer bullying and victimization, even though a national study of children and adolescents conducted by Finkelhor, Turner, and Ormrod (2006) found that physical sibling violence occurred more often than peer violence. In this same study, sibling violence was found to be more chronic in nature, yet children and youth more frequently reported injuries resulting from peer violence. Given the potential deleterious effects of both forms of violence, as well as the differences between the two, efforts to understand how research has examined both forms of violence are warranted. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature that included both physical and emotional sibling violence and peer victimization.   

Methodology

Using the guidelines provided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA; Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009), the purpose of this systematic review was: to explore how research has examined sibling violence and peer victimization within the same study, ascertain and compare sample characteristics and measures from these studies, and to determine the overall strengths and limitations of this body of research. Online databases including PsycARTICLES, Elsevier, JSTOR, PLoS, MEDLINE/Pubmed, and others were used to find peer-reviewed articles. Inclusion criteria required articles to include both sibling and peer violence. Searching terms included but were not limited to “peer victimization,” “peer violence,” “polyvictimization,” as a title keyword with "sibling" used as an overall keyword. The search resulted in 271 initial articles which were then examined for consistency with inclusion criteria, resulting in 34 articles included in the analysis.   

Results

Analysis of the articles found substantial discrepancies in how articles combined and distinguished between sibling and peer violence. For those articles that combined sibling violence and peer violence into one variable (i.e. peer/sibling victimization), justification for combining was not provided. For those articles that distinguished between sibling and peer violence, more incidents of justification were provided. When considering the demographics within the articles, all articles included children as participants except for those studies using the Juvenile Victimization Survey, in which parents reported for children aged 2-9. For many of the studies parental education, family income, and ethnicity were not reported, nor were definitions included regarding the terms used to refer to sibling and peer victimization.

Conclusion

The results highlight the need for research to distinguish sibling violence from peer victimization. While both forms of violence often occur between children/adolescents and can influence the occurrence of the other form of violence (Duncan, 1999; Tucker, Finkelhor, Turner, & Shattuck, 2014), each type of violence likely happens in a different context. Given the substantial differences between sibling and peer violence (Finkelhor, Turner, & Ormrod, 2006), efforts to distinguish between the two will help in conceptualizing social work interventions aimed at addressing both.