360— Caribbean College Students’ Perceptions of Sibling Relationships: The Role of Culture and Identity

This qualitative research examines the sibling relationships and cultural identity processes of five Caribbean college students with one or more siblings. Participants were recruited through college-affiliated email listservs and word of mouth. Participants ages 18-24 with various gender identities, self-identified as Caribbean. The data were collected during individual interviews after completing demographic questionnaires. All interview transcripts were reviewed and coded by at least three researchers. Exploratory coding methods prior to first-cycle coding acted as the most appropriate coding method (Saldaña, 2013, pp. 63-64). Initial and in vivo coding layers were applied to the primary data set. Using guidelines for Thematic Analysis by Braun and Clark (2006, pp. 86-93), all codes were collated into three themes. The first theme highlights Caribbean parenting styles and the impact on their sibling relationships. The second theme showed intersections in familial values between Caribbean identity and sibling relationships. The final theme examines differential sibling expectations within their family. These emergent themes revealed that Caribbean culture influences sibling relationships and identity through parenting styles, familial values, and differential sibling expectations. Future research using focus group data would further strengthen these findings and offer research to the scant literature on Caribbean sibling relationships during emerging adulthood.