Possibilities of the Sibling Postcard dataset: What’s important for researchers to know about their brothers and sisters?

 

Possibilities of the Sibling Postcard dataset: What’s important for researchers to know about their brothers and sisters?

Ros Edwards and Susie Weller

 

What do people think is important for researchers to know about their sisters and brothers?  If you’d like to know the answer to this question, and to undertake some qualitative secondary analysis, then the Sibling Postcard data set is recently deposited in the Timescapes Archive and available for reuse.

What are Sibling Postcards?

The original idea of asking people to ‘Please tell us about your brothers and sisters’ by submitting a written postcard came about as part of a public engagement exercise that we conducted with Joanna Bornat and Bill Bytheway.  Joanna and Bill were colleagues involved in the original ESRC Timescapes Initiative projects – they were studying the Oldest Generation, while at the other end of the lifecourse we focused on children and young people’s lateral, sibling and friendshiprelations.

The four of us collaborated on a separate engagement initiative, asking the public to submit ‘postcards’ to tell us about their siblings as part of an annual week-long UK-based ‘Festival of Social Science’ series of events in March 2008.  People could either complete an electronic postcard via a website (which we advertised through leaflets, email lists, chat groups, on email sign-offs, etc.) or a paper postcard (at displays in offices, schools, libraries, and care homes).

In one week, we received just under 800 postcard responses from children and adults, two-thirds of them via the online portal.  While hard copy postcard writers were constrained by the minimal size of the postcard, online writers could submit longer descriptions of their siblings, over 1000 words in some cases.  We had clearly struck a chord about an aspect of people’s family relationships that they felt motivated to tell us about in their own terms.

Writer characteristics

Both the online and hard copy versions of the postcard had three entry fields for writers to complete about themselves and each of their siblings: tickbox gender, dates of birth and death, and a free text box for information.  Unfortunately, only binary choice male/female categories were provided for gender, common practice at the time.

Just over half of the postcard writers were middle-aged (roughly 30 to 60 years old, although a third of the responses were from children and young adults (we suspect the very youngest were aided by a parent).  The majority were female – as others have found, women are far more likely than men to participate in studies concerned with family and intimacy issues.  Postcard writers overwhelmingly listed their siblings in age order.  We didn’t ask writers to provide their race or ethnicity, but quite a few thought to mention a minority ethnicity or non-UK nationality so we can say that they’re a relatively ethnically diverse set of writers.  Maybe unsurprisingly, where writers mentioned their employment there were quite a few academics, likely related to email sign-off and academic discussion group routes that we used to publicise the Sibling Postcard exercise.

Example of a completed hard copy postcard

Indicative postcard content

For the public engagement exercise our team wrote up a cursory overview of the postcard material, available through the Timescapes Archive, but the data set is ripe for more analysis.

Recurrent topics covered include, unsurprisingly, information about family structure, sibling relatedness (biological, step, half, social), and/or sibling birth order; geographically where they and their siblings have lived and are living; sisters and brothers leaving or remaining in the parental home; job or profession or aspiration; education and qualification details; housing situation; health status; pets; and death of a sibling or in the siblings’ own family.  There are also references to physical and personality characteristics, and discussion of the quality of the writer’s relationships with their sisters and brothers.  The information that writers provided was not necessarily about brothers’ and sisters’ childhoods in the case of adults.  Rather, the here-and now-was what writers tended to judge as important for researchers to know about their siblings’ circumstances.

            Below we provide three illustrations of postcard content:

Male (postcard writer)	Age: 58	Academic economist brought up near Heathrow Airport in West London, father from Hampshire mother Scotland (both deceased). Brought up in family home which I left at 18 to live elsewhere from in London. Got emotionally closer to brother after mother's death 7 years ago
Male (brother)	62	Civil engineer working in oil industry for many years married with two children and has worked overseas most of his professional life brought in family home and left at 22 when first married

Online postcard no. 304

 

Female (postcard writer)	Age: 27	I am a Canadian but live in the UK now. I am a writer.
Male (brother)	32, born 1975	My older brother is a wonderful and kind man. He has been married for over a year now and I adore his wife as well. I think she is a perfect match for him and that is saying a lot since he is a complex person. They are expecting their first baby in August and it is huge excitement for my family. My brother is very generous and loving but has a sensitive soul and is often disappointed in things. He grew up with three younger sisters so I think he really understands women very well. He has a great sense of humour, is a wonderful story teller, and is extremely intelligent. He is a very talented writer and clearly has the personality of a novelist but suffers a bit from first child syndrome so became a high achiever and is a lawyer in New York. I am still hoping that he will write novels one day as I believe it would make him much happier than he is now.
Female (sister)	30, born 1977	My older sister is like a rock for me. She is kind, generous and understanding and she is constantly sacrificing herself for everyone else around her. She is the unofficial head of our family as she is a business woman and so she is extremely well organized and hard working. She sends out all the reminders about birthdays, etc. Sometimes I worry that it is a burden for her and she doesn't think about herself enough. I know that she has a deep sensitive side to her and she doesn’t show it to very many people. I can't tell if she is completely happy but I am pleased that more recently she has started a new job where she finally has some free time. She spends her time doing a million other things, visiting with my mom and dad, coaching a sports team, playing on a sports team, taking tennis lessons. She is truly an excellent coach and leader. I know she enjoys all these things and I am so happy for her that she finally has the time, as her last job was very demanding. I am so grateful to have her because I know there is always someone I can count on in this world.
Male (brother)	26, born 1982	My younger brother is quite a wonder. We adopted him when he was nine. This is why I think he is a wonder because he had quite a difficult childhood and he has turned into a terrific man. He is very kind and very relaxed and one of the most well liked guys I have known. He works very hard and is doing well at his job, often receiving promotions. I think he will end up being very successful in his company. He has a girlfriend whom I don't know very well but she seems kind and he is happy so I am glad. Sometimes I don't understand certain things about him but it is only because we are very different characters. When I see him though, I feel his kindness and I am proud of the man he is becoming.
Female (sister)	23, born 1983, died 2007	My youngest sister is my best friend. She was killed in a car accident in May of last year and I am absolutely devastated. She was an actress, living in London, and she was just about to start her first play on the London stage. We shared a room our whole lives and we grew together in so many ways. Even though we were separated by three years, we were like twins. She is half of my soul really. My sister was beautiful, athletic, and an extremely talented actress. More importantly, however, she was the most special person I have ever known. She had an unusual way of making people feeling extremely loved and supported. She was like our family cheerleader. She was also absurdly funny and I find I laugh so much less now without her humour in my life. She gave me so many things and my life is so much less without her in it. I am so grateful to have had a best friend like her and I am forever grateful that she died instantly, and doesn't know that we are apart. I know my sister would have been a star because she was a truly gifted person and the world will never know what it has lost. I feel this loss with every breathe I take. It is very difficult when the person who knows you best is no longer on this earth.

Online postcard no. 694

Female (postcard writer)	Age: 12
Female (sister)	Born 1983	Kind but sometimes moany
Male (brother)	Born 2007	Crying a lot
Female (sister)	Born 2002	Very annoying

            Online postcard no. 65

Conclusion

Much of the data collected on sibling relationships, whether concerned with outcomes and adjustment or everyday relational processes, is shaped by interaction with researchers (including our own Timescapes Siblings and Friends project).  In surveys, researchers pre-determine the questions about self and siblings, and even in in-depth interview research on sibling perspectives, discussions about interdependencies, conflicts, etc. are elicited from participants through interaction with the researcher.  In some contrast, the written postcard material isn’t formed by and with researchers beyond the question and postcard format.  It’s a framing that’s unshaped by ongoing interaction with researchers beyond the initial, open, written question.  The archived postcards dataset then contains the information about their siblings, whether child or adult, that postcard writers felt was meaningful enough to convey.

In addition to use of the Sibling Postcard dataset for qualitative secondary analysis; there’s also the possibilities of the postcard exercise as an intentional data generation method.  In our experience, the online postcards facility in particular enables speedy reach and response – even more so with the growth in social media outlets than was available to us in 2008.  We can envisage the use of online postcard submission as an initial ‘co-productive’ phase in qualitative projects, bringing people’s own ideas of significant knowledge into the research endeavour.  Entries to the postcard exercise could inform research perspectives on the substantive topics and framings before designing data generation methods and entry into the field.

Rosalind Edwards is Professor of Sociology, SSPC, at the University of Southampton UK, and Susie Weller is a Senior Research Fellow in CELS, Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford.  Their mapping analysis of the Sibling Postcard dataset, co-authored with Luisa Weissberg, is published in the Family Research Journal (2026).

 

Acknowledgement

The original postcard public engagement exercise was funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council’s Timescapes Initiative, under grant number RES 437 25 0003.