Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop an Italian version of the Sibling Relationship Inventory (SRI) and to examine its psychometric properties. The Sibling Relationship Inventory was developed by Stocker and McHale (1992) to evaluate the quality of sibling relationship during middle childhood and pre-adolescence. The Italian version was administered to 436 children, aged 6-12 years, 209 first-born and 227 second-born. The sample was divided in two groups to perform a cross-validation procedure. Explorative factorial analysis, performed on the first half of the sample, showed the original three factors structure explaining the 51,3% of variance: Affection, Rivality and Conflict with a significant positive correlation between Conflict and Rivality. The internal consistence of these dimensions was acceptable ( Affection = .84, alfa Rivality = .81, alfa Conflict = .59) and the test-retest reliability was satisfactory (ranging from .77 for Affection to .66 for Conflict). Confirmative analysis showed a good fit of the model (CFI = .88, NNFI = .86, RMSEA = .06) encouraging the use of the SRI on Italian population.