The impact of sibling status on Chinese college students' quality of life

The World Health Organization Quality of Life-100 (WHOQOL-100, Power, Harper, Bullinger, & WHO1QLG), the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (Zhang, 1993), and the Self-Rating Depression Scale (Zhang, 1993) were used to determine whether Chinese college students from only child and sibling child families rated perceptions of their quality of life differently. Small to moderate significant differences were found when comparing only students to sibling students on the WHOQOL-100 with no significant differences on measures of anxiety and depression. These results suggest that only child students do not differ greatly from sibling students in terms of their overall perceptions of their quality of life. A unique characteristic of this study was that we targeted older college students born after implementation of the 1-child-per-family policy in China. Also, self-rating instruments were used to gain a greater holistic understanding of the emotional well-being, physical state, and social functioning of students. Several psychosocial and economic reasons, including methodological issues related to this study’s findings, are discussed.