Autism Research and Treatment 3 Table 1: Participants’ demographic information. Sibling with ASD age and gender Number of family members Marital status of parents 7, M 6, M 11, F 7, M 12, M 10, M 9, M 14, M 15, M 15, M 13, M 9, M Participant sibling name Cloe Morris Hanna James Cabot Mitch Breanna Jared RaeEllen Ruby Asia Mera Participant sibling age and gender 7, F (Twin) 7, M 8, F 8, M 10, M 10, M (Twin) 11, F 11, M 12, F 14, F 14, F 15, M Note: M: male, F: female. collective descriptions of them since they were the focus of the interviews with their siblings. See Table 1 for a summary of participants’ demographic characteristics. We learned quite a bit about our participants during the 1 : 1 interviews. Our intent in this report is to summarize characteristics of our participant siblings, their families, their siblings with ASDs that became evident throughout the interviews. We don’t assume generalization of our sample beyond these particular participant siblings. 2.3. Interviews. A member of the research team conducted a semistructured, individual, face-to-face interview with each participant sibling at a place and a time convenient for the family. Parents and participant siblings signed parent per- mission and child assent forms prior to engaging in their interviews. Each interview lasted about 45 minutes and in- cluded the following open-ended questions: (a) Tell me about you and about your family; (b) Describe your relation- ships with (name of brother/sister with ASD); (c) What is the best part of being a sibling to (name of brother/sister with ASD)? (d) What are some diﬃcult parts of being a sibling to (name of brother/sister with ASD)? (e) What helps you handle the diﬃcult parts/situations? and (f) Can you think of other things that may help you? 2.4. Data Analysis. We audiotaped all interviews, transcribed them for analysis, and entered information such as time, date, and location. Each researcher independently line-by- line coded each interview, and we entered all codes into NVivo7 software [31]. We developed a coding system by noting words and phrases that represented topics and patterns in the data [32]. Next, we met as a team to discuss the codes, identify emergent themes, and reach concordance on the organization of major categories. We used a ﬂexible standard of categories that is, we adjusted our categories as we analyzed in depth data from each case [33]. As cate- gories emerged, we segmented the data into simpler, general categories in order to expand and tease out the data for 3 4 4 10 5 4 3 4 5 7 4 6 Divorced Married Married Married Married Divorced Divorced Married Married Married Married Married interpretation [30, 33]. We used NVivo 7 [31], a data management software program, to organize the coded data and the themes that emerged from the data, and to retrieve the quotes that we used to illustrate participants’ responses. Our documentation provides a clear audit trail that allowed us to “claim dependable and conﬁrmable results” [26, page 201]. 3. Findings Our themes emerged from our data, and as we analyzed the relation among our major themes we found them to be reﬂective of family systems theory [5]. Speciﬁcally, our par- ticipant siblings described their sibling subsystem and sibling interactions which clearly reﬂected the tenets of cohesion and adaptability from family systems theory. Accordingly, we used the “lens” of family systems theory to analyze relations among our themes and the following three themes emerged: (a) descriptions of the sibling subsystem, (b) cohesion bet- ween and among the siblings, and (c) adaptability of the par- ticipant siblings to having family members with ASDs. These themes are interrelated, dynamic, and recursive in nature, as portrayed in family systems theory. For example, if a partici- pant sibling described eﬀective adaptability, s/he also des- cribed improvement in cohesion with a sibling with an ASD and/or described an improved relationship with that sibling. Consequently, we want to emphasize the connectedness among the themes we discuss and are providing a graphic representation of our ﬁndings in Figure 1. 3.1. Characteristics of Participant Siblings. Most of these par- ticipant siblings strove for academic success, wanting to do well in school. The older siblings were somewhat involved in their siblings’ education—one had attended a parent/teacher conference; another volunteered at her sibling’s summer camp. Socially, these participant siblings ranged from one who described herself as a “social butterﬂy” to those who said they had no friends. Our sample included interviewees who