Birth Orders Effect on Non-Suicidal Self-Injury and Perceived Parental Support

Sammanfattning: In this study we investigated the effects of birth order and gender on nonsuicidalself-injury and perceived parental support. This study’s main purposewas to challenge the current use of birth order in psychology. The studyincluded a short questionnaire assessing birth order, gender, perceived parentalsupport and non-suicidal self-injury. The questionnaire was distributed throughan online survey among young adults attending a university in a medium sizedcity in Sweden (N = 202). To explore the perceived parental support, we usedThe Social Provisions scale and non-suicidal self-injury was assessed by theDeliberate Self-harm Inventory, short 9-item scale. The results of these studiesshowed that birth order had no significant effect on non-suicidal self-injury orperceived parental support. On the other hand, the results suggested that genderhad a significant effect on non-suicidal self-injury, with females engaging onnon-suicidal injury more frequently than men. This contradicts earlier studieswhere no effect of gender has been present in young adults. Gender had noapparent effect on perceived parental support.