Hi, my name is Charlene. I'm a fourth year undergraduate majoring in psychology at the National University of Singapore. I'm sending this email to you because I'm in urgent need for participants for my research at NUS. I'm conducting research on sibling adjustment to illness experience in the family. Specifically, I'm interested in how the psychological wellbeing of the child with chronic illnesses and that of his or her siblings is associated. I'm also examining how child and sibling adjustment can be related to sibling resilience, perceptions of the illness experience as well as closeness and conflict between siblings in the family. I hope to draw a cross cultural comparison between families in the UK and Singapore.

Findings generated from the study can be very important because they could not only raise awareness to some of these issues that can be overlooked, but also contribute to improvements in interventions designed to meet the needs of families of children with chronic illnesses. Research findings will be provided to support groups for children with chronic illness, not only cancer, so that the social workers can work on them.

Currently, I'm looking for participants to answer some of my questionnaires for my study. I urgently need many families to come forward because accuracy of research findings hinges a lot on a large sample. Moreover, the respectable numbers will enable me to conduct certain statistical analysis that could provide a lot more insight.

I would appreciate if you could participate in my research. The questionnaires can be sent via email to the UK. Postage back to Singapore and other administrative fees will be reimbursed. Findings will be shared with your support group.

The process involves filling in a couple of forms and will not take more than 30 minutes. It involves one parent and a sibling. I need families with at least two children, one of whom is a child with illness. The child with illness has to be between the age of 4-16, whereas the sibling has to be between the age of 8-18. Siblings and parents will be answering several questionnaires.

Please help in my research. I would really appreciate all the help I can get. Thanks so much!

Warmest regards,

Charlene Chen

Department of Social Work and Psychology

National University of Singapore

P/S: Please inform me if you require some form of verification from my professor.