‘Evaluate the usefulness of Bigelow and La Gaipa’s work for understanding children’s friendship’

One of the most prominent

research

about children’s understanding of

friendship

was conducted by Brian Bigelow and John La

Gaipa

in the 1970’s.

Friendship

is complex and it has different interpretations for different people.

Friendship

is seen differently in

children especially

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children, especially

the younger ones, as they grow older children becomes more complex as well as the meaning of

friendship

.

This

essay will

firstly

focus on the

work

of Bigelow and La

Gaipa

(1975) understanding children’s

friendship

such

as expectations from a best

friend

.

Secondly

, it will outline the

approach

of their

study

looking at the

research

method they used.

Lastly

, it will attempt to evaluate the usefulness of their

work

and look at the contemporary

research

on children’s

friendship

.

Finally

, it will aim to weigh all the arguments presented and provide a short summary of the points made. Understanding children’s

friendship

is far more complex than just defining what the concept means. The meaning of

friendship

in children changes as they grow, the qualities on a search for a

friend

becomes more profound. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

(1975) was the

first

to conduct

research

on children’s understanding of

friendship

at that time when it was an under-

research

Suggestion

researched

issue in Psychology. The main focus of Bigelow and La

Gaipa

(1975)

research

during that time was understanding children’s emotional relationship and what attracts them from one another (Brownlow,

C

., 2012). To understand the idea a bit more the two researchers looked at the distinction of

friendship

on several stages of child development. Younger children rely on parents for support and guidance,

this

is true on most occasions as parents are their

first

contact for help and comfort. As Philip Erwin (1988) noted that as children matures the

importance

of

friendship

changes. Friends acts as a powerful source of support for them cited in (Brownlow,

C

., 2012, pp. 240-241). Bigelow and La

Gaipa

(1975) proposed a three-

stage

model of development of

friendship

expectations. The

first

stage

looks at the significance of shared activities

such

as sports (for boys), the possibility of interacting with each

other

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other, such

such

as hanging out at the park or each other’s houses, so geographically closeness is very important. An example of

this

can be found on the teenagers discussion on

friendship

, one of the teenagers said that he wouldn’t necessarily

hangout

Suggestion

hang out

with the people he doesn’t see very often so he doesn’t consider them as best mates (The Open University, 2019). The

second

stage

of

friendship

expectations is the

transition focusing

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transition, focusing

on individual needs

such

as sharing confidential information about themselves, loyalty and commitment to each other. At

this

point they were able to make judgement and define the level of

friendship

they will have. The

third

stage

emphasizes the

importance

of commonness in attitudes, values and interests and the possibility of starting an intimate relationship as well as confiding. Children at

this

stage

have a very specific criteria in acknowledging a best

friend

. Listening to the teenagers discussion online, teenager 1 said that he wouldn’t necessarily confide in someone who he doesn’t know well enough like someone at college (The Open University, 2019). Obviously, the level of

friendship

is different at

this

point, the best mates are the ones he can confide in and

hangout

Suggestion

hang out

more often as opposed to the ones that just say hi every now and

then

. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

’s (1975)

research

helped gain an insight on understanding what the meaning of

friendship

for children really means.

Furthermore

, it supplied evidence regarding the children’s

friendship

and how it becomes more complex as they grow older. Bigelow and La

gaipa

informal term for objecting

gripe

(1975) used a very different

research

approach

compared to the previous

research

studies,

instead

of doing observations or administering questionnaires they collected their data in the form of written essays.

This

is called Content Analysis which is an

approach

used to examine written, audio and visual

material that

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material, that

involves identification as well as counting important information that can be used in answering

research

questions. They collected a large sample of 480 written essays from children (30 girls and 30 boys) between six and fourteen years

from

Suggestion

of

upper-working class and lower-middle class homes in Windsor, Ontario, Canada (Brownlow,

C

., 2012,

p

. 242). Before they started their

study

, they came up with a list of twenty-one

friendship

expectations.

This

was done in order to count how many times each expectation was

mentioned which

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mentioned, which

is

also

referred to as frequency count (Brownlow,

C

., 2012, pp. 242-243). Interestingly, Bigelow and La

Gaipa

(1975) found some important differences in the children’s expectations of

friendship

. Sixteen out of the original twenty-one expectations were more persistent based on the older children’s description

in contrast

to the younger ones (Brownlow, 2012,

p

. 243).

This

indicates that the children’s expectations of a best

friend

becomes

Suggestion

become

more sophisticated as they mature.

Then

, they were able to compare the children’s written essays to their list and used frequency counts to look for patterns in their data that would be useful in understanding about the changing nature of

friendship

in children. Not only that, they were

also

able to compare the samples in order to see the differences between boys and girls as well as younger and older children. The

importance

of doing it

this

way is because children, especially the young ones are able to express themselves better in

written

Suggestion

writing

form than expressing themselves out loud.

This

approach

is qualitative in nature.

However

, the researchers were able to transform the qualitative data into quantitative data through frequency counts (Brownlow, 2012,

p

. 245). The downside of doing

this

was that they lost the personal as well as the individual aspect of children’s account that didn’t fit in the category.

Nevertheless

, they were able to compare the differences between the groups

such

as age and gender. They found that in general,

by comparison

of gender the difference is insignificant.

For

example in

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example, in

an organised play boys tend to have more expectations than girls (Brownlow, 2012,

p

.244). Their decision to transform data from qualitative to quantitative data raised some questions

such

as using a very large sample and the preservation of the children’s accounts. It is important to remember that they came up with predetermined

friendship

expectations that were later used for comparison rather than individualised features.

Moreover

, they wanted to make generalisations about children’s

friendship

and develop a model that could be used in the wider population. It is

also

possible that there were some expectations that they might have missed

such

as the influence of culture in children’s expectations of

friendship

. One advantage of using

this

technique is that it illustrates how to transform a large sample of qualitative data to quantitative data using content analysis. The

work

of Bigelow and La

Gaipa

(1975) has shown

importance

in understanding the changing nature of

friendship

in children through the three-

stage

model of development in

friendship

expectations they develop using content analysis. Their contribution to

research

methods has been very useful and influential because it introduced the concept to the

research

of

Suggestion

on

children’s relationships. Their

research

study

on

Suggestion

of

children raised some questions on accuracy and

reliability

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reliability, however

however

, with the evidence they provided they were able to prove that the purpose of

this

method was to make

generalisation

Suggestion

generalisations

a generalisation

the generalisation

therefore

it can be used in a wider population. Weighing the arguments presented their

work

have been useful at that time of their

study

despite of the limitations of their

study

,