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

There was limited understanding of the phenomenon of

friendship

. The role of friends and the potential influences of friends on the behaviour of children, had been under researched in the field of psychology. Brian Bigelow and John La

Gaipa

a constitutional monarchy occupying the Japanese Archipelago; a world leader in electronics and automobile manufacture and ship building

Japan

in 1975, conducted

research

on the changes in the way children perceive and define

friendship

throughout the different stages of development.

This

essay will evaluate the usefulness of these findings and the influence the

research

had on understanding children’s friendships. To understand and define the term

friendship

is very difficult because

this

is subjective and means different things to different people.

This

is

also

dependent on what stage people are in life. The role of

friendship

and influence of peers changes with age. Parents and carers are replaced by peers as the main source of support as children get older.

(

Accept space

(

reference

Suggestion

Reference

) Bigelow and La

Gaipa

wanted to explore how children defined

friendship

at different stages. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

(

reference

) used content analysis to conduct the study of children’s

friendship

. Children between the ages of six and fourteen, were asked to write an essay on the expectations of their best friend of the same sex, and how

this

expectation differed from other friends and acquaintances. A total of 480 essays was collected from 8 schools based in Canada, 30 boys and 30 girls were selected from each.

This

method had limitations as it was more suited to older children who had the capability to express their emotions and expectations in writing. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

recognised

this

limitation, and even stated that younger children, may lack the verbal and written skills to effectively discuss expectations in an essay format.

(

Accept space

(

reference

Suggestion

Reference

pg

one side of one leaf (of a book or magazine or newspaper or letter etc.) or the written or pictorial matter it contains

page

.245) To measure the results Bigelow and La

Gaipa

created a list of pre-determined expectations, which they compared to the essays. The expectations were split into 21 categories, each particular expectation mentioned that matched the pre-determined criteria were counted.

This

essentially turned qualitative data into quantitative data. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

could use the frequency count to look for trending patterns in the data and compare results between younger and older children, including a comparison between the sexes. It was proposed that the findings from the study could be considered in terms of a three-stage model (

reference

).

This

demonstrated the understanding that as children grow older,

friendship

expectations become more complex. Subordinating characteristics of

friendship

to a pre-determined coding did cause limitations. The focus is on what the researchers wanted to find.

This

removed individual expectations of

friendship

traits that children suggested and removed validity of the study.

This

is because it was possible, that expectations other than those listed could have been overlooked with the use of content analysis.

However

, it was recognised that

this

methodology was a quick way to analyse large amounts of information,

also

removing ethical problems associated with researching children.

(

Accept space

(

reference

Suggestion

Reference

). A numerical summary enabled them to draw on difference between the age groups very efficiently, as analysing individual opinions would have been time-consuming. In conclusion, Bigelow and La

Gaipa

’s

research

was important for our understanding of friendships for multiple reasons.

This

was one of the

first

studies of children’s

friendship

and placed the concept of children’s

friendship

on the

research

agenda. It

also

provided interesting findings on the nature of friendships and how expectations developed in different stages of children’s lives. It introduced an interesting

research

method for studying relationships, using written accounts and descriptions as data.

However

, as explained there is a difficulty in defining

friendship

and differences may exist between young children, adolescents and adults which could not be captured in the method used.