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

This

essay

will evaluate the

research

conducted by Bigelow and La

Gaipa

and how useful it is when understanding children's relationships. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

set out to investigate 'children's understandings of friendship at various stages of development' (Brownlow

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

242). It is important to consider that at the point of investigation (1975) there was very little known about children's friendships, as the focus of

research

was mostly on emotional relationships and what things attract people to

one

another. In order to conduct their

research

, Bigelow and La

Gaipa

created a means of investigating the changes in a

childs

Suggestion

child's

child

interpretation of friendship as they grew older. In order to do

this

, they asked

children

Suggestion

the children

to think about their best

friend

of the same

gender

and to write an

essay

on what they expected of their best

friend

and how

this

might differ from what they expect from other people. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

collected 480 essays written

from

Suggestion

for

children aged six and fourteen years old, who were in upper-middle to lower-middle-class homes in Canada, they collected from eight different schools with an even mix of thirty boys and thirty girls from each. Before conducting their

research

, Bigelow and La

Gaipa

created a list of different characteristics that they assumed children might want to include when writing their essays,

such

as 'sharing common activities, engaging in organised play, admiration, loyalty and commitment, genuineness, and similarity in attitudes and values' (Brownlow

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

242-243). These were

then

used when analysing each

essay

. They used content analysis when comparing said results and found 16 of the 21 expectations to be more frequent in the older

childrens

a young person of either sex

children

children's

essays.

This

was suggested to mean that as children get older the expectations of their best friends get more complex.

To begin

with, the

method

of selecting the

sample

, as well as the

size

of the

sample

has some advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of choosing

such

a large

sample

size

is through the increased accuracy in mean values, and the smaller margin for error. Another advantage of having a large

sample

size

is that

outliers

that might end up skewing a smaller

sample

sizes' results can be identified.

However

, there were

also

issues

witho

expresses the means used

with

how they chose their

sample

.

For instance

,

one

issue apparent with the

research

conducted is through only choosing children coming from upper-middle and lower-middle-class families in Canada.

This

could

then

lead to a sampling error, due to the

fact

that children from other classes were not included when researching and so it would be unknown whether their findings would remain true for all types of

economical

Suggestion

economic

class, or if there would be changes. Another issue with the

sample

used is the

fact

that all participants were from Canada.

This

can be seen as a disadvantage as Bigelow and La

Gaipa

are unable to show whether culture may impact children's understanding of friendship, due to the

fact

that all children used were from the same - Western - culture.

Therefore

, it can be argued that while Bigelow and La GaIpas'

research

is useful when considering Western, middle-class children and their expectations with relationships, it is not so useful when considering other cultures and classes.

However

,

one

clear advantage of the

sample

size

and

method

used is the

gender

difference observed. Because the children were asked to write about a

friend

of the same

gender

, there could be a comparison made between male-male friendships and female-female friendships.

Although

the findings on

gender

difference were rather minimal, the

research

is still useful as it leads to people being able to draw data for both genders,

instead

of only being able to use data for

one

gender

and drawing estimations and assumptions for the other, which could end up being inaccurate. Another way in which Bigelow and La Gaipas

research

might not be as useful is through the usage of writing an

essay

.

This

is because it can be argued that the younger participants might not have had the written skills needed to be able to write an

essay

describing the expectations of their best

friend

.

Although

this

method

remains useful when considering older children - as largely they would have had the written skills needed- it can be argued that the results for the younger participants might not be wholly accurate, and

therefore

not as useful, as results from another type of

method

of collecting data.

However

,

one

way in which Bigelow and La Gaipas

research

is useful is through the

fact

that it was the

first

of its type. As mentioned before, in the 70s'

research

regarding relationships focused on emotional relationships, so, though Bigelow and La Gaipas experiment, they opened up

this

idea for discussion, and brought attention to something that had previously been unknown to psychology.

Also

, through the large age range of the participants, it allowed showed how children regarded friendships at different ages and

also

allowed for