Evaluate the usefulness of Bigelow and La Gaipa’s (1975) work for understanding children’s friendship.

Bigelow and La Gaipa’s

study

into the understanding of friendships was the pioneering

study

into childhood

friendship

, as at the time very little research had been done at the time. Their experiment was designed to help understand the influxes that

friendship

could have on the impact during their development. The

method

that they used to perform their

study

was to ask the participant to write an

essay

on what they expected from their best

friend

. The participant where a

sample

of 480 children aged from six and fourteen chosen from 8 different

school

Suggestion

schools

with a mix of thirty boys and thirty girls.

This

sample

size ranges from upper-working-class and lower-middle-class.

This

included a large

sample

size to offer a wider range of results.

This

method

of

study

allowed them to collect written form of data which could

then

be analysed and coded. Allowing them to compare them to the characteristics of a best

friend

that they had made for

this

study

. Body – 600 It should be noted that

this

research was taken place during a time where very little importance was taken on the understanding of children

friendship

.

This

experiment was designed in a way that allowed to track the development of

friendship

as children grew older.

This

was done by using a wide age group. Here we can take a look at how useful the result of these tests are and why they have some limitations. Due to the

essay

an appraisal of the state of affairs

assay

method

they used during

this

research it allowed for some clear limitations for the younger group when it came to write about their best

friend

.

For example

, the vocabulary of a six year old will limit the way they express how they feel about their best

friend

as opposed to a fourteen year old with a

wider

Suggestion

wide

vocabulary. Whilst

this

does show some of the limitations of

this

method

of

experiment it

Accept comma addition

experiment, it

also

shows how

friendship

develops and understanding of

friendship

as children age. Another limitation found in

this

study

was the coding

method

chosen by Bigelow and La Gaipa. As the

essay

where qualitative data they converted

this

data into quantitative using a pre-written

list of before the

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list before the

study

took place. By converting the

essay

, it lost what could be

consider

Suggestion

considered

important information as if the personal dimension did not fit into expectations

this

result was

simple

Suggestion

simply

lost and was not considered.

This

is often a

draw back

the quality of being a hindrance

drawback

when it comes to converting qualitative to quantitative data as you are often looking for key words and qualities listed and might miss out on the small details of

friendship

that a child might class as important. With the limitations being

said there

Accept comma addition

said, there

are many benefits

to

Suggestion

of

the

method

chosen for

this

study

. Bigelow and La Gaipa wanted to include a large

sample

size for their

study

and to make

this

realistic they had