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

Children’s friendships were not a focus of

study

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for psychologists prior to the work of Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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. Psychologist prioritised like Bowlby focused more upon the importance of primary attachment,

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however it

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however, it

is important to not the influence that friendships have on children.

Friendship

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in children can yield interesting results because it is a relationship among peers as opposed to the more common adult authority figure. Prior to Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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’s

study

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William Hartup reasoned that

friendship

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is far more abstract that the ‘friend or not friend’ definition previously put forward. Enter Bigelow and John La

Gaipa

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’s

study

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. The

study

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conducted was conducted

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was conducted

in the 1970s with a focus on how children understood and valued friendships. 480 children were drawn from 8 schools, 30 girls and 30 boys

from each

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from, each

with an age range of 6-14. The subjects were asked to write an essay on their best (same sex) friend and what they expected from

this

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person. Beforehand Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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had written a list of 21 different categories of

friendship

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expectation, which were

then

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compared against the essays. The essays were originally a qualitative form of data, but Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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were using a large

sample

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size (480) and were trying to ascertain a generalisation of

friendship

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. So, by using content analysis the broke the essays down into quantitative information.

This

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allowed for easy comparison of

ages

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age

groups and genders. On inspection of their results they proposed a three-stage model of development of

friendship

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expectations, with the idea becoming more complex as the children matured. Moving from shared activities and geographical closeness, to a focus on trust and sharing and

finally

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a similarity of attitudes and beliefs.

This

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study

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was valuable because it brought the subject of

friendship

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in childhood into the interests of psychology and it yielded an interesting hypothesis on how children understood

friendship

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. My chief argument against its usefulness is the way they changed qualitative data into quantitative. I understand that with the

sample

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size being so large it would take a long time to evaluate each essay and by quantifying

it they

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it, they

could use their list of 21 categories to make generalisations about

friendship

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.

However

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, they lose some of the individual characteristics in some children’s friendships, especially if these characteristics fall outside of their 21 categories.

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, in more qualitative focused

studies psychologists

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studies, psychologists

were able to extract a more nuanced understanding of childhood

friendship

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. An example of one of these qualitative studies would be William Cosaro’s ethnographic

study

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. Ethnography has a unique advantage over experimental and observational studies by immersing the psychologist into the group under

study

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.

Cosaro’s

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Cursors

Casseroles

Coarse

approach involved him spending time around the children carefully filming and observing their conversations with each other.

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differed from Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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’s

study

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because the children were formalising their answers for an adult researcher.

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,

this

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allowed the younger age groups to express their expectations in a clearer manner, because they were not hindered by their linguistic or written skills if they were conversing with someone of their own level.

This

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allowed Corsaro to show an example of younger children, aged 3, speaking about friendships in intricate and conceptual ways. Jenny and Betty are both within Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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’s

first

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stage of their three-stage model, but they show they are mindful of each other’s feelings “I do like you, Jenny… I do […] I know you wanted- all the time- you want to know because you’re my best friend.” (Corsaro, 19985, p.166) proving that the

first

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stage of Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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’s three stage model was too simplistic. Another important outcome of Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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’s

study

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would be the interest in cultural differences it raised. Starting

with

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to

González et al’s

study

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comparing the friendships of children in Canada and Cuba, highlighting how collectivist and individual cultures shaped the children’s expectations of

friendship

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. Collectivist cultures favouring mutual assistance and individualistic

cultures putting

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cultures, putting

more emphasis on common interests.

This

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study

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opened a new vein of though into the categorisation of cultures and whether they should be useful in the

study

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of children’s friendships, Doran French worked with a

sample

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of students from the US, South Korea and Indonesia to compare their friendships. Her theory being that if collectivist and individualistic cultures affected friendships, the south Korean friendships and the Indonesian friendships would share similar expectations but differ from that of the US. French’s

study

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favoured the quantitative approach, like Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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, she asked the students to keep a record of two weeks of social interactions with their friends and rate the quality of their relationships. After finding that Indonesian and South Korean students differed on most French’s criteria, 7 out of 8, in

fact both

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fact, both

nations students shared more in common with that of the US students.

This

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suggesting

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suggests

is suggested

that collectivist and individualist are perhaps too broad in their terminology to define how cultures shape

friendship

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. Whilst Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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’s

study

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has not procured

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have not procured

a definitive answer to the nature of

friendship

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, quantitative studies not being able to capture the nuance and qualitative studies not having a large enough

sample

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size to procure generalisations, they did bring the

study

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of children’s friendships in the focus of psychology. Planting a seed that

lead

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leads

to the observations of children across countries, studying how

friendship

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changed through age groups and was affected by culture. Even now in contemporary times psychologists are still studying it as technology changes the way we interact and how friendships adapt to that. Bigelow and La

Gaipa

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were integral to the field of

study

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, their work was the foundation to the understanding of children’s friendships.