Children’s friendships were not a focus of
study
for psychologists prior to the work of Bigelow and La
Gaipa
. Psychologist prioritised like Bowlby focused more upon the importance of primary attachment,
is important to not the influence that friendships have on children.
Friendship
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
’s
study
William Hartup reasoned that
friendship
is far more abstract that the ‘friend or not friend’ definition previously put forward. Enter Bigelow and John La
Gaipa
’s
study
.
The
study
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
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
person. Beforehand Bigelow and La
Gaipa
had written a list of 21 different categories of
friendship
expectation, which were
then
compared against the essays. The essays were originally a qualitative form of data, but Bigelow and La
Gaipa
were using a large
sample
size (480) and were trying to ascertain a generalisation of
friendship
. So, by using content analysis the broke the essays down into quantitative information.
This
allowed for easy comparison of
groups and genders. On inspection of their results they proposed a three-stage model of development of
friendship
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
a similarity of attitudes and beliefs.
This
study
was valuable because it brought the subject of
friendship
in childhood into the interests of psychology and it yielded an interesting hypothesis on how children understood
friendship
. My chief argument against its usefulness is the way they changed qualitative data into quantitative. I understand that with the
sample
size being so large it would take a long time to evaluate each essay and by quantifying
could use their list of 21 categories to make generalisations about
friendship
.
However
, they lose some of the individual characteristics in some children’s friendships, especially if these characteristics fall outside of their 21 categories.
Also
, in more qualitative focused
were able to extract a more nuanced understanding of childhood
friendship
.
An example of one of these qualitative studies would be William Cosaro’s ethnographic
study
. Ethnography has a unique advantage over experimental and observational studies by immersing the psychologist into the group under
study
.
approach involved him spending time around the children carefully filming and observing their conversations with each other.
This
differed from Bigelow and La
Gaipa
’s
study
because the children were formalising their answers for an adult researcher.
Also
,
this
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
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
’s
first
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
stage of Bigelow and La
Gaipa
’s three stage model was too simplistic.
Another important outcome of Bigelow and La
Gaipa
’s
study
would be the interest in cultural differences it raised. Starting
González et al’s
study
comparing the friendships of children in Canada and Cuba, highlighting how collectivist and individual cultures shaped the children’s expectations of
friendship
. Collectivist cultures favouring mutual assistance and individualistic
more emphasis on common interests.
This
study
opened a new vein of though into the categorisation of cultures and whether they should be useful in the
study
of children’s friendships, Doran French worked with a
sample
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
favoured the quantitative approach, like Bigelow and La
Gaipa
, 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
nations students shared more in common with that of the US students.
This
that collectivist and individualist are perhaps too broad in their terminology to define how cultures shape
friendship
.
Whilst Bigelow and La
Gaipa
’s
study
a definitive answer to the nature of
friendship
, quantitative studies not being able to capture the nuance and qualitative studies not having a large enough
sample
size to procure generalisations, they did bring the
study
of children’s friendships in the focus of psychology. Planting a seed that
to the observations of children across countries, studying how
friendship
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
were integral to the field of
study
, their work was the foundation to the understanding of children’s friendships.