Compare and Contrast the Approach to Studying Children’s Friendships Taken in the Bigelow and La Gaipa (1974) Study with That Taken by William Corsaro.

Making relationships: children play co-operatively, taking turns with others. They take account of one another’s ideas about how to organise their activity. They show sensitivity to others’ needs and feelings, and form positive relationships with adults and other children.”

Also, it suggests that they are related and they contribute to development more generally. They are suggested as being related because in order to build a friendship you have to accept them for who they are first. Young children are more likely to form friendships with children who they see on a regular basis. Preschool friends are more likely to maintain close proximity to one another than children who are not friends (Lindsey 2002). The findings of this study suggest that mutual friendship is an important factor in children 's social development as early as the preschool years.

Social Psychology also focuses on social behaviour, people’s thoughts, feelings friendship and how we interact with other people. A prime example of this is in a study carried out by Brian Bigelow and John La Gaipa [1975] when they carried out a study on children’s friendship. Bigelow and La Gaipa wanted to explore what understanding children had on friendship and how it changed with the children’s age group and of the same sex. Bigelow and La Gaipa began their research by asking a group of children to write an essay in regards to their best friend who had to be of the same sex the children was asked to write what their expectations were from their friend. To enable this research to be conducted Bigelow and La Gaipa completed a list of Twenty

When it comes to investigating friendship, one question that has been raised is ‘what is the role of friendship in the life of a 13 year old?’’. Several sources of data include ethnographic notes taken whilst spending time with a group of friends during school lunch breaks and diary/blog entries etc. Firstly, in this case the researcher would need to carefully consider the strengths and weaknesses of each type of data, for example, when looking at a blog the information/data available is likely to be information that the author wants to share with a wider audience whereas a diary entry is more private. In this case, both documents

Brain Bigelow, John La Gaipa and William Corsaro have both made important contributions into understanding how children interpret “friendship”. Bigelow and La Gaipa carried out one of the first studies from what was a very under researched area. Bill Corsaro, a key figure in childhood studies, was particularly successful in gaining access into young children's worlds which has helped shape a further picture of this somewhat intriguing definition. Brace and Byford (2012)

Compare and Contrast the approach to studying children’s friendships taken in the Bigelow and La Gaipa (1975) study with that taken by William Corsaro.

Through play, children are also able to form relationships with their peers, therefore developing socially. They are able to “learn how to work in groups, to share, to negotiate, to resolve conflicts, and to learn self-advocacy skills” all of which are important skills in a child’s world as well as the adult world (Ginsberg 183). This is especially prevalent in young school age children, who have had relatively few social encounters without the presence of their parents before entering school. These young children will often make life time friends by sharing a popular treat at snack time or borrowing a color crayon to another child who has broken theirs.

Friendship has been researched with different approaches including both quantitative and qualitative types. One of these is ethnographic approach in which the researcher joins the researched group and carries out observation over certain time. This essay will evaluate its contribution to research on friendship focusing on the Corsaro’s (1985 cited in Brownlow, 2012) ethnographic study on children’s friendship. Firstly, focusing on its benefits. Secondly, moving to shortcomings. Finally, it will evaluate it in the context of social sciences’ methodology.

William Damon is an educator/researcher on psychology and education. In William Damon’s work, he has proposed that children’s friendships are developed in three specific stages. In Level 1, children are about 4-7 years old. During this level children see each other as momentary playmates. During this stage children are all about having fun, with limited perspectives. Children want things their way and do not wish to hear different opinions other than their own. As the child gets older, at the age of 8-10 years old a more profound friendship is formed, this is called Level 2. During this time a child start to build trust and start to think of other rather than just themselves. Children learn the value of sharing and learn how to compromise. Lastly, Level 3 is during the approximate age of 11- 15 years old. During this time, friends are valued the most to a child. This is a more mature stage where children build trustful relationships and a high level of emotional closeness is built. Regardless of age cliques and crowds always develop among children and adults. A clique is a group of member that share common interests, often are of the same gender. The members of the group are often labeled or stereotyped. Crowds are very similar to cliques, both shape the minds of children on how they should act or how they should be. Both add pressure to adolescents under peer pressure such as drinking, smoking, skipping school, or sex in order to fit it. Cliques and crowds develop as a way

Differences in childhoods can impact individual’s communication with each other in relationships. At a young age, children tend to play with other children that seem to be of the same gender as them. Both groups of genders have different ways of building a friendship. Tannen says that, “Little girls create and maintain friendships by exchanging secrets” (276). It is important to girls to share secretive things to get closer to one another and to get a mutual understanding. Unlike boys whose bonds are, “based less on talking, more on doing things together” (Tannen 276). Boys do not talk a lot unless the need to prove something. While girls are comfortable about talking about their feelings, boys feel uncomfortable because it is not something they discuss much.

Part 1 and 2 is based on Greenfield’s (2009) theory of “Linking Social Change and Developmental Change.” This study predicts that Facebook friend lists

4. The research study is a longitudinal study as it involved researching the same participants from sixth grade to ninth grade. A longitudinal study was best for this study as it examines the development of changes in adolescences. The research methods used were based on quantitative methods. The first method used to measure mixed-sex friendship groups was friend nominations. The friendship method allowed students to chose two best friends and five close friends. The next method was group-level network measures. Using the nominations, students are grouped until no new changes are made. Next, demographics played a large role in assessing mixed-sex friendship groups. It is important for students to identify their race and gender, as a majority of the race was white. Behavioural characteristics were then studied by using self-reports.

The results illustrated how adolescents communicate with one another, and how their friendships can influence their behavior. For instance, adolescents are more likely to communicate openly and engage in the same activities with close friends. More simply, the closer the friendship or bond, adolescent are willing to maintain their closeness by communicating openly and share similar experiences. The authors did well in describing and analyzing their results, because they showed how a close relationship could affect adolescents. For instance, strong relationships could affect who adolescents date, what activities they will engage in, what experiences they will share. More simply, strong relationship made adolescents more open minded and more willing to communicate openly. However, the weakness of the article included how African American adolescents were above or below other racial groups, when pertaining to friendships and sexual behavior. Illustrating where other racial groups stood with friendship and sexual behavior could have made the article stronger. An interpretation that the authors overstated how adolescents depend on their friends’ experience and opinion when making their own decisions about relationship. More simply, adolescents will form their own opinion based off their friends’ experiences or feelings. Weakness in the article had an effect on the interpretation of the results and conclusion because it seemed

Friendships are defined as a voluntary relationship between two people involving mutual liking, by age 4 or 5 most children claim to have a “best friend,” (Kail, R. V., & Cavanuagh, J. C., 2016). Friendships create many benefits for an individual, but there also may be negative effects. Recent findings suggest that there are differences in the associations between direct pathways of parental influence and childhood friendship characteristics between children with and without CP (Cunningham, S. D., Warschausky, S., & Thomas, P. D., 2009). Results

2. Tell about a time when your friends’ opinions were different than your parents’ and how you felt about it.