Content Analysis and Ethnographic Research in Decoding Children’s Understanding of Friendship

Notably, most adolescents face the same obstacles in life and experience similar difficulties. Friends in childhood are primarily found at “school” (Murray). This is because they see each other everyday and it is easier to become friends with someone that you see on a daily basis than someone you only see every so often. In the article, Murray says, “Visiting friends’ families exposes the

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

Subsequently Corsaro took a different approach to studying children's friendship, Corsaro was more interested in maintaining the children's individual view of the word “friend” and seeing how children talk to each other about this. In addition Corsaro wanted to see what this may mean to children from different backgrounds and personal beliefs.

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.

In the early 1970’s little was known regarding children’s friendships. Bigalow and La Gaipa (1975) assessed developmental differences by having grade school children write 480 essays on what they expected of their best friend that was not expected from other

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.

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.

Social experiences play a vital role in the development of children. Theories of child development have been created to help us to understand how children’s minds develop, taking into account the differences between cultures around the world. Some of these theories explore the possibility that children gain knowledge, develop new concepts and bridge new ideas through interaction with experience and cognitive schemata. Some theories explore the theory that development also plays a role in social experience.

Many children have attended a preschool or nursery before starting school, they are now entering a new setting and as part of a much larger group they will need to adapt to much more complex social situations (Yael Schmueli-Goetz). Yvonne Skipper said that 10%have trouble socially, without the friendships they do not have the opportunities to practice skills like ‘listening, responding, it may effect cognitive development because they may struggle more with listening instructions, and responding to teachers. (Yvonne Skipper o.u. video 2015 in Yael schmueli-Goetz.) By having friends children campractice the listening, responding and turn taking which will help them with the school routine once they begin their formal

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.

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

Initial analyses showed that children with reciprocated friends had higher social competence scores than children without reciprocated friends. Correlation's suggested that the number of changed friendships was associated with the social ability indicators studied here. Beyond the cost of having no reciprocated friends, having non-reciprocated friendships was not a liability. Cross-time analysis suggested differing patterns of relations for boys and girls. Having, versus not having a reciprocated friend was unstable across time, because there was a trend toward participating in reciprocated friendships from 3 to 4 years of age (most older children had at least one reciprocated friend).

This shows that children are more inclined to create friendships which they have been exposed to previously linking what they believe, ethnicity and places they have been together, as something they have in

The influence of peers can occur at an early age when children develop the ability to relate to each other. Infants six months of age develop the ability to relate to their peers through communication by smiling, touching, and babbling. “In the second year of life, they show both prosocial and aggressive behavior with peers. Peers began to have an influence on children during the primary school years and adolescence” (Hay, Dale). Unlike early childhood, adolescents spend more time with and give more attention to their peers rather than their parents heightening the need to please and fit in with them.