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 means different things to different people in different cultures. Friendship is also different from other kinds of relationship such as love, family and professional. The influential power on people’s behaviour, style, ideas and life is dominant and remarkable and therefore worthwhile for scientific investigation. This essay will compare and contrast the academic research of three dominant and pioneer scientists on the development psychology discipline and especially in the field of children’s expectations and children’s understanding of friendship. It will show who and what was studied, what method was used, what did they find, what criticisms have been made and what conclusions were derived. Bigelow and La Gaipa (1974) psychologists and researchers of development psychology and Williamm Corsaro (1985), professor of Sociology at Indiana University and ethnographist, have made important contributions to the neglected and unheeded area of children’s friendship. They all aimed to investigate children’s friendships and the important role, which these friendships, play in children’s everyday lives. their studies were both based on the children’s experiences and on the children’s understanding of friendship but the key difference was that Bigelow and La Gaipa explanations were based on formal essays written by the children and that Corsaro explanations based on the observation of the children’s playing and socialization. Each research was drawn from entirely different methodological procedures, as both administered and analysed their studies with a completely different method. The difference was that Bigelow and La Gaipa were interested on general patterns (ignoring the individual component) while Corsaro was interested in a more individualistic understanding of the
References: • Brownlow, C. (2010) ‘Making friends’ in Brace, N. & Byford, J. (Eds), Discovering Psychology (pp242-255), Milton Keynes: The Open