TMA02 DSE141 a

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 is a distinctly human trait and has been the subject of numerous studies. It has always posed a problem in how to define friendship as it can mean different things to different people. However one aspect of friendship that was relatively overlooked and under researched was that of friendship between children. that is until the studies that will be discussed in this essay. This essay will look at two pioneering studies that focussed on children's friendships. It will look at any similarities and differences in approach, the unusual methods employed by the researchers and assess some of the strengths and the weaknesses of each. It will also discuss their findings and what relevance their work has today.
The first comparison to be made when looking at the overall aims of the studies of Bigelow and La Gaipa(1974) and William Corsaro are the similarity in interests They were both interested in a child's understanding of friendship. Bigelow & La Gaipa(1974) were interested in the differences in a child's understanding of the term friendship and how friendships between children develop and change as children get older. Corsaro was interested in how children communicated and in what context they used the word “friend”. He believed that research should focus on the child's comprehension of the word friend and what it meant in particular situations and in what context it was being used.
Due to the different areas of friendship that each party wanted to examine, it stands to reason that their approach and methods should also differ. At the time Brian Bigelow and John La Gaipa carried out their studies in the 1970s, very little research had been done relating to friendship in children, theirs was one of the first to be conducted. The main focus on friendship had been on understanding what attracted one person to