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.

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This essay will discuss the pioneering studies of Bigelow and La Gaipa (1975) and William Corsaro (1985) on children’s expectation of friendship. It will discuss two different approaches taken by mentioned researchers. Extra attention will be given to examination of similarities and key differences between Bigelow and La Gaipa’s content analysis research method and Corsaro’s ethnographic approach. The essay will also discuss the limitations faced by the two methods and conclude with the distinct advantages and disadvantages. There are a few similarities and a number of differences in the Bigelow and La Gaipa (1975) study and that of William Corsaro (1985). Both studies looked into children. More precisely – into their understanding of friendship, how it develops over time and into different expectations children have from a friend at different stages of their life. However, Bigelow and La Gaipa (1975) used Content Analysis approach on written essays about children’s best friend, whereas William Corsaro opted for Ethnographic Approach – i.e. he studied children in a group of their peers over prolonged period of time. In the early 1970’s little was known regarding friendships of children. Bigelow and La Gaipa (1975) tackled this issue by asking 480 grade school children (equal number of boys and girls) to write an essay about their best friend of the same sex – specifically, what they expected of their best friend and how was that different from other friends and acquaintances. Once all the essays were collected, Bigelow and La Gaipa applied some content analysis – they identified and counted pre-selected features of friendship such as sharing common activities, engaging in organised play, admiration, loyalty and commitment, genuineness, and similarity in attitudes and values (Brownlow, 2012) – also known as frequency counts. William Corsaro’s (1985) approach was
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