Thematic Analysis

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A qualitative study showing how adults perceive the significant people in their lives have affected their development, using thematic analysis Abstract This study investigates the development psychology view of attachment theory that child relationships affect later development. A qualitative, textual analysis was carried out on a pre-existing, edited, filmed semi-structured interview. Thematic analysis showed that childhood relationships do affect an adult’s life, but they do not determine adult relationships and adults can have earned security through successful relationships in later life. Introduction Lifespan psychology, or development psychology, looks at the way our psychological characteristics develop and form throughout our lives. One of the main areas of focus in development psychology is the affect the early relationships we experience during childhood, such as those with our parents, can have in our later relationships in adulthood. These adult to child relationships are known as vertical relationships, and the fact that these can then shape our later horizontal relationships (adult to adult) is known as attachment theory. John Bowlby (1940) believed that an infant having a mother figure that represented a permanent source of comfort and security, allows them to build up and ‘internal working model’ of their relationship. Internal working model is a “set of expectations for how oneself and another person will relate to each other” (Wood, Littleton and Oates, 2002, p.29). Bowlby theorised that whatever working model a child form will dictate the approach they take to future relationships. The internal working model “contains expectations about how others will behave and will thus mean that the individual will behave in ways consistent with these expectations” (Wood et al., 2002, p.32). Initial research in this field primarily focused on

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