Qualitative Study Of Friendship

In order to evaluate the contribution of qualitative research on friendship, it is crucial to define and have some background of friendship, define and understand qualitative approach and then evaluate its contribution to friendship research. Friendship is considered to be one of the pillars of day to day life starting from childhood to very old age. Friendship is a complex endeavour and can be difficult to define as it may have different meanings to different people at different times. Friendship has different stages and occurs inversely in different stages of life i,e childhood, adolescence, and adulthood friend, long-term friend, best friend, good friend, school friend, college friend and etc. Friendship is a mutual trust and support between

Although researchers have tried to defined friendship simply focused on the differences between friends and non-friends, Willard Hartup (1996) cited in Brownlow (2012, p. 239) argues that a whole range of relationship is possible from best friend to good friend to occasional friend to non-friend. Therefore, it is far more complex than just a definition between friends and non-friends. Now that friendship is defined it is essential to define and understand qualitative approach. Unlike a quantitative data, qualitative method or approach involves the analysis of talk, interview material and written text such as transcripts, newspaper diaries or articles and it does not use any measurements nor is in numerical form. Although, friendship research has been carried out by researchers to studying friendship using qualitative and quantitative approach, however, this essay is going to evaluate and focus more on the contribution of qualitative

250 - 255) used ethnography. Ethnography is the systematic study of people and culture, and it carries out broad observation of a group being involved in their activities over a period of time (Brownlow, 2012). Corsaro (1985), is interested in how friendship is described in communication between children, and what it means in certain places at specific times, rather than in a formal interview. In support, he video records them and makes notes of children's activities and their collaborations with others. The researcher needs to become a member of a specific group and spend months and sometimes even years, in order to carry out observations from within the group (Brownlow, 2012). The benefits of this method are that it enables the researcher to observe a direct, first-hand and original account of the child's experience. In addition, the multifaceted and rich data can be generated. On the other hand, it can be hard for an adult to 'blend in'. furthermore, in order to use ethnography, the researcher has to watch and observe from distance for a while to start with and wait until to be approached and invited by children into their social world (Brownlow,