The changes of friendship features in middle childhood

Abstract

Friendship is important aspect of socialization in middle childhood. Friendship as social construct is closely related to social adaptation of the child’s self-esteem, self-concept, and mental health. Empirical evidence that friendship in middle childhood may differ in different cultures was found in literature. Methods: As children in middle childhood are quite concrete by understanding life situations, answers in the questionnaire might be biased. So the features of friendship were investigated according to a specially created method with projective stimulus and the questionnaire. The children were acquainted with the main characters in the picture and were asked to fill in the form in the manner of the game. The form consisted of nine situations with three choices for solution, describing the investigated feature: emotional support, instrumental aid, solution of emotional conflicts, solution of physical conflicts, stability, satisfaction, reciprocity, intimacy and cooperation. Primary school children participated in the study twice during 8 months period (91 at the first administration; 76 at the second administration). Results: The scores of friendship features during 8 months period remain quite stable for both boys and girls. Differences occur in emotional support and solution of physical conflicts for boys and in solution of emotional conflicts for girls. For relationships between features of friendship series of factor analyses were run. Analysis revealed different solutions for the first time data and the second time data for boys and girls. Conclusions: Despite the intensity of friendship features are unchanged for 8 months in middle childhood, which also indicates reliability of projective method; differences are observed in interrelations between features for both genders.