Browsing by Subject "sadutus, lapsinäkökulmainen tutkimus, vertaissuhteet, ystävyyssuhteet"

For many people friendships are an essential part of life and can be formed from an early age. Friendships as well as peer relationships play an important role when considering children’s well-being and healthy development. The purpose of this master’s thesis was to highlight children’s perspective regarding friendships and peer relationships. The aim of this thesis was to study what friendships look like and what they include in the stories told by 7–12-year-old children. In addition, the aim was to study how friendships are formed and how to successfully gain an entry to a peer group. The data of this research consisted of 88 stories told by 7-12-year-old children. The stories were selected from a larger data which included 3500 stories and was ordered from the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. The stories were collected 1995-2005 using the storycrafting method. This is qualitative research, and the data was analyzed by data-driven content analysis. The research results indicate that children appreciate friendships. Friendships included spending time together, reciprocity and being empathetic towards a friend. There were also descriptions of negative behaviour towards a friend which emerged as aggressive behaviour and negative feelings. Friendships were formed by coming across a same aged peer, after helping a peer and by asking a peer to play together. A lonely character was able to find a friend by showing initiative or after someone else noticed they were lonely and needed a friend. Being accepted into a peer group required that peers accepted difference. Another way of gaining entry to a peer group was to become more similar with peers or to find another peer group which was similar to oneself.