When looking at the influences of culture in understanding friendship, Gonzalez et al., cited in Brownlow, also used the method developed by Bigelow and La Gaipa. They were focusing their question on comparing friendship as collectivist and individualistic societies to those in Cuba and Canada. Again essays were written by adolescents in both countries, but they were then analysed by counting in categories based on culture characteristics that shared different sets of values. The results showed similarities such...
When looking at the influences of culture in understanding friendship, Gonzalez et al., cited in Brownlow, also used the method developed by Bigelow and La Gaipa. They were focusing their question on comparing friendship as collectivist and individualistic societies to those in Cuba and Canada. Again essays were written by adolescents in both countries, but they were then analysed by counting in categories based on culture characteristics that shared different sets of values. The results showed similarities such as loyalty and acceptance as well as differences between the two groups’ idea of what a best friend is to them. The Cuban adolescents were expressing more attention to attributes like helping each other and recognising one’s sense of qualities which is a result of a collectivist culture. While the Canadian adolescents were concentrating on having things in common with each other and the length of time they have known each other which identifies to individualistic culture. Nonetheless Gonzalez et al. made sure to point out that this did not allow for judgements to be made for one style group to be more favourable than the other. But as with Bigelow and La Gaipa, this shows the limitations of the quantification of the personal accounts over incorporating all the information that is distinct to each point. Both these studies show the value of qualitative techniques as it forms the basis of gathering information for quantitative data.
