Studiare l’amicizia dalla fanciullezza all’adolescenza: confronto critico tra differenti approcci metodologici per indagare un fenomeno multidimensionale

The study of friendship from childhood to adolescence: critical aspects of different research methodologies for investigating a multidimensional phenomenon. This review, which begins by establishing a definition of friendship, deals with the critical implications associated with investigating friendship, from a period of childhood to adolescence, as an intrinsic multidimensional phenomenon. Specifically this review introduces some methodological approaches to the study of friendship on the basis of the distinctions proposed by Hartup (1996) among having friends (in terms of width of friendship network and popularity), characteristics of friendship (that is the quality of friendship evaluated by a self-report questionnaire, observation and drawing) and, finally, the personal characteristics of friends that may influence friendship by the way of reciprocal interdependence and socialization processes. We also present a review of methodologies most commonly used for investigating friendship in children and adolescents at an individual level of analysis, such as by is sociometric test, self-report questionnaire, observational methodology and drawing. This review explains the main characteristics of each method and the possible strengths and weaknesses associated with the use of each method. This review also highlights the importance of moving toward a dyadic level of analyses given that friendship involves at least two people with potentially different opinions, perceptions, and power. A challenge of new research methodologies in developmental psychology is how to consider interdependence at the dyadic level in terms of actor and partner effects. Thus, this review presents a brief statistical model for handling this interdependence with the use of APIM; and SIENA, a model apt to consider the embeddings of dyadic friendships within larger social networks. The main methodological suggestions of this review are twofold: to integrate different research methodologies for gaining a clear picture of friendship at the individual level; and to move from an individual level to at least a dyadic level of analysis.