The objective of this study consists in demonstrating what factors are relevant when young children establish new ties of friendship, analysing what differences are shown of factors of the choice of friends by age and sex, and identifying what needs m...
The objective of this study consists in demonstrating what factors are relevant when young children establish new ties of friendship, analysing what differences are shown of factors of the choice of friends by age and sex, and identifying what needs mothers have for their children's choosing friends, so that educational understanding could be provided to the parents of the development of their young children, and be of help to leading them to a round social life as an adult in the future.
For that purpose, subjects of study were proposed, as follows:
First, what differences are represented of factors of young children's choice of friends by age and sex?
Second, what differences are shown of mothers' needs for their children's choosing friends by age and sex?
Randomly sampled out from D Kindergarten located in Keumchun -gu, Seoul were 159 young children and 131 mothers of theirs. The subjects of study were classified into a four-year-olds group, a five-year-olds group, a six-year-olds group, and then a male group and a female group, especially in consideration of inquiries by age. The tools utilized for this study had recourse to a personal interview method to investigate young children's cognition of factors of their choosing friends, and a questionnaire poll was conducted to identify mothers' needs for their children's factors of the choice of friends.
For the data processing, the materials obtained from personal interviews with young children proceeded with determining friend-choosing factors according to corresponding items, and then a comparison was carried out of frequency of the friend-choosing factors by age and sex. Furthermore, A 2-way ANOVA was conducted of the mothers' needs for their children's friend-choosing factors by the mothers' academic career and their children's sex.
The resultant findings were revealed, as follows:
First, young children's cognition of friend-choosing factors represented the highest value in reciprocity, and then came in order of proximity, status, analogy, and humanity. As regards differences by age, four-year-olds and five-year-olds reflected the highest value in reciprocity, irrespective of age, and the older the age, the more value was placed on humanity than on status.
Second, mothers' needs for their children's choosing friends did not reveal a statistically significant response but showed a pro-portionally high value in the humanity factor.
As a result of having analysed what differences are disclosed of mothers' needs for their children's choice of friends by the young children's sex and the mothers' school career, no statistically significant differences were found but a correlational effect was identified between the two factors in the status factor as a result of having carried out a 2-way ANOVA. Male respondents indicated that the higher their mothers school career, the higher value in status, while female ones represented irrelevance to that of their mothers. That is, the factor of status may be said to reveal distinct differences by their mothers' school career in male young children.