Concepciones acerca de la amistad: Un estudio exploratorio con niños españoles e inmigrantes afincados en la comunidad de madrid

Resumen

The aim of our study is to know the childrens’ conceptions of friendship and looking at if it changes according to gender and the cultural characteristics of the participants. To this end, a semi- structured interview of open answerered questions was developed, and applied –following the piagetian method– to a sample of 30 students (16 girls and 14 boys) of the 5 th and 6 th grades of primary school. The ages of the children varied between 11;1 and 12;3 years, and the 50% were immigrants, with the remaining part being natives Spaniards. The results of this work show that there aren’t significant differences in the childrens’ conceptions of friendship based on their nation- al origin, understanding it as a link based on help, confidence, company and faithfulness. However, significant differences were found in relation to the ease of starting relationships with the peers, and the ethnical origin of their friends, confirming a higher number of Spanish natives that had the most problems making friends, as opposed to the immigrants, and whose friends were mostly Spanish natives. Likewise, significant differences were found according to gender, pointing out that the girls, rather than boys, found confidence as a trait that differentiated their friends from the rest of their peers.