What do Japanese youth think about their relathinships with significant friende? Generation of a hypothetical model from the grounded theory approach

Abstract

In Japan, most studies of youth's friendships follow a top-down, quantitative, hypothesis-verification approach. The present article, in contrast, uses a qualitative method, the Grounded Theory Approach (GTA), and "what does youth think about their relationship with their significant friends" is the research question (RQ). Under this RQ, data was collected from 19 youth in semi-structured interviews and analyzed by classifying into categories. Through these steps, 6 hypothetical ideas on structure, formation and the meaning of relationships, were revealed and a hypothetical model was generated. The results suggest that Japanese youth consider the core of their relationships to be deeply related to their self and peace of mind.