Group discussion

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The group discussion is a survey method of empirical social research in which, in contrast to surveys with individual individuals, the thematic statements of a group or the communication in a group are to be recorded. The group discussion method is v. a. of importance in qualitative research in the social and educational sciences. Group discussions are also often used in market research.

Origin and further development of the process

The origin in the USA

The use of group discussions in the context of empirical social research can be traced back to the 1930s. In the USA, Kurt Lewin and later his students used group discussions as part of socio-psychological investigations to research how group processes influence the behavior of individual group members. These group discussions had a more experimental character, bound by the tradition of psychological research: “Kurt Lewin was less concerned with the statements of the individual group members, but rather group processes, group dynamics, the determination of the effects and interactions of individual variables that were responsible for the relationship of the individual and the group are significant. So it was not yet a question of explicitly qualitative methods, but rather a specific form of quantitative social research ”.

Friedrich Pollock: The group experiment

However, this conception changed with the first application of the group discussion procedure in 1950/1951 in Germany: Friedrich Pollock researched political attitudes under the impression of the Second World War with his “group experiment” at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research . The aim was to “determine important aspects of German public opinion, to study what is in the air in the field of political ideology, to study the ' trans-subjective ' factors and in particular to learn to understand how and to what extent they differ prevail over the individual. ” Pollock derived the particular suitability of the group discussion procedure for this interest in knowledge directly from his criticism of the widespread procedure for determining public opinion in the form of representative surveys. Here public opinion is treated only as a “cumulative phenomenon” of individual opinions and at the same time it is assumed that every individual has a 'ready-made' individual opinion that only needs to be collected through a questionnaire. According to Pollock, “opinions and attitudes arise and work; JS] not in isolation, but in constant interrelationship between the individual and the society that affects him directly and indirectly. They are often not particularly dedicated, but rather represent a vague and diffuse potential. The individual often only becomes aware of them when dealing with other people ”. The discussion in a group should enable such a discussion in which individual opinions can be formed in an explicit manner and in addition, conscious and unconscious resistances of the individuals are overcome, which lead to blockages and rationalization in standardized interview situations. With this in mind, the use of a basic stimulus was an important element. A fictitious letter that was played to the participants as a tape recording should not only serve as a thematic basis, but also “stimulate the discussion by touching psychological nerve points and prompting the discussion participants to do so to step out of the reserve that is otherwise often observed in affective subjects ”. A controversy developed around the group experiment between the social psychologist Peter Hofstätter and Theodor W. Adorno , who had contributed to the volume with an extensive monograph on the relationship between "guilt and defense". Hofstätter presented his arguments, which could not make friends with Adorno's advanced arguments in terms of past politics, in the medium of methodological criticism, an argumentative volte that Adorno saw through and exposed. The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research used the group discussion method in a number of research projects in the following years, including research into the attitude of industrial workers to coal and steel participation in the Mannesmann Group or to investigate the anti-democratic attitudes of late returnees from Soviet war captivity. With this commissioned research, the Institute for Social Research repeatedly exposed the application of the group discussion procedure, which was extremely innovative for the 1950s, to the methodological criticism of experts in applied psychology, because here too the results obtained by the Institute for Social Research partly contradicted the spirit of the times .

Werner Mangold: Informal group opinions

The group discussion process was turned by the approach of Werner Mangold . By taking up Pollock's concept and developing it further, he came to the conclusion that group discussions are an unsuitable instrument for collecting individual opinions, precisely because of the social contextuality of the attitudes expressed. He therefore shifted the interest in knowledge to the recording of informal group opinions. “Comparative analyzes of discussion minutes have shown that in different discussion groups with the same social structure, informal group opinions of the same kind can indeed manifest themselves in terms of content.” “Homogeneous discussion groups of workers, farmers, small employees and civil servants - to name a few examples - agreed with each other the attention that certain topics found, in the perspectives from which they were discussed, in the ideas that existed about social reality in which one as a worker, as a farmer, as a small employee or civil servant believed to be. " Mangold assumed that these informal group opinions are by no means a product of the survey situation itself, but that the investigated collectives also have shared opinions outside of the group discussion that are merely updated within the group discussion. This is linked to an external validity claim with regard to informal group opinion, which was subsequently doubted primarily by Nießen on the background of the interpretive paradigm. In the 1970s, Nießen investigated interaction processes in real groups. According to the theoretical position of symbolic interactionism , social action is essentially constituted by interpretive achievements and mutual attribution of meaning by those who act together. In order to be able to adequately collect such processes, Nießen found the duade unsuitable for an ordinary interview situation. In the group discussion, however, it is precisely these processes of situational negotiation of meaningful content that become accessible to the researcher. “However, in the understanding of the 'interpretative paradigm', it now seemed difficult to identify structures despite all the processuality” - Nießen concluded from his studies that the (group) opinions expressed in such discussions, due to their situational contextuality, do not apply to the concrete survey situation can also own.

Ralf Bohnsack: Group discussion and environment research

However, this position raises the question of what purpose the use of group discussions can serve in empirical social research. Ralf Bohnsack provides an answer to this with a methodological reformulation of Mangold's concept: The approach of informal group opinions is developed into a "model of collective orientation patterns". The decisive factor is the detachment from the concept of the group, which is replaced by Karl Mannheim's concept of conjunctive spaces of experience. The meaning of this conceptual distinction becomes clear using the example of the intergenerational context: “So if we speak of a 'concrete group' when either grown or established bonds unite individuals to form a group, the intergenerational context is a coexistence of individuals, in which one can, indeed, through something connected is; but this solidarity does not yet result in a specific group ”. The common life is thus contrasted with the common experience ; collective-structural patterns of meaning become recognizable behind individual, process-based assignments of meaning. Bohnsack relates this collective orientation pattern mainly to the concept of milieu, which he differentiates into generational, gender, educational and socio-spatial milieus . At the same time, he emphasizes the importance of milieu analysis for biography research, because individual biographical experiences are always shaped by a milieu-specific context. Classical biographical research in the form of narrative interviews only makes the influences of milieus accessible as an integrated aspect of the closed life narrative. Bohnsack sees an important field of application for group discussions here: The "different milieu-specific realities in which the individual participates and which he only internalizes retrospectively and in terms of aspects are accessible to direct empirical analysis via the group discussion process". In the model of collective orientation patterns, the opinion of a group is no longer in the foreground, but the structures of common milieu-specific and biographical experiences that determine it. Bohnsack developed the documentary method to reconstruct this orientation pattern ; meanwhile a standard method of qualitative social research, which is also used in the interpretation of interviews such as the analysis of images and films.

literature

  • Theodor W. Adorno “Guilt and Defense”, Collected Writings, Volume 9.b., pp. 121–325.
  • Peter R. Hofstätter, On the "Group Experiment" by F. Pollock. A critical appraisal, in: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 9 (1957), pp. 97 ff. (Book I)
  • Ralf Bohnsack (1997): Group discussion procedures and milieu research. From: B. Friebertshäuser, A. Prengel (Hrsg.): Handbuch. Qualitative research methods in educational science. Weinheim, Munich: Juventa. Pp. 492-501.
  • Siegfried Lamnek (2005): Group discussion. Theory and practice. 2nd revised edition. Weinheim: UTB. The first edition from 1998 by Beltz / PVU does not yet take Bohnsack's concept of collective orientation patterns into account.
  • Werner Mangold (1960): Subject and method of the group discussion process. From the work of the Institute for Social Research. Frankfurt / M .: European publishing company.
  • Friedrich Pollock (1955): Group experiment. A study report. Frankfurt: European publishing company.
  • Werner Mangold (1973): Group discussions. From: R. König (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Empirischen Sozialforschung. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag. Pp. 228-259.
  • Ingo Dammer, Frank Szymkowiak (1998): The group discussion in market research. West German Publishing House (Opladen)
  • Thomas Kühn, Kay-Volker Koschel (2011): Group discussions. A practical manual. VS Verlag for Social Sciences (Wiesbaden)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Dammer / Szymkowiak; Kühn / Koschel
  2. ↑ Lamnek 1998, p. 17.
  3. ↑ Pollock 1955, p. 34.
  4. ↑ Pollock 1955, p. 32.
  5. ↑ Pollock 1955, p. 35.
  6. ↑ place 2012, passim.
  7. ↑ Mangold 1960.
  8. ↑ Mangold 1960.
  9. ↑ Mangold 1973, p. 244 f.
  10. ↑ Bohnsack 1997, p. 495.
  11. ↑ Bohnsack 1997, p. 495.
  12. ↑ Mannheim 1971, p. 33 f.
  13. ↑ Bohnsack 1997, p. 498.