Exploring Environmental Values through the Medium of Small Groups: 1. Theory and Practice

Empirical qualitative research is gaining recognition within social and humanistic geography, although the ‘small group’ is not yet recognised as a valuable research technique. In this paper we review the use of once-only group interviews in social and market research, and then discuss the principles of Group-analytic psychotherapy as a way of conducting in-depth small groups. By means of a discussion of the Greenwich Open-Space Project, we explore the methodological issues involved in conducting in-depth small groups with local people, discuss the interpretive strategies which can be used to handle large amounts of linguistic data, and present the major findings from the project.

[1]  J. Burgess,et al.  Nature in the city: popular values for a living world , 1987 .

[2]  Susan J. Smith.  Practicing Humanistic Geography , 1984 .

[3]  S. Scheidlinger.  Individual and group psychology — Are they opposed? , 1984 .

[4]  J. Burgess,et al.  Recreation 2000: views of the country from the city , 1986 .

[5]  G. Rowles.  Place and personal identity in old age: observations from Appalachia , 1983 .

[6]  S. Freud,et al.  Sigmund Freud , 2020, Los Pioneros del Psicoanálisis de Niños.

[7]  The Group Discussion as an Interview Technique , 1957 .

[8]  J. Burgess.  Crossing Boundaries: A Group-Analytic Perspective in Geographical Research , 1986 .

[9]  G. Suttles.  The Cumulative Texture of Local Urban Culture , 1984, American Journal of Sociology.

[10]  Edmund C. Penning-Rowsell,et al.  Fluctuating fortunes in gauging landscape value , 1981 .

[11]  S. Haberman.  Analysis of qualitative data , 1978 .

[12]  David Lowenthal,et al.  Finding valued landscapes , 1978 .

[13]  A. D. Bradshaw,et al.  Ecology and Design in Landscape. , 1987 .

[14]  S. Foulkes.  Introduction to Group Analytic Psychotherapy , 1948, Mental Health.

[15]  A. Pred,et al.  Place as Historically Contingent Process: Structuration and the Time-Geography of Becoming Places , 1984 .

[16]  Annabel Faraday,et al.  Doing Life Histories , 1979 .

[17]  R. Burgess.  In the Field: An Introduction to Field Research , 1984 .

[18]  David Pepper,et al.  The Roots of Modern Environmentalism , 1984 .

[19]  Peter R H Wood,et al.  Collaboration, consultation and conflict: the process of change in a teaching department , 1982 .

[20]  Peter Jackson.  Principles and Problems of Participant Observation , 1983 .

[21]  R. Mabey.  The Common Ground: A Place For Nature In Britain's Future? , 1981 .

[22]  M. Bulmer.  Concepts in the Analysis of Qualitative Data , 1979 .

[23]  K. Plummer.  Documents of life : an introduction to the problems and literature of a humanistic method , 1984 .

[24]  J. Donovan,et al.  Making Sense of Sickness and Care: An Ethnography of Health in a West Midlands Town , 1986 .

[25]  A. Mitscherlich.  Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego , 2020, Nature.