Suchergebnisse

Pressure groups may be divided into 2 classes: those which speak for a particular section of the community & those which organize people with similar att's. The diff between them lies in the fact that it is the task of the former to reflect a particular interest of a group represented & of the latter to try to persuade people to subscribe to its point of view. Few attitude groups (AG's) have members of their own, but they can rely on the support of particular sections of society. They are predominantly Mc & Uc in composition. Members provide the groups with lobbyists & money. The most direct form of lobbying is interviewing Members of Parliament, but it is also important to have members scattered about the country to ask questions during elections. The AG's usually enjoy private patronage; less often the membership is large enough to provide the necessary funds by subscription. The AG's are pol'ly less influential & important than others, though some welfare societies have been consulted on legislation. The AG's are also less likely to produce pol'ly important people. IPSA.

Over the past decade, focus groups and group interviews have reemerged as a popular technique for gathering qualitative data, both among sociologists and across a wide range of academic and applied research areas. Focus groups are currently used as both a self-contained method and in combination with surveys and other research methods, most notably individual, in-depth interviews. Comparisons between focus groups and both surveys and individual interviews help to show the specific advantages and disadvantages of group interviews, concentrating on the role of the group in producing interaction and the role of the moderator in guiding this interaction. The advantages of focus groups can be maximized through careful attention to research design issues at both the project and the group level. Important future directions include: the development of standards for reporting focus group research, more methodological research on focus groups, more attention to data analysis issues, and more engagement with the concerns of the research participants.

In recent political literature, pressure groups have frequently been condemned as a deleterious element in American government. One scholar in the field of political parties writes: "In the economy of democratic government the pressure group is definitely a parasite on the wastage of power exercised by the sovereign majority." Another scholar uses the following harsh language: "There exist socially created constraints which emanate from less sanctioned or less responsible sources, informal and opportunistic in their operation; they fluctuate incessantly in intensity and direction. These constraints may be called social pressures…. In R. E. Park's comment: 'The pressure group is not an army which seeks to win battles by frontal attacks on hostile positions; it is, rather, a body of sharp-shooters which pick off its enemies one by one.'" Another student of politics, in a denunciation of pressure groups, says: "It is a testimonial to the faith, the tenacity, or the credulity of the American people that after 150 years they still cling to the forms—without the substance—of democratic government. Since the founding of the Republic the democratic process has been perverted to a greater or less degree by cunning and powerful minorities bent on serving their own interests. The ideal of rule by the majority for the good of the many has been illusory from the start."

The common problem in the life of working small groups of division into opposed camps that are unable to cooperate [schism] is considered here in theory and in practice. The first aim of the paper is to integrate previous theoretical contributions into a single coherent model, which will provide intelligibility and lines of intervention to the group leader or consultant. The second aim is to show this conceptualization in practice, in work with a seminar in a Group Relations Conference and in work with a small group of medical students studying "The Doctor-Patient Relationship. " What is em-phasized is the ease with which subgrouping is made more defensive and in-transigent by the leader's articulation of it and the necessity for getting back to the task in common and the resistance to this task.