With Several Voices: What in situ Group Interviews Can Contribute to Sociology of Voting
Type de matériel :
71
In situ group interviews, to be distinguished from focus groups and face-to-face individual interviews, have not yet found their rightful place among the tools available to social science researchers. This article, based on research experience in sociology of voting, points up the specificity of information produced in the in situ group framework and its particular usefulness in accounting for the contextual determinants of individual behavior. Questioned together in spaces where they habitually meet, couples and small groups of friends, colleagues and neighbors are willing to speak of or admit to political behavior they do not mention in other survey situations. But above all, this situation makes visible the relationships between respondents, including influence, pressure, and the bandwagon behavior those relationships may induce. In situ group interviews are thus a fitting tool for improving our understanding of what is implied today in the collective dimension of the act of voting.
Réseaux sociaux