13

UNDERSTANDING GROUP
DYNAMICS USING
NARRATIVE METHODS

SunWolf

SANTA CLARA UNIVERSITY

It was a dark and stormy night on the oncology ward of a large children's hospital when I first stepped into story. There was a room no doctors could enter, a room of sanctuary, where hospitalized children knew they would be temporarily free of painful intrusive treatments. The life battles these children confronted necessitated long periods of hospital-style incarceration – even the most engaging toys or creative crafts become too familiar. I was a trial attorney, also trained as a play therapist, who volunteered on weekend evenings on the oncology unit of a children's hospital where play is used to help children heal, rather than healing based on adult-favored conversations. Play is especially effective in groups of similarly struggling peers. Late one Saturday night, on duty as the play therapist in this special room, I found myself surrounded by six bored adolescent patients (it is the nature of cancer treatment that children spend a great deal of time in the hospital and soon exhaust the possibilities of available crafts).

Caught in a moment of epiphany, I (who did not consider herself to be a storyteller) asked my patient-companions if they'd like to turn out the lights and tell ghost stories. They were thrilled and fell to darkening the room. I gave them a scary story my father had given to me, stretching it as far as I could. The shivers and chills, shared in the community of group, were far different versions of fear than the ones these children faced daily. They were no longer afraid in this story-moment of dying, of pain, of questions no one was answering for them; it was healing-fear, safely stored in a story-container. They laughed, screeched, giggled. A trial attorney by day, my logical brain went into action and I set up camp in the local library until I had unearthed every book I could find about storytelling. I traveled the country to study with the best storyteller-teachers I could find. I knew more stories would always be needed (SunWolf, 2004a, 2005). The power of story began for me in the 1980s, as I awakened to the power of real-world face-to-face story-sharing in peer groups. When I later left the courtroom for graduate school and the study of small group communication processes, I found that I had “story eyes,” narrative lenses for seeing the possibilities for understanding social behavior through story.

What is a Narrative Analysis Approach to Research?

It turns out that not all scholars are on the same page (or even reading from the same book) when it comes to narrative analysis. For Polkinghorne (1988), narrative analysis is linked to discourse analysis (discourse is a unit of utterance larger than a sentence). Berger (1997) takes on the question of how scholars distinguish between narratives and nonnarratives – excluding lists, pictures, drawings, and photographs. Narrative analysis is defined by Riessman (2008) as a family of methods for interpreting texts that have in common a storied format (oral, written, visual), with the actual analysis of data as only one component.

Stories offer a way of knowing and remembering experiences, providing a powerful structure for binding together seemingly isolated or confusing events in a meaningful way (SunWolf & Frey, 2001). Fisher (1987) suggested that people might be best understood as homo narrans, organizing experiences into stories with plots, central characters, and action sequences that carry implicit and explicit lessons. If, as Fisher (1985, 1987) argued, people do inherently pursue a narrative logic, and that all humans are essentially storytellers, it follows that stories will be embedded in group talk, culture, and task.

Narrative analyses may be thought of as involving one or more of three parts: (a) the data collected (narratives produced during group processes or shared by group members outside of group meetings); (b) the analytical or theoretical approach; and (c) research design tools the scholar uses to make sense of the narrative data about or from a particular group. All three, however, are aspects of the methodology of narrative analysis that can be applied to studying small group issues.

A narrative method might focus on the data collected

When a researcher's data consist of stories, the researcher has narrative data. For example, scholars who study family groups coping with illness often look at the stories that emerge from these groups:

They chose to capture on video the personal narratives of the residents about the challenges and rules of group living. In order to learn how childhood peer groups construct social boundaries, my collaborator and I collected retrospective narrative data from 682 adolescents (SunWolf & Leets, 2004, p. 208; research design described later in this chapter), using a survey instrument that asked, “Think of a time when a group of people excluded you and it hurt your feelings. What did someone in that group say or do that let you know you would not be included?” One white male teenager wrote, “They needed an extra person, so I offered. The person making the team said I was not good enough, even though we played on the same school football team.”

A narrative method might focus on how data is analyzed

When a researcher examines collected data to make sense of it, narrative analysis occurs, in an attempt to lift meaning, qualitatively or quantitatively. A quantitative approach to analyzing data using narrative analysis might focus on creating a coding scheme, training coders for acceptable reliability on similar data using that scheme, and reporting, for example, frequencies of themes, metaphors, events, outcomes or the story-element of interest. SunWolf and Leets (2003), using an original narrative coding scheme, trained coders to analyze more than 600 adolescent personal stories about specific times they failed to speak up even when they disagreed with their peer group's decision to exclude an outsider (finding the narrative accounts revealed six reasons given for failing to voice disagreement with the social exclusion of outsiders by their peer groups, described below). Meyers and Seibold (this volume) describe specific methodological issues in developing coding schemes. An example of a qualitative approach to narrative analysis of small group behaviors is the work of Conquergood (1994), who used ethnography, moving into Chicago's tenements to gain access to group processes, symbols, and meaning-making of street gangs, as participant-observer.

A narrative method might focus on specific design tools
that generate narrative data

Questions to participants intended to generate data in story format can be thought of as narrative research tools. “Tell us about a time when …” is a format designed to produce stories about past events. Seibold and I (SunWolf & Seibold, 1998) used hypothetical story stems (“Imagine you are on a jury and … ”), for example, to generate story-thinking in citizens called for jury duty and waiting to be called in a jury assembly room (described later). Researchers at the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, used a narrative approach studying community groups in sub-Saharan Africa to change people's willingness to behave in healthier ways (Galavotti et al., 2005). In order to motivate increased participation in cervical cancer screening among Yakama Indian women, scholars at the University of Washington's School of Nursing and Yakama Indian Health Center joined existing storytelling circles of Alaskan NativeAmerican women (Strickland, Chrisman, Yallup, Powell, & Squeoch, 1996), listened to their cultural tales, then used those stories to create consistent interventions with the values of these women. In other words, narratives were gathered (data), then those stories were reformatted into health care advertising interventions.

All three aspects of narrative analysis, or only one, may be chosen by a group scholar as part of the methodology of studying small group processes and outcomes. Each of them, in addition, involve challenges and choices in the design, collection, or data interpretation, as illustrated by my experiences with a narrative approach to understanding small group dynamics.

Strengths and Tradeoffs of Narrative Methodologies
for Group Scholars

Narrative methodologies can allow group scholars to connect more closely with the groups they study. The symbolic–interpretive perspective of group dynamics (Frey & SunWolf, 2004, 2005) argues that the vitality of any group relies upon the members’ symbolic activities. Storytelling, in addition to ritual and symbols, are primary means by which a group's members bind themselves together as a group. Many peer groups, teams, and families also function as ongoing story circles, in which a collective point-of-view in that group is created and recreated. Members are both listeners and tellers. The power of small groups as story sharing has long been recognized, for example, in psychotherapy, self-help groups, and support groups. Ingroups and outgroups (critical to forming a sense of identity in small groups) are formed, in part, by the sharing of stories about “us” and “them” (SunWolf, 2008).

In addition, a narrative analysis of group talk, for example, offers scholars an opportunity to re-analyze existing transcripts, videos, or audio tapes of groups, in order to cast light upon the functions of personal, cultural, or co-created member stories that emerge during any group's task talk. Groups may tell identity stories (stories that describe “who we are”). Further, a narrative approach to understanding small groups can benefit from qualitative, quantitative, or triangulated methods (as illustrated later in this chapter). Another challenge of studying the dynamics of small groups is that the scholar is confronted with complex, multilayered data (such as member differences, group culture, embeddedness in community or organizations, member exits/entrances, conflict, creation and maintenance of group identity, leadership styles, rules, and multimember participation in group talk). Finally, as will be seen in the studies described in this chapter, a narrative approach acknowledges the many variables that impact narrative data. As a result, it both allows penetration of these variables by providing a focus (stories shared, stories co-created, and even story battles during group argument, for example) while, at the same time, being faithful to coexisting variables by including them in the research design or description of the results.

Three Exemplars of Studies that Used Narrative Analysis
as a Component of Group Methodology

In this chapter, stories about my own narrative analysis of group data are shared, describing some of the challenges, choices, and findings that emerged from my research. I have drawn upon various forms of narrative analysis in studying three different types of small groups: social groups (childhood peer groups), decision-making groups (juries), and professional training groups (task groups). Drawing specifically upon the three-part framework of approaches used in narrative analysis introduced above (e.g., a focus on the actual data collected, an analytical or theoretical approach, or a research design tool), my studies of group dynamics in childhood peer groups incorporated a research design tool and the collection of narrative data, my study of jury deliberations focused on an analytical and theoretical approach to understanding naturally occurring group storytelling, and my work with professional training groups created a narrative research design tool to facilitate different group outcomes and experiences.

My goal is to offer specific scholarly experiences from the field, in order to encourage group researchers to feel better prepared to design and analyze research from a narrative perspective.

Studying social groups: childhood peer groups

When I became interested in childhood peer groups, it was the result of conversations I had with many of my students enrolled in group courses about the painful memories they had of being left out. I remembered my experiences in changing schools and being picked last for teams and I remembered, as well, excluding unwanted outsiders at school. I partnered with a fellow graduate student who was now on faculty at Stanford University and was interested in social justice issues. We wanted to learn how children and adolescents communicated social rejection, as well as how outsider children attempted to negotiate peer group inclusion. Our first methodological decision was to ask children directly about these events.

Research designs involving children are challenging because permission and consent at so many levels are required, as well as full review by university human subjects committees. It would be easier to design a study asking adults to remember these events, but the trade-off is that time has passed and distortions of painful events occur. We decided we wanted participants who were at the transitional cusp of childhood and adolescence, that is, those in their first year of high school. This would allow us to ask about current events for teens, as well as have them recall events only a few years before, in elementary school. The written permissions involved included: parents, student-participants, school administrators, and classroom teachers. Months later, we had university approval of the consent forms, only after showing them the survey that would be given. It took more than six months and many phone calls to get schools and classroom teachers to agree to participate.

Many considerations were involved in designing the survey, including using language that would be familiar to young teens, items that would be relatively easy to answer, and a length that would not generate fatigue and disinterest. We included narrative questions, frequency questions, and scaled questions: “Think of a time when a group of people excluded you and it hurt your feelings. What did someone in that group say or do (behavior and/or words) that let you know you would not be included?” followed by 1½ inches of white space. One frequency question asked, “How often have you experienced being left out? [Circle One]: never, not often, the same as most people, more than other people, constantly.” This was in anticipation of the narrative analyses we wanted to do of the first question (e.g., did self-described frequently left out children respond differently than rarely-left out children?).

One question that generated narratives about social rejection was, “Sometimes we are part of a group that excludes somebody – even though we don't really agree and afterwards we regret that we didn't say anything. Think about a specific time when this happened. What happened?” We included a Likert scale on this same issue: “As you think about it now, how stressful was it for you to watch someone else be excluded when they wanted to be part of a group or activity?” followed by seven numbers, where 1 was “not at all stressful” and 7 was “definitely stressful.” In all, we included questions that could generate narrative data for three separate studies that interested us: children's moral rules about peer group exclusion; the stress of watching or participating in social rejection; and specific words or behaviors used by children to exclude others.

Since we wanted to gather multiple datasets, this informed our decision to gather more than 500 participants, in order to generate enough data for multilevel analyses: the variety of stories gathered offers stronger support for findings, in addition to allowing for narratives to be analyzed by gender or ethnicity. We had decided to gather the data personally at each school and in each classroom, rather than use graduate students. As soon as we had full consent from a school and several classroom teachers (it would involve the students filling out the form in class), we went to the school with the consent forms, set a date for us to show up, and arranged with teachers for an alternative in-class activity for students who did not have permission. It did take large chunks of time, but it resulted in 682 adolescents (377 males, 301 females, four undeclared), from five high schools, from large urban school districts in northern California. The median age of students was 14, with 41. 3 per cent Caucasian/White, 18. 8 per cent Asian American, 24. 2 per cent Hispanic American, 5. 7 per cent African American, and 10 per cent other. We wanted to be able to analyze the stories gathered about social exclusion in peer groups by gender and ethnicity (although we elected to collapse these categories into “White” and “NonWhite,” since there were not enough participants in specific non-Caucasian categories for statistical analyses).

We decided to do statistical as well as narrative thematic analyses in one study (SunWolf & Leets, 2004) to answer our research questions about how children and adolescents communicate peer group boundaries to unwanted children who attempt to join their groups and how stressful students reported it was to attempt to join a group or watch someone else be rejected by a group. Quantitative data were analyzed using nonparametric method, since we were not interested in central tendencies (peer rejection is not evenly distributed or similarly experienced); we wanted the relations between perceived elevated, moderate, and low levels of stress for various rejection events. Table 13. 1 contains exemplars of the narrative data. To understand how peer group members communicated boundaries to outsiders, we analyzed the themes in participants’ narratives using Owen's (1984) three-part criteria: recurring themes, repeated themes, or forcefulness. Both researchers made sense of the data in terms of first-order explanations from student answers and second-order explanations through our eyes as researchers. We took a bottom-up approach in analyzing responses by collecting short responses about similar events, then examining these responses for what they revealed about the communication of rejection. Once we identified broad themes, we looked for connections among them, collapsing several themes into single categories when similar communication dynamics were present.

For another part of our data, we trained undergraduate students to code narrative data from the survey. We were interested in the narratives participants shared about times when they were members of a group rejecting someone, but they disagreed with their group's rejection. What reasons did students give for specific storied events? An original coding scheme was developed, taking a grounded theory approach, that sought to build generalizations from the data collected (Frey, Botan, & Kreps, 2000), so we began an initial cycle of data analysis by reading each of the exclusion narratives for emerging themes that addressed words adolescents used to conceptualize their own failures to voice disagreements with peer-group exclusion. Two senior undergraduate communication students were trained as coders, first practicing with a sample that used the same questionnaire (data generated only for purposes of coder training), then discussing their differences only during practice sessions; training sessions took a total of 12 hours, including individual practice. Finally, a written four-page “dictionary” that defined categories and offered examples was developed for the coders to use. Students coded every reason appearing in a response, with intercoder reliability per category calculated on a 20 per cent sample of actual data (ranging from a low of 0. 90 to 1. 00). As a result of this coding, a frequency table for each category in the coding scheme emerged from the analysis (see SunWolf & Leets, 2004, Table 1; for the reasons student offered for vignettes of failing to disagree with social rejection as a group member). We learned that however careful the coder training, narrative analysis that uses coding benefits enormously in terms of intercoder reliability with the development of a dictionary defining the categories, to insure all coders continue to use the researchers’ definitions.

Table 13. 1 Adolescents’ responses to story prompts about peer group rejection

Response themes	Representative responses to: “What did someone in that group say or do that let you know you would not be included?”
	Males		Females
	White	Non White	White	Non White
Ignoring	I was new to the school and didn't know anyone. When it got time for recess I had nothing to do or anyone to lay with. In the class I had to do my work alone and was ignored by the other students.	When I was the only black person in a group they totally ignored me and whispered stuff to each other about me. I was talking and they would make a comment like, “is that the wind?”	The group wouldn't look at me, they seemed to be avoiding looking at my face and they turned their backs towards me. At recess in 5th grade there was a group of girls 1 always wanted to play with, but whenever I tried to they gave me dirty looks and ignored me or told me to go away.	They ignored me. I felt sad and wondered what I did. They don't acknowledge my presence, don't say hi or anything. They pretended I wasn't there.
Disqualifying	They needed an extra person, so I offered. The person making the team said I was not good enough. even though we played on the same school football team. They said my friends and 1 could not play because I was white. Their exact words were “no white boys allowed.”	Because of some difficulty I have with my heart. They mocked me and made fun of my situation telling me that I'll die or have a heart attack. I went to the group and they said that I was dumb and asked me what did this word mean and so on.	They said I couldn't play cuz I wasn't good enough of a player. They were mean. They said I couldn't be in the group because I was too ugly and I wasn't German which made me “not good enough” to be in the group.	I was an athletic girl, so I was usually one of the first people picked. But that day I had to wear my Girl Scout dress to school. The boys saw that I was dressed too much like a girl and wouldn't let me play. Oh you don't even speak English.
Insulting	They told me to shut up and go away because I was stupid. Get out of here, stupid, you're gay. They said I was fat and stupid, so they didn't want to include me in anything. 1 walked away crying.	I was told no “Ghandhi's” were allowed. You ain't cool, you are weird. Someone was making fun of my head's shape. They were making fun of me by saying “E.T. phone home.” They said that I was too stupid and ugly.	The boys said I couldn't play with them because I was a girl and I had cooties.	Other kids did not want to play with me because I had a mole on my nose. They would call me mole face. They said, hey, look at the ugly girl how she dresses.
Blaming	They said we have even teams and that I could not play very well. Because no one knew me and because of all my freckles. I wanted to play but they said no cause I wasn't good enough. They said no one liked me and I should just go away.	Because I don't look good enough. I'm not a good dresser kind of person. I was standing with who I thought were my friends and they told me don't hang out with them because I stutter. I was very hurt inside.	People do it all the time because I'm not like them or I'm not cool!! Back in grade school I was really large (fat) and people would exclude me all the time. It hurt me a lot.	I wasn't a fun or smart person to be with. They said I wasn't popular enough. Once a group of girls didn't want me to hang around with them because I wasn't like a girly girl.
Creating new rules	They said I didn't get there in time and they already started. I would have to get another person in order to play. They ignored me and left me for last pick. Then they told me I couldn't play because it was uneven.	I went to the basketball courts and asked if I play and they said they were making teams. So as they chose I looked. there was 12 people so it would be 6 on 6.1 waited then when I was the last one, the captain said, “It's already we'll make it 6 on 5, we have a better team.”	They said “Sorry no more room” but I knew that there was about 5 spaces left. I saw someone else go up there to ask if they could play and the kids let that person in. They said that they had to go home because they were leaving. 1 thought it was cause they didn't like us.	One time in 8th grade we were supposed to be getting into groups of four people and then I was going over to this one group to ask them if I could be in their group because they only had three. When I asked them, they were like, “No. because Amanda was going to be in our group.”

One further lesson in using survey instruments to gather narrative data emerged from my experience with research instruments that failed to allow respondents to add something important that related to the study. In other words, there are often stories triggered for some participants that would be of interest to researchers, but it was not specifically asked. Our survey instrument was three pages long (with plenty of white space for narrative answers), but at the end of the third page, we created a three-inch box that read:

While only a few dozen used the space, those who did gave us gold: stories of a friend who committed suicide after being rejected so often, additional stories they had no space for, and many artistic renderings of children being rejected by a group, to name a few – priceless.

Studying decision-making groups: juries

As opposed to using a narrative approach by asking adolescents to recall stories about peer group events, I had the powerful experience of observing how stories emerged and were used by group members during their task.

At the time I was attempting to study juries for my master's degree, but there were no transcripts or tapes of jury deliberations to analyze (deliberations have been protected by the courts since the 1950s). Many studies existed using mock juries but, as a trial lawyer, I saw unacceptable research design issues (discussed in SunWolf & Seibold, 1998), including truncated deliberation times (often only 20–30 minutes), too few mock jurors (often 3–5) to replicate the more complex group dynamics of 12 jurors, no outcome saliency (mock jurors knew their “verdict” did not affect anyone and they were not hearing from real witnesses whose credibility they had to evaluate), and no real-world diversity among jurors (college students). My challenge, then, was to design a study that came closer to replicating real jurors and their deliberation task. What I really wanted was to be a fly on the wall of the jury room – I wanted access to the storied vignettes that I anticipated would occur during jury talk.

My research question did not involve narrative (“What rules about jury deliberations do citizens bring with them to jury duty?”), but the design used a narrative tool to get at those rules. Group members bring expectations, values, and rules with them to new group experiences; I wondered what rules citizens might have already formed about jury deliberations. I was also challenged by the issue of gaining access to the group of interest. I wanted to get to people as close to the moment before they became jurors as I ethically could. I drew upon my knowledge of what happens in jury deliberations (from talking to jurors as an attorney after verdicts) to create imaginary narratives and ask people to complete the story (story stems).

Narratives and stories can be used as stimulus materials in designing a study. Imaginary vignettes in a narrative format can be used to learn about the perspectives group members carry about possible future problems that may emerge in a group. (There are many small groups a scholar might not be able to sit in on or record, but a scholar may know the many issues that have faced similar groups, for example, in the military, in health care settings, or with police units designed to rescue hostages.) I talked to lawyers about the worst events they had heard happening in a jury for one of their trials and I remembered my own, because I wanted my data to help attorneys and judges think in new ways about the challenges of being a juror with a group task. I wrote five imaginary jury deliberation events that frequently occur in deliberations (choosing a leader, deciding how to vote, dealing with a member's misconduct, deciding whether or not to ask the judge a question during deliberations, and deciding how long to deliberate before giving up when no agreement had been reached). Pre-testing designs using narrative vignettes, however, is critical to uncovering misunderstandings and editing the vignette to its shortest salient format. Since attorneys were not the group of interest, I pre-tested the vignette on people I knew who could, conceivably, be called for jury duty. This resulted in useful editing. For example, my final vignette involved the dilemma facing jurors in deadlock. However, when I used that word, many people were uncertain what it meant. Jurors come in a wide variety of ages, ethnicities, professions, and educational backgrounds. After feedback, the final narrative vignette read:

Potential jurors, I realized, did not need to hear the word “deadlock” or “hung jury,” just the story of how that might develop.

The next issue was gaining access to relevant participants. What might be “as close to a real juror on a trial” as you can get, without being a real juror (who is, of course, not allowed to talk to outsiders, so ethically unavailable)? In the jury assembly room are people who have been summoned for jury duty from jury-eligible citizens in the judicial district. I knew people are generally bored waiting and might volunteer to help in a jury study. While attorneys are not allowed in a jury assembly room, I realized I was now a graduate student, instead. I knew that jury commissioners could grant permission, so I made a face-to-face appointment with the jury commissioner in a nearby county, described my study and emphasized that the value to citizens might be that they would feel they had contributed to an interesting study, even if they never served. I not only received permission to come on as many days as I wished, but I was introduced by the jury commissioner to the citizens called for jury duty and they were told they could volunteer, if they liked. I had the use of a table inside the jury assembly room, in the back. (Bored groups of people “waiting,” can be a rich source of data about group experiences, values, beliefs, rules.)

Since I wanted to capture the tone of voice, hesitancies, and linguistic cues of participants, I elected to use a tape recorder rather than a written survey. I read the stimulus vignettes (the citizen was asked to speak in the role of the imaginary juror); it took about five minutes per participant. The first vignette was:

The subsequent decision was when to stop gathering data. As a master's student, I stopped at 100; today, it might be 500. Could I have used undergraduates and gathered more data? I rejected this possibility as injecting too many variables, including the fact that I wanted to experience the citizens myself and that I was, as a former attorney, entirely comfortable and familiar with courthouse protocols and rules.

My second study of jurors, however, did transport me into a real jury room during deliberations. As luck would have it, I was still looking for a way to study real jury deliberations for my doctorate two years later – at the same time that the Arizona Supreme Court agreed for the first time to allow television filming of four criminal trials (SunWolf, 2006b, 2007). ¹ Since CBS was advertising the editing versions on their documentary of these trials, I became aware of them; one news article reported that scholars would later have access to the full tapes. Knowing data existed, however, and gaining access to it, turned out to be separate things.

After numerous calls to CBS, as well as the Arizona Supreme Court, I finally found out that two law schools were going to be given sets of complete tapes. I had recorded the CBS show, which provided background information on the trials, the charges, the issues, and clips from trial and deliberations. I needed the complete tapes, however. I called the head librarian at the first law school scheduled to receive the tapes, found out the tapes had not arrived yet; I was first on the list to get a copy. I paid for the physical copying of the tapes and they were shipped months later. (Learning lesson: consider a variety of people who may have authority to grant access to the data.)

I only wanted to analyze deliberations, but had to purchase the entire trials. I watched hours of tapes to find the point where deliberations began and made copies of those portions. At this point my research question involved both my roles as lawyer (Do jurors commit misconduct during deliberations?) and as group scholar (How do jurors structure themselves and communicate on their task during deliberations?). I started with the shortest tape and, using shorthand, created verbatim transcripts (none existed). Once the first stories started appearing in deliberative talk, I knew I wanted to use a narrative lens to learn about the types and functions of stories jurors told to one another during their deliberative task. I was now able to use the transcripts of deliberations.

These group deliberations contained both social and task talk, but were also were rich with shared storytelling:

Rather than counting the stories or frequencies of their occurrence, I chose to do a qualitative analysis, making many passes through the transcripts to find emerging themes and story types. I created a rough draft table of the stories that appeared, then plugging in each spoken example that I was able to think more deeply about how these stories were functioning for each group (both juries that reached a verdict and those that deadlocked). I needed to see the story talk across trials, side by side. As a result of many passes through the data, similar types emerged (e.g., jurors sharing personal stories). For a story typology to be valid, it should include all stories that emerged, as well as have data from more than one juror across all three trials. Some categories were expanded, for example “counterfactual” stories (in which a person imagines something that did not, in fact happen) were separated into “what-if” stories and “if-only stories,” which allowed deeper understanding about a juror's story-thinking into imaginary past events of the trial (if-only) or imagined future events (what-if). At the same time, I collapsed some potential categories, relegating all personal stories into one category, no matter what the topic; this decision was based on the fact that myriad personal events were told, but it was the fact that the juror was sharing an experience which was the point of interest, not the content.

Finally, I looked at what happened after a story vignette was told in order to understand the effect narrative talk had on deliberative argument. I found, for example, that “story invitations” (e.g., What would your husband have done?) triggered story arguments about hypotheticals that were not part of the trial evidence. Further, “personal stories” or “common knowledge stories” had the effect of introducing improper out-of-court evidence for jurors to use as support for their positions. Throughout, however, I was aware that the data was rich with non-narrative talk and events (use of humor, for example); I made the decision to separate that for future study. With thick data it is seductive to analyze it all, but the resulting clutter can obscure the events of interest.

The story of jury deliberations did not end for me, however, with this first story-typology study. Several years later, I looked at this deliberation data again. I was now a professor, interested in how group theories might explain events during jury deliberations. In particular, I became interested in the counterfactual talk that was embedded in the narratives shared; that is, stories about what-might-have-been or what-might-yet-happen. Jurors were sharing counterfactual communication through the deliberations in all trials, imagining nonevidentiary events.

At this point, I stopped looking at the data and began a literature review of counterfactual thinking and regret, since jurors seemed to be trying to undo what did happen, as well as imagine unwanted outcomes of their verdicts (SunWolf, 2006b). I remembered that Bormann (1986, l990) described developing Symbolic Convergence Theory while analyzing small group talk and I reread those articles. Studying naturally occurring group talk, Bormann found that a group's unique culture, task identity, and cohesiveness are created through shared fantasies, in story format. Bormann's Symbolic Convergence Theory explained how shared fantasies and imagined stories, shared by group members, functioned to shape a group's identity, which, in turn, influenced task and relational group processes. Bormann found group fantasy themes (shared stories group members tell one another), fantasy chains (or strings of connected stories), and convergence (during group talk, the private symbolic worlds of members will intersect, coming together). Communicated fantasies perform important functions for small groups in that they: (a) help to create a unique group identity; (b) allow difficult information to be dealt with indirectly; (c) direct a group's task by endorsing or condemning particular behaviors; and (d) provide entertainment and fun for group members. Shared fantasies, thus, help group members to make some sense of their group experience and to anticipate task demands.

This explained some of the imagined stories I was analyzing, prodding me to look at how they functioned in the group. One thing stood out: when a juror shared an imagined story about an unwanted outcome of a verdict (e.g., What if we find him not guilty and then he goes out and kills someone else?), other jurors would join the story and retell it with an acceptable outcome (e.g., What if we find him not guilty and the police realize they have to find the real gunman, who is still out there?). When jurors could not successfully retell a counterfactual story with an unwanted outcome from a verdict, the jury deadlocked. I decided to attempt a sequential outline for a new theory of group communication that explained the process by which a group member's imagined decisional regret impacted a decision-making group's task before analyzing the data further (SunWolf, 2006b).

Decisional Regret Theory is based upon the concept that people want to live in a predictable world, yet we all have a lifetime of having faced unwanted outcomes from our decision choices. It looks at the production, sharing, and reconstruction of pre-decisional imaginary narratives that allow alternative decisional outcomes to be anticipated a type of shared communication (counterfactual storytelling) under specific circumstances (anticipation of making a meaningful decision), also predicting how other group members will respond and various effects on the decisional task (group regret, for example, and deadlock). Returning to existing scholarship in the middle of analyzing data can be a powerful way of redirecting one's attentions; it was for me. Finally, using the lenses counterfactual thinking literature and this new theory that emerged from looking at storied data, I sorted all juror stories into pre-existing typologies of counterfactual thinking (see SunWolf, 2006b, Table 2). The narratives made sense as counter-factual talk attempting to avoid an unwanted outcome from group decision making (Table 13. 2).

Studying task groups: professional training groups

In addition to using a narrative approach by asking adolescents to recall stories about peer group events and observing how stories emerged and were used by group members during their task, I have also used narrative as an intervention to create new outcomes at the outset of small group processes.

Table 13. 2 Story types emerging during jury deliberation talk

Story type	Trial A: Drug smuggling	Trial B: Shooting	Trial C: Store robbery	Trial D: Drug smuggling
What-if	Let's just say. for a moment, that she was a very bright person. Same actions, but bright. Calls up and says. “Tell Specta I'm at Madison County Jail. Good-bye.” The whole case goes out the window.	What if Tho Tran was maimed. and what if he was blind, or if somehow it affected his spinal cord and he was. you know, in a wheel chair the rest of his life?	I'm the person that sat in the classroom and hated the “what if” people. “But what it–,” and I would go, “Shut up!” But I'm not in school any more, and we're talking about a human life.	J #C: But see that's exactly my point. My thought is, it could have been reversed. There's no reason she couldn't have done the same thing.
If-only	What would have happened if, had she not had – if – how would we have decided, just for curiosity, if we didn't have any tapes from prison?	If he had not have gone right out there and shot at those people. If the natural course of events would have taken place, they would have just drive away.	If would have been nice to know. if she was a witness, if you could've asked her, “At which point is the helicopter being dispatched?”	If only the defendant had testified.
Common knowledge	If they already had the tickets when they went in. then you would check the luggage outside. If I already had my rickets, I'd check my luggage outside.	Even cops shoot accidentally. It's not that unusual. Because he has to make that decision so quick. And he's even been trained. And he made the wrong decision. And it's totally unfortunate.	It's hot, more than 100 degrees outside. I've gone to the grocery store and taken cans off the shelf and put ’em in my trunk, got home, picked it up, and it was cold.‘ Cause when it's 100 degrees out, you know. 70 degrees is cold.	Common sense would tell you that she somehow came up with this money, very easily, and got bail. And he had to sit there.
Personal knowledge	Well, one thing, round trip on certain airlines, round trip tickets were more expensive than one-way. It depends on which airlines. I've flown on Frontier Airlines, to Missouri for $69 one-way. Got there, you know. $69 back. That was $130. Round trip was $200.	I've been in situations even where. I mean, you may not be directly involved, and it's like you can hardly talk. It's like it takes a minute. And then, all of a sudden. once you start talking, you can't – it's like [begins shaking] you're shaking, you can't stop,…	It's legal in Arizona to have a weapon in a holster. I've been in there more than once with guys. they weren't cops, just guys who had a holster and their gun was fully exposed. They'd walk in there and buy a candy bar and pay for it and leave.	The people that book them don't know what they're coming in for until they fill out that paper. They frisk them, they fingerprint ’em. “Give me your valuables.” They might ask. “What're you here for?” But they would have no idea what the circumstances were.
Reasonable person	So, she comes back out and she tickets the baggage. He sees four tickets. She says. “Okay. I bought these tickets under Sarah Nunez and Marcos Bowdas.” Why did they not use Urbano's name? I mean, if there's nothing to hide here, or whatever, why didn't we just use our real names?	What I would haw done, as a reasonable person, would've gotten the license plate. There arc cops in dose proximity, because it only took one minute to get there. He could haw had the license plate number. They would have been caught.	You just, you don't do it. You hope it will get by. you pause a little bit. You call 9-1-1. You go. “Yeah.” and to me	The thing it goes back to for me is she said she knew the guy for a year. Well I mean, if I know somebody for a year. I'm going to know what their job is. their family. Even if I know someone for three months. I'm at least going to know where they live. what they do for a living. I'm going to know if they do drug;.
What probably happened	Okay, they already miss the early flight. So, go in and find this next flight going to Newart. Takes care of the money end of it. All of a sudden you have two unemployed people and he's got a big wad of cash. Takes care of that. They go to check the luggage with the sky cap.	That always has been his role. Somebody's going to call down to their house, or that's his assumed role. Troy or Greg, whichever one was home. “This is your role. We want you to go and investigate.”	So I'm trying to think what they were thinking. There's a good chance that they assumed that if there was no gun that the case was closed, no knowing that somebody else's testimony that they had a gun would be enough to sink them. I'm just guessing that…	Well, this is just a thing, might not make much sense, but 1 think that she's the one that was higher up on the ladder…
Story invitations	If I didn't know what was in those suitcases. I'd never say those were my suitcascs. 1 wouldn't. Would you? Would you [to another juror]?	What if, six months down the line, he does it again – but this time, he kills somebody?	What would be an armed robbery that wasn't dangerous?	Example #l:Do you pick up hitchhikers? Example #2:Would you haw been relaxed?[Answer:Yes, I would have] After you found out?

As a group scholar, I recognize that I now have narrative eyes, so, even when working with task groups as a trainer/facilitator, I am likely to draw upon narrative tools to help those groups in their processes. Once upon a time, I was a trial attorney, appointed as a public defender to represent indigent clients who were charged with criminal acts. Seventeen years into this career, in the middle of a death penalty trial, I resolved that if I could save the life of that client, I would return to graduate school to study people, persuasion, and social thinking, so attorneys could learn more about real jurors. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, I studied group processes and communication, focusing on juries. After graduate school, I accepted a position at Santa Clara University, which has a law school; I was invited to participate as faculty in the law school's annual Death Penalty College, ² so I did not face the challenge of gaining entrance to small groups of attorneys in training programs. I came with an insider's view of the stresses and demands of representing a client in a death penalty trial (SunWolf, 2006a). The goals of this program are to teach attorneys the skills, knowledge, and insights (into both themselves and other people) that are needed to defend a capital (death penalty) case successfully.

These attorneys, who have never met one another and come from various states, are assigned to work in the same group of eight members for six days. They are a task group. Each day, following lectures, attorney-participants meet in their small groups, performing, receiving feedback, and brainstorming various aspects of the mitigation portion of a death penalty trial (e.g., that portion of the trial that follows a conviction on the substantive charges of murder, including exercises on investigation, creating a compelling life story of clients). I became aware that these attorneys were often stressed and disconnected from their clients. Further, I was enrolled at my university's graduate counseling psychology program, with courses involving therapeutic tools for creating empathy and facilitating small therapeutic groups. I wanted to create an intervention for these attorneys that could enhance their work with one another during the week on the task of learning new trial skills, as well as create healthier relationships with their most challenging clients. I chose a narrative method, designed to be introduced in the first small group session. One reason for this choice was that there is little time in intensive continuing legal education programs to trigger new thinking. I combined my legal experience as a death penalty lawyer, my work with attorneys around the country on their criminal cases, my training as a group scholar, and my counseling psychology education to develop a group intervention based upon role-switching and storytelling in the first-person format. Group scholars are encouraged to draw upon their own multiple interests, training, and group memberships in this same way.

In this narrative intervention, for the first meeting, eight attorneys were challenged to “become” their current client, speak in that client's voice, then tell a small slice of that client's storied point-of-view. The technique (which I called empathic attunement, becoming connected with the emotions felt by another), involved the following steps.

• 1 At zero history (i.e., the first meeting of a small group of strangers), the facilitator (my role) places an empty chair in placed in the center of the group's U-shape of chairs.
• 2 Group members (attorneys) are told that they will be asked, one at a time, to sit in that chair and to respond to two specific prompts from the facilitator as the client would, adopting the behavior of that client as they have experienced it, but adopting as well the client's voice, emotions, and attitudes.
• 3 The facilitator poses the first prompt, “Who are you and what are you most afraid of?”
• 4 The attorney, as client, answers the question, as the group listens.
• 5 The facilitator poses a second prompt to the attorney, “Tell me about the lawyer you have on your case;” and the attorney, as client, answers.
• 6 After everyone has participated, the group is asked to share what was that like for them, as they role-switched with their client and as they listened to the mini-stories of others.

Each step was designed to reject the typical first session of these groups, in which people generally introduced themselves, talking about their legal practices. Instead, they were now listening to a dramatized client talking about facing death and dealing with a lawyer while in jail. I chose a U-shape rather than a circle, so that the person in the center did not have his/her back to anyone. I decided to delay any group discussion or feedback until everyone had participated, so as not to interrupt the drama of the experience across group members. One co-facilitator who watched this intervention for the first time offered his observation:

Some attorneys described feeling momentarily inadequate, even ashamed about how little they had thought about their clients before the narrative exercise, even though they saw themselves as extraordinarily people-oriented. As a co-facilitator explained, “It's an epiphany moment for them. For the first time, they realize there's a gap here, and they have been invited into a paradigm shift” (S. Harmon, personal communication, January 21, 2003). Comments from attorneys during the exercises included the following.

I am moved by what they share; the cohesion and insights help me tailor my teaching for the week every year.

For me, this group intervention using narrative represented the bridges I could build between various scholarly interests (in this case, counseling psychology, oral storytelling, and small group processes), my professional service (using my scholarship to help underresourced criminal defense attorneys more fully represent clients), and social activism (opposition to the death penalty), while learning more about the effects of group interventions on group processes and members. In particular, I came to understand more about the critical first moments of a group that set the stage for the climate and the task to follow.

Recommendations for Researchers Considering Learning
about Groups Using Narrative Analysis

At the outset, group researchers new to narrative analysis can benefit by learning how narrative talk is embedded in group processes. In addition to reading the articles already referenced in this chapter from group scholars who observed group storytelling, such as Bormann (1986, 1990), there now exist in the public domain videos of real jury deliberations. In August 2010, a special issue of Small Group Research focused on jury deliberations, including five articles by group scholars who examined transcripts from a capital jury case (death penalty trial), addressing different aspects of the jury's deliberative talk from different scholarly perspectives. Jury deliberations are salient exemplars of group decision making, as community-based, single-event, conscripted groups of strangers face the task of reaching agreement on both law and facts (SunWolf, 2010). Access to those transcripts, as well as videos of the jury deliberations that may be purchased, are detailed in that issue, offering a valuable opportunity for scholars to practice retrieving, coding, and theoretically explaining the story types and functions during group deliberations. Drafts of coding instruments and attempts to obtain intercoder reliability on story typologies can be practiced on these and other existing exemplars of group talk. These transcripts and videos are also valuable tools in teaching university courses involving group processes or research methodology.

Further, group scholars might begin by experimenting with extraordinarily accessible narrative tools, the story vignette or the story stem question. They both can be used as story-gathering probes, focusing on group events, in group classes with students, with members of groups in which we are already embedded, or with colleagues or friends describing their group experiences. For example, a story vignette, as previously described, is a hypothetical mini-story about something that might happen in a group, which then asks the participant some form of, “What would you do or say if that happened?” On the other hand, a story-stem question focuses on a group event that did, in fact, happen to the participant, asking, in essence, “Tell me about a time when X happened in your group,” The value for group scholars includes the fact that it becomes apparent that narrative data are created immediately by either tool, yet each gathers a different perspective, focusing back (it already happened) or forward (what might happen). Both offer access to group processes without the necessity of the group researcher being present when an event happens.

Finally, group scholars should ground themselves in some of the most respected and recent books describing narrative methods. These would include Riessman's (2008) Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences, as well as Gubrium and Holstein's (2009) Analyzing Narrative Reality. While narrative analysis, as already described, works well with quantitative methods, for qualitative researchers as a supplement to these two works I recommend The Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd ed.) edited by Denzin and Lincoln (2000), which contains outstanding chapters on grounded theory for explaining narrative data, methods of collecting narratives, analyzing talk and text, case studies, co-constructed narratives, culturally situated narratives, interviews, and narrative evaluation, to name a few. These chapters help group scholars to anticipate methodological challenges embedded in narrative analysis, while also offering specific suggestions on research design and field work that involve collecting or interpreting stories.

Concluding Thoughts

Narrative methodologies can travel in time, retrieving past stories or provoking participants to imagine future group events, allowing group scholars access to what has already happened to the group or what might yet happen. Further, a narrative approach that acknowledges in the real world in which group members and groups are embedded adds value. Draw upon a bona fide groups perspective (Putnam & Stohl, 1990; Stohl & Putnam, 2003) to include investigation of the organization or community in which a group is embedded as you design your study. This perspective argues that group researchers should acknowledge all groups as embedded in multiple social systems, knowing that each group member also balances memberships in other groups, which is all a critical part of the environment necessary to understanding the dynamics of any particular group. When you know the group you wish to study, become familiar with the backstory, the prequels, and the community stories in which that group is embedded. Stories told by any culture function to persuade through generating new thoughts, triggering listener involvement, and modeling (SunWolf, 1999).

My group scholarship has and continues to benefit enormously when drawing upon existing narrative theories and perspectives. Fisher's (1986, 1990) Narrative Paradigm, Bormann's (1985) Symbolic Convergence Theory, and Decisional Regret Theory (SunWolf, 2006b) may suggest to you a narrative approach to designing group research. Why did a decision-making group fail to reach consensus (Decisional Regret Theory)? Why does discussion in a task group often get off track with humor and fantasies (Symbolic Convergence Theory)? Is it predictable that any group over time will generate stories and speak to one another in storied format (Narrative Paradigm)? The Symbolic Interpretative Perspective (Frey & SunWolf, 2004, 2005) invites group scholars to examine, among other group events, how groups use stories to socialize new members, recreate identity after loss of one or more members, create insider–outsider symbolic boundaries, or communicate unique group culture and rules.

While it has been traditional for many to speak of a methodology as having weaknesses, I argue that there are simply trade-offs with any methodology used to study groups. With a narrative approach, the richness of data gathered about specific group members’ experiences might not be generalizable to other groups, for example, even though the data generate deeper understand of a particular group. Some methods of gathering narrative data, as well as analyzing it, are affected by the researcher (in particular interviewing, participant observation, ethnography), such that another researcher using the same design would produce different data or sense-making of that data. Further, the analyses of dense narrative data or the training of coders to analyze storied talk is time-consuming.

Groups, as entities, create storied rituals, use stories to socialize new members, share stories about group history and values. A narrative approach to studying groups offers a gateway into both the individual member experiences of group dynamics and the group processes that create and recreate narrative communication.

Notes

• 1 In the midst of enacting major rules for jury reform, the Arizona Supreme Court granted permission to a national television network (CBS) to film both the trial and deliberations of four criminal trials after consent of all parties involved (attorneys, judges, defendants, and jurors) was obtained. The network agreed to make the tapes available for use by academic scholars. In Arizona, eight jurors are used on criminal trials. Trial A involved a possession of narcotics charge in which drugs were found in suitcases at the airport. Trial A jurors deliberated for twelve hours and ended in deadlock (6:2). Trial B involved assault charges resulting from a shooting in which one person died and another was wounded; the defense raised self-defense and defense of others. After 9-½ hours of deliberation, this trial resulted in a hung jury (6:2). Jurors in Trial C convicted a defendant charged with armed robbery, resulting from a convenience store robbery. Trial C jurors deliberated for 3 hours; seven jurors eventually convinced the holdout to change her vote and a guilty verdict was returned. Trial D was the retrial of Trial A, resulting in a conviction after 45 minutes of deliberation. Two cameras were used, both placed behind walls to minimize distraction (jurors knew about the cameras). Times were captured using a 24-hour clock.
• 2 Each small group was composed of eight lawyers, attending an intensive, week-long trial advocacy program, focused on the aggravation/mitigation portion of a capital defense trial (evidence and arguments supporting either a sentence of life or death, after considering the entire life of the defendant, as well as circumstances of the crime) rather than on the guilt/innocence portion (evidence and arguments supporting either a verdict of guilty or not guilty of the crimes charged).

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