ABSTRACT
Reflecting agreement with the points of view advanced by Altman and Sells, this chapter addresses the concepts of group formation, group environment, and group behavior, and their significance for appropriate choice of methods for indirect observation of groups under conditions of confinement and/or isolation. The circumstances under which individuals become isolated and/or confined as a physical group are important both for understanding behaviors which occur under those conditions and for ascertaining the possibilities available for observing group behavior under such conditions. Group behaviors, then, are generally of two broad categories. One has to do directly with goal attainment and the other has to do with maintenance of the group itself, or, in Slater's framework regarding small group role differentiation, task-oriented and social/emotional-oriented behaviors. The goal patterns within an isolated or confined group represent the aggregate of those objectives held by individual group members during the groups experience.
