ABSTRACT
The Family Research Consortium can be viewed as itself a small-scale group interaction experiment; when this experiment has run its course it may help to answer four questions:
Is it possible for a group of working family scientists to define, accurately and contemporaneously, the major ebbs and flows of their own field. In particular, can they spot a significant wave of scientific advance before it crests.
Is it possible for such a group to position its work in relationship to that crest, drawing on the wave’s increasing momentum and directing and accelerating it further?
Is it possible for a group to sustain work of this kind even though it is dispersed to the four corners of a large continent?
If work of this kind is possible, what are the social structures, within the group, which work best?
