Analýza komunikace ohniskové skupiny ve výchovném ústavu

This paper deals with a specific aspect of a focus group interview – communicational behaviour among the participants. The focus interview was conducted with a group of young people living in an offenders’ institution in the Czech Republic in order to identify how they perceive their self-regulation in conflict situations. Two aspects of communication were observed: interactional structures and communication functions. In the interactional structures, special attention was paid to participant-participant communication (in contrast to moderator-participant communication). There were 77 utterances identified between participants out of the total of 413 utterances. This number is not large, but its relevance is high because a discussion amongst participants is the raison d´être of focus group interviews. The following communication functions were observed: informing, regulating, evaluating, and off-topic.