pp. 61-93

In situ group interviews, to be distinguished from focus groups and face-to-face individual interviews, have not yet found a place in the set of tools available to social science researchers. This article, based on a research experiment in sociology of voting, points up the specificity of data produced in the in situ group framework and their particular usefulness in accounting for contextual determinants of individual behavior. Questioned together in spaces where they habitually meet, spouses and small groups of friends, colleagues and neighbors are willing to speak of or admit to political behavior that they do not mention in other survey situations. But above all, this situation makes visible the relationships obtaining between respondents, including influence, pressure, and the bandwagon behavior those relationships may induce. In situ group interviews are thus a fit tool for improving our understanding of what is implied today in the collective dimension of the act of voting.