Activity Areas and Developmental Stages in Self-Help Groups

Abstract

This article reports on four and a half years of participant observation in two self-help associations, a Gray Panthers group and a Parents Circle of Young Drug Abusers. As the first step of our analysis, we developed a classification system for the activities of these groups (self-maintenance, mutual aid, socializing, voluntary work, and lobbying). This helped us to identify and characterize five developmental stages (solidarization, orientation, stabilization, differentiation, and institutionalization of one or more activity areas). We describe the development of the two groups and their transformation over time, suggest some hypotheses for further research, and discuss some implications of the results.The number of self-help groups and self-help organizations has been growing steadily. This is especially true of Western countries, it is increasingly true of Eastern countries as well. Research on self-help groups has also increased, but there are few longitudinal studies that try to develop systematic accounts of the activities and phases of self-help groups and of their changes over time. More knowledge of these issues would be particularly valuable for an empirically founded debate on the potential and limits of selfhelp associations in a new welfare mix (Evers and Wintersberger, 1988).Although there are studies in the research tradition of small-group dynamics as well as studies using concepts from organizational sociology, there is hardly any literature on the transition from small self-help groups to larger self-help organizations. Our study of the development of two local self-help groups should help to fill this gap.