The purpose of this study was to explore group leaders' subjective intentions and the changes of focusing occurred during group meeting sessions. Discovery qualitative approach was used to collect data from 5 doctorate trainees. The “Interpersonal Process Recall”(IPR) was applied to collect leaders' intentions within group counsel- ing sessions within a week immediately after they had led the groups.
The findings of this study were as follow :
1. There were totally 490 intentions were found, and these were primarily divided into 37 categories, and then simplified to 12 categories by content analysis: (1) expressing support;(2) working on feelings and emotions;(3) reinforcing and helping personal changes;(4) facilitating insight;(5) setting and promoting personal goals; (6) getting information and assessment; (7) interpersonal skillstraining;(8 )establishing the group culture;(9) facilitating the group cohesion;(10) facilitating the group process; (11) satisfying the leaders' need; (12) the others.
2. The leaders' intentions to focus on "group process" decreased as the group process carried on, while the "individual member" focus increased with the group processing.
3. When leaders focused on "the group process" their intentions were ”facilitating the group cohesion" and "facilitating the group process". When leaders focused on ”the individual member” their intentions were ” facilitating insight”, "getting information and assessment” , "interpersonal skills training" and "expressing support".
Based on the findings, some suggestions were made.