For general understanding we regard any collection of two or more individuals to be a group, sociologically, a group is a relatively small organization whose members identify and interact with each other in a personal manner.

The small size of most groups (often no more than 15-20 people) enables all the members to know and interact many shared values and norms. As a result, the members of a group feel strong inter- personal bonds among themselves and with the group as a whole. There are countless kinds of groups in contemporary societies, including families, friendship cliques, work crews, teenage gangs, sport teams, juries, rap groups and committees of all sorts.

All of us are members of numerous social groups that influence or shape many of our daily activities. The family is an extremely important group in most of our lives, since bonds of love; commitment, marriage, and kinship link us closely to other family members. Even if we do not live with all the members of our family or interact with them on a daily basis, we commonly maintain these interpersonal ties through letters, telephone calls, and visits

Though there exists a wide variety of groups, etc. Categorizing groups as either primary or secondary is a convenient way of indicating the depth and inclusiveness of their social relationship.

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Definitions of Social Group

(1) Albion Small defines: a group as “any number of people, larger or smaller, between whom such relations are discovered that they must be thought of together.”

(2) According to Sheriff and Sheriff: “A group is a social unit which consists of a number of individuals who stand in (more or less) definite status and role relationships to one another and which possess a set of values or norms of its own, regulating the behaviour of individual members at least in matters of consequence to the group.”

(3) Williams states “A social group is a given aggregate of people, playing inter-related roles and recognized by themselves or others as a unit of interaction”.

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(4) To Bogardus “A social group may be thought of as a number of persons, two or more, who have some common objects of attention, who are stimulating to each other, who have common loyalty and participate in similar activities.”

(5) According to Green Arnold, “A group is an aggregate of individuals which persists in time, which has one or more interests and activities in common, and which is organized.”

(6) By Eldredge and Merrill “A social group may be defined as two or more persons who were in communication over an appreciable period of time and who act in accordance with a common function or purpose.”