The data collection measure was conversational interviews of thirty to sixty minutes. Such groups include groups that are intensive training programs, professional organizations and cross-cultural training programs. The general depiction of such groups are that fifty to 400 individuals meet over a period of four days to two weeks in a large community group. During the large community group, other activities are decided upon. These activities often entail small interaction groups, topic group discussions, participant demonstrations, and leisure activities.
Participants usually live in a dorm or similar community type setting.
There are experienced facilitators who attempt to create an atmosphere for personal growth by experiencing and communicating the attitudinal conditions of genuineness, unconditional positive regard and empathic understanding. Research including excerpts from interviews conducted in two towns in eastern Czechoslovakia illustrate the investigator's striving toward following the aforementioned guidelines of the person-centered research model. An ethereal experiencing of freeing of individuals was an emergent theme in the interviews conducted at this site. Three hundred twenty-nine participants from nineteen countries gathered to expand intercultural communication, hoping to meet the challenges of becoming more complete as individuals as well as better members of the world community. Ironically, the site of the cross-cultural workshop had previously served as a communist school whose purpose was to prepare people for positions in the communist party.