This article provides an accessible introduction to recurrence analysis—an analytical approach that has great promise for helping researchers understand group dynamics. Recurrence analysis is a technique with roots in the systems dynamics literature that was developed to reveal the properties of complex, nonlinear systems. By tracking when a system visits similar states at multiple points in its life—and the form or pattern of these recurrences over time—recurrence analysis equips researchers with a set of new metrics for assessing the properties of group dynamics, such as recurrence rate (i.e., stability), determinism (i.e., predictability), and entropy (i.e., complexity). Recent work has shown the potential value of recurrence analysis across a number of different disciplines. To extend its use within the domain of group dynamics, the authors present a conceptual overview of the technique and give a step-by-step tutorial on how to use recurrence analysis to study groups. An exemplar application of recurrence analysis using dialogue-based data from 63 three-person student groups illustrates the use of recurrence analysis in examining how groups change their focus on different processes over time. This is followed by a discussion of variations of recurrence analysis and implications for research questions within the literature on groups. When group researchers track group processes or emergent states over time, and thus compile a time series dataset, recurrence analysis can be a useful technique for measuring the properties of groups as dynamic systems.

中文翻译：

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使用重复分析来检查群体动态。

本文提供了一个易于理解的递归分析简介——一种非常有希望帮助研究人员理解群体动态的分析方法。递归分析是一种源于系统动力学文献的技术，它被开发用于揭示复杂非线性系统的特性。通过跟踪系统在其生命周期中的多个时间点访问相似状态的时间——以及随着时间的推移这些复发的形式或模式——复发分析为研究人员提供了一组新的指标来评估群体动态的属性，例如复发率（即、稳定性）、确定性（即可预测性）和熵（即复杂性）。最近的工作显示了跨多个不同学科的递归分析的潜在价值。为了扩展其在群体动力学领域的使用，作者介绍了该技术的概念概述，并提供了有关如何使用递归分析来研究小组的分步教程。使用来自 63 个三人学生小组的基于对话的数据的循环分析的示例应用说明了循环分析在检查小组如何随着时间的推移改变对不同过程的关注时的使用。随后讨论了重复分析的变化以及对群体文献中研究问题的影响。当群体研究人员随着时间的推移跟踪群体过程或紧急状态，从而编译时间序列数据集时，递归分析可以成为一种有用的技术，用于测量群体作为动态系统的属性。