  In order to investigate the nuclear activity of galaxies residing in compact
groups of galaxies, we present results of our optical spectroscopic program
made at Okayama Astrophysical Observatory. We have performed optical
spectroscopy of 69 galaxies which belong to 31 Hickson Compact Groups (HCGs) of
Galaxies. Among them, three galaxies have discordant redshifts. Further,
spectral quality is too poor to classify other three galaxies. Therefore, we
describe our results for the remaining 63 galaxies.
  Our main results are summarized below. (1) We have found in our sample; 28
AGN, 16 HII nuclei, and 19 normal galaxies which show no emission line. We used
this HCG sample for statistical analyses. (2) Comparing the frequency
distributions of activity types between the HCGs and the field galaxies whose
data are taken from Ho, Filippenko, & Sargent (382 field galaxies), we find
that the frequency of HII nuclei in the HCGs is significantly less than that in
the field. However, this difference may be due to selection bias that our HCG
sample contains more early-type galaxies than the field, because it is known
that HII nuclei are rarer in early-type galaxies than in later ones. (3)
Applying correction this morphological bias to the HCG sample, we find that
there is no statistically significant difference in the frequency of occurrence
of emission-line galaxies between the HCGs and the field. This implies that the
dense galaxy environment in the HCGs does not affect triggering both the AGN
activity and the nuclear starburst. We discuss some implications on the nuclear
activity in the HCG galaxies.
