2.3.1.6 - Observational design

What are behavioural categories?

What 3 criteria must behavioural categories fulfill?

Creating behavioural categories is a way of dividing a target behaviour into a subset of specific, operationalised behaviours. This is a form of operationalisation.

Behavioural categories must be:

• Objective - observer should not have to make inferences about the behaviour but record it as explicit actions

• Cover all possible component behaviours

• Be mutually exclusive

What is event sampling?

Observational technique where a count is kept of the number of times a certain behaviour (event) is observed over a given period of time

What is time sampling?

Give 2 key points to include in an exam question about time sampling

Observational technique where observer records behaviour at set time intervals. Observer may select one or multiple behavioural categories and record whether or not each is happening at the time interval.

Exam question key points

• set time intervals (give an example)

• Behaviours which occur outside of time intervals must be ignored

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