observations

• The observational technique is when researchers watch participants, and record their behaviour
• how to measure and record behaviour using observational technique:

  1. categorise the target behaviours
  2. sample the target behaviours
• behavioural categories

  When researchers break down the behaviour they want to measure into smaller behaviours
• Behavioural categories help researchers operationalise their dependent variable e.g. aggression into kicking, swearing and shouting
• event sampling-when researchers focus on one specific, operationalised behaviour, and count up every time those behaviours occur.
• sampling procedures are methods of recording behaviours e.g. event and time sampling (different to types of sampling)
• time sampling- when researchers categorise behaviours at regular intervals, like every 30​ seconds.
• What is inter-rater reliability?

  a method of assessing the external reliability of observations in an observational study. It is a measure of how similar the data collected by different observers are.
• External reliability can be assessed via the test-retest method, or by assessing inter-rater reliability.