observation

• naturalistic 


  • behaviour is studied in a natural situation where everything has been left as it is normally
• controlled observation


  • some variables controlled by researcher, reducing the naturalness as ppts know they are being studied
• structured observations 


  • a pre determined coding scheme to record ppts behaviour
  • behavioural categories should be objective (the observer shouldnt have to make inferences and just record explicit behaviour), cover all possible component behaviours and be mutually exclusive (should not have to mark 2 behaviours at once)
• behavioural categories 


  • allow observers to tally observations into pre arranged groupings
  • identify operationalised behaviours they intend to see
  • enable proposal of a testable hypothesis
  • easy to analyse
• sampling procedures 


  • event sampling - counting the number of times a certain behaviour occurs in a target individual
  • useful for infrequent behaviours
  • complex behaviours can be over simplified
  • time sampling - recording behaviours in a given time frame (e.g every 30 seconds)
  • more structured and systematic
  • important details can be missed outside the timescale