Observational design

• what is an unstructured observation?

  when the researcher writes everything they see down which tends to produce accounts of behaviour that are highly detailed

  • useful for observations which are small in scale , involving few pps
• what are the strengths of unstructured observations?

  more richness and depth of detail as it produces qualitative data
• what are the limitations of unstructured observations?

  • qualitative data = harder to record + analyse
  • greater risk of observe bias as researcher may only record behaviours which 'catch the eye ' (prominent) = may not be important + may exclude important detail
• what are structured observations?

  too large of a study = necessary to simplify target behaviours that will become the main target of the study = researcher quantifies their targets a predetermined list of behaviours + sampling methods
• what are the strengths of structured observations?

  • makes recordings of data more systematic
  • more likely to be quantitive data = easier to distinguish patterns , analyse and compare data
  • less risk of observer bias
• what are the limitations of structured observations?

  difficult to achieve high inter observer reliability as filling in / producing predetermined lists (behavioural categories) is subjective
• what are behavioural categories?

  when target behaviour which is being observed is broken up into more precise components which are observable + measurable
• what should behavioural categories be?

  • observable and measurable
  • clear + ambiguous as possible
  • exclusive + do not overlap
• what is a key feature of structured observations?

  continuous recordings of behaviours
• what 2 methods of structured observations are there (excluding continuous recordings only suitable for short studies)?

  Time and event sampling
• what is event sampling?

  when the target behaviour or event is first established then the researcher records this event every time is occurs
• what is time sampling ?

  involves recording a behaviour in a time frame pre-established before the observational study
• what is a strength of event sampling ?

  useful for when the target behaviour occurs infrequently which could be ,issued if time sampling was used
• what is a limitation of event sampling ?

  • if behaviour is too complex , some important details of behaviour may be overlooked
  • could be counting errors
• what are the strengths of time sampling?

  effective in reducing the number of observations needed to be made = less time consuming
• what are the limitations of time sampling ?

  small amounts of data being collected within a time frame may be unrepresentative of the observation as a whole