AO3 - Behaviour Sampling

• One strength of event sampling is that it is useful when behaviour happens infrequently as the participants are watched over a period of time and the behaviour category (AO2) is recorded every time it occurs so researchers are less likely to miss behaviours, unlike time sampling, in which if the behaviour happens infrequently, it may be missed.
• A limitation of event sampling is that if the behaviour being observed is complex/happens very often the observer may miss some behaviours (AO2) as they cannot tally in time, unlike time sampling, in which the researcher only tallies at set time intervals and is therefore less likely to miss these behaviours.
• A strength of time sampling is that it reduces the amount of time the observers have to observe behaviours for (AO2 – what behaviours and how long), as they only observe in set time intervals. However, as the researchers are only observing at set time intervals the behaviours tallied (AO2) may not be representative of the observation as a whole.