Observational design

• Designing observations can be difficult:

  • It can be difficult to know what to record and what not to record
  • It can also be difficult to record everything that is happening
• Unstructured observations (Researchers record the behaviour they can see):

  1. Advantages

  • provides a great deal of rich, qualitative data

  2. Disadvantages

  • can be difficult to analyse - tendency for observers to notice the most eye-catching behaviours which may not be most relevant
  • Can be difficult to write everything down
  • Risk of observer bias
• Structured observations

  (Researchers use various systems to organise the observation such as behaviour categories and sampling procedures.):

  Advantages

  • More likely to produce numerical (quantitative data) making it easier to record and analyse
  • Less risk of observer bias

  Disadvantages

  • May lack richness and depth of detail
• Behaviour categories are when we divide a target behaviour into a subset of specific or operationalised behaviours

  • For example – friendly behaviour.
• INTER-OBSERVER reliability (sometimes called inter-rater reliability)

  refers to the extent to which two or more observers are observing and recording behaviour in the same way.
• behavioural checklists:

  • the observer simply ticks the relevant category every time the behaviour occurs.
• Behavioural checklist Advantages:

  • simple to carry out
  • quantitative data which can be statistically analysed
• Behavioural checklist Disadvantages:

  • gives a very restricted view of what is happening
  • researcher may miss important behaviour
• Sampling:

  • Continuous recording of behaviour is a key feature of unstructured observations.
• In structured observations however, the researcher must use a systematic way of sampling their observations (meaning they take a sample of the overall behaviour).

  This can be done in 2 ways:

  1. Event sampling
  2. Time sampling
• Event sampling :

  • Taking a count of each time a particular behaviour occurs (as in the behaviour checklist)

  Evaluation:

  • Useful when target behaviour or event happens infrequently and could be missed if time sampling was used. However, if specified event is complex, this may lead to important behaviour being overlooked.
• Time sampling:

  • Recording observations in a given time frame – e.g. recording behaviours every 30 seconds.

  Evaluation:

  • Effective in reducing the number of observations that have to be made. However, those instances when behaviour is sampled might be unrepresentative of the observation as a whole.