observational design

• observations may seem easy but they are difficult due to 2 main reasons: 1. it is difficult to work out what to record and what not to record 2. it is difficult to record everything that is happening
• unstructured observations: the researcher records all relevant behaviour but has no system, the most obvious problem w/ this is that there may be too much to record
• unstructured observations: another problem is that the behaviours recorded will often be those which are most visible or eye-catching to the observer but these may not necessarily be the most important or relevant behaviours
• unstructured observations: researcher do sometimes use this approach in situations e.g. where research has not been conducted before as a kind of pilot study to see what behaviours might be recorded using a structured system
• structured observations: observational techniques like all research techniques aim to be objective and rigorous, for this reason it is preferable to use structures observations i.e. various 'systems' to organise observations
• structured observations: the 2 main ways to structure observations are using behavioural categories and sampling procedures
• behavioural categories: one of the hardest aspects of the observational method is deciding how different behaviours should be categorised
• behavioural categories: this is because our perception of behaviour is often seamless when we watch somebody perform a particular action we see a continuous stream of actions rather than a series of separate behavioural components
• behavioural categories: in order to conduct systematic observations a researcher needs to break up this stream of behaviour into different behavioural categories, what is needed is operationalisation -breaking the behaviour being studied into a set of components
• behavioural categories: e.g. when observing infant behaviour we have a list of things including things like smiling, crying and sleeping etc or when observing facial expressions including different combinations of mouth, cheeks, eyebrows etc
• behavioural categories: they should be objective the observer should not have to make inferences about the behaviour but should just record explicit actions
• behavioural categories: they should cover all possible components behaviours and avoid a 'waste basket' category
• behavioural categories: be mutually exclusive meaning that you should not have to mark 2 categories at 1 time
• sampling procedures: when conducting an unstructured observation the observer should record every instance of the behaviour in as much detail as possible
• sampling procedures: this is useful if the behaviours of interest do not occur very often, however in many situations continuous observation is not possible due to there being event and time sampling
• sampling procedures: event sampling = counting the number of times a certain behaviour (event) occurs in a target individual or individuals e.g. counting how many times a person smiles in a 10 minute period
• sampling procedures: time sampling = recording behaviours in a given time frame, e.g. noting what a target individual is doing every 30 seconds or some other time interval, at that time the observer may tick 1 or more categories from a checklist
• secure attachment in pets: Topal et al (1998) used the Strange Situation technique to explore the attachment between dogs and their owners, for 10,000 years dogs have been bred for certain traits among them their willingness to become attached to their owners
• secure attachment in pets: this makes it quite likely that dogs and owners will behave like infants and caregivers, the presence of a caregiver (the owner) should reduce anxiety and increase willingness to explore in the dog
• secure attachment in pets: in this study owners and their dogs went through episodes of the Strange Situation, the owners were not informed of the aims of the study beforehand, their behaviour was videotaped so that the behaviours could be analysed afterwards
• secure attachment in pets: there were 8 behavioural categories, 2 observers sampled the behaviour every 10 seconds, rating each category on a scale of 1-5 where 5 meant they were very confident about this observation, the findings of the study were that dogs (like people) were either securely or insecurely attached
• secure attachment in pets: there was a list of behavioural categories used to assess dogs and their owners, this list is called a behaviour checklist or a coding system (because each behaviour is given a code to make it easier to record)
• secure attachment in pets: some of the categories being: EXPO = exploration when with owner, PLYS = playing when with stranger, SBYO = standing by the door when with owner, PASS = passive behaviours when with stranger
• facial expressions: Paul Ekman and colleague (1978) have developed a coding system to record non-verbal behaviours, this can be used to investigate e.g. what expressions are shown on a person's face when they are lying
• facial expressions: The Facial Action Coding System (FACS)for observing facial expressions (Ekman and Friesen, 1978) = examples: 14 = dimpler, 25 = lips part, 45 = blink, 63 = eyes up