Observational design

• What is event sampling?

  Establishing a target behaviour and recording it every time it occurs
• What is time sampling?

  Establishing a target behaviour and recording it in a fixed time frame
• What type of account does an unstructured observation produce?

  Rich in detail
• What is an unstructured observation?

  Writing down everything you see
• What is a structured observation?

  Simplifying target behaviours into behavioural categories
• What are behavioural categories?

  Categories of behaviour - target behaviour broken up
• What must behavioural categories be?

  Observable
• Why must behavioural categories be observable?

  Reliability
• What are the two types of sampling observations?

  Event and time
• When is event sampling useful?

  The target behaviour occurs infrequently
• When might an observer overlook important details when using event sampling?

  Target behaviour too complex
• What is time sampling effective in doing?

  Reducing number of observations
• What is a problem with time sampling?

  May be unrepresentative
• What is it important behavioural categories are?

  Clear and unambiguous
• What must behavioural categories not require?

  Further interpretation
• What must behaviour categories NOT do?

  Overlap