Abstract
Observational studies entail making several decisions before data collection, such as the observational design to use, the sampling of sessions within the observational period, the need for time sampling within the observation sessions, as well as the observation recording procedures to use. The focus of the present article is on observational recording procedures different from continuous recording (i.e., momentary time sampling, partial and whole interval recording). The main aim is to develop an online software application, constructed using R and the Shiny package, on the basis of simulations using the alternating renewal process (a model implemented in the ARPobservation package). The application offers graphical representations that can be useful to both university students constructing knowledge on Observational Methodology and to applied researchers planning to use discontinuous recording in their studies, because it helps identifying the conditions (e.g., interval length, average duration of the behavior of interest) in which the prevalence of the target behavior is expected to be estimated with less bias or no bias and with more efficiency. The estimation of frequency is another topic covered.
Highlights
Observation as a means of gathering data has been and is still present across disciplines and contexts related to psychological processes, including clinical psychology (Langer et al, 2016), work-related behaviors (Beck et al, 2016), family interactions (Dishion et al, 2016), social competence in childhood (Vaughn et al, 2016), sports (Castañer et al, 2016), primatology (Dolado et al, 2016), and ethology in general (Pasquaretta et al, 2016)
It is not strictly speaking necessary to know the average DPO beforehand, given that the user can select several likely values using the slider in the application
It is not required to have information about the specific values of incidence, average DPO or prevalence to get a general insight of the interval lengths that are justified to be used
Summary
Observation as a means of gathering data has been and is still present across disciplines and contexts related to psychological processes, including clinical psychology (Langer et al, 2016), work-related behaviors (Beck et al, 2016), family interactions (Dishion et al, 2016), social competence in childhood (Vaughn et al, 2016), sports (Castañer et al, 2016), primatology (Dolado et al, 2016), and ethology in general (Pasquaretta et al, 2016). We present an example of an observational study, in the context of which we illustrate the decisions that need to be made when conducting such an investigation: (a) choose observational designs; (b) choose what to code; (c) decide whether time sampling is required; (d) choose an observational recording procedure. We comment on the way in which the results of the simulations are implemented into interactive graphs, how these graphs can be used and what their main results are
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