Observation

Question 1

What is objective observation vs subjective observation?

Answer 1

Objective: measuring no. of frequencies / Subjective: describing behaviour

Question 2

What is an ethogram?

Answer 2

A list of the full behaviour repertoire of a species

Question 3

What are the 4 scales of measure?

Answer 3

Nominal, ordinal, ratio, interval

Question 4

What are the 5 types of observational measures?

Answer 4

Rate, proportion, latency, frequency, duration

Question 5

What are the 2 observational classifications?

Answer 5

Event and state

Question 6

What is event vs state classification?

Answer 6

Short occurrence vs long duration

Question 7

What are the 3 sampling rules?

Answer 7

Specific which individual is sampled: focal, scan, behaviour

Question 8

What is focal sampling?

Answer 8

A specific individual is isolated for observation

Question 9

What is scan sampling?

Answer 9

A number of individuals are sampled

Question 10

Wha is behaviour sampling?

Answer 10

Sampling all occurrences

Question 11

What are the 2 recording rules?

Answer 11

Specify how the behaviour is recorded: time or continuous

Question 12

What is the difference between time and continuous recording?

Answer 12

Time periodically samples behaviour / continuous records absolute frequencies and durations

Question 13

What 5 things should the coding schemes aim to do?

Answer 13

Be exhaustive / mutually exclusive / be no more or less accurate than the research question / categories behaviours that you are not interested in as “other” / be designed to answer a particular question

Question 14

What are the two types of reliability in observation?

Answer 14

Interobserver and intraobserver

Question 15

What is intraobserver reliability?

Answer 15

When the same observer is coding the same behavioural record at different times (video, audio, script)

Question 16

What is interobserver reliability?

Answer 16

When different observers independently code the same behavioural record

Question 17

What are the 2 estimates of interobserver reliability?

Answer 17

Consensus and consistency

Question 18

What are consensus estimates? How do you calculate them?

Answer 18

Assuming that the two observers came to an exact agreement: percentage agreement or Cohen’s Kappa

Question 19

What does percentage agreement fail to do?

Answer 19

Does not correct for agreement by random chance

Question 20

What does Cohen’s Kappa do?

Answer 20

Correct for agreement by random chance

Question 21

How do you calculate Cohen’s Kappa?

Answer 21

(P(observed) - P(expected by chance)) / 1 - P(expected by chance)

Question 22

What is a good Cohen’s Kappa score?

Answer 22

1 (should range between 0 and 1 - 0 is bad)

Question 23

How do you calculate P(observed)?

Answer 23

Observers yes, yes / total observations

Question 24

How do you calculate P(expected by chance)?

Answer 24

P(yes) + P(no)

Question 25

How do you calculate P(yes)?

Answer 25

((A+C) / total) x ((A+B) / total)

Question 26

How do you calculate P(no)?

Answer 26

((B+D) / total) x ((C+D) / total)

Question 27

What are consistency estimates?

Answer 27

Classifying behaviour, based on their understanding of the scale

Question 28

What are the 2 types of consistency estimate?

Answer 28

Correlation coefficients and Cronbach’s a

Question 29

What do correlation coefficients fail to account for?

Answer 29

Variance between coders

Question 30

What does Cronbach’s alpha do?

Answer 30

Corrects for variance between coders and estimates reliability

Question 31

What are 3 limitations of coding schemes?

Answer 31

They don’t record changes in behaviour intensity / don’t record changes in different social situations / uses arbitrary boundaries