For my human behavioral observation, I observed someone engaged in a conversation in Zummos, a coffee shop in Scranton. The conversation seemed to be more of an informal, yet serious, meeting discussing certain things about the Scranton School District. The specific behavior I observed was the individual nodding her head up and down. In the specified context, the individual typically nodded her head to demonstrate that she was actively engaged in the conversation and was listening intently.
I used an interval coding method to observe the individual's behavior. To do this, I used intervals of one minute. If the individual performed the behavior of nodding her head within each interval, the interval received a checkmark as an indication that the behavior occurred.
yes = the behavior occurred, no = the behavior did not occur
1 yes
2 yes
3 yes
4 yes
5 no
6 yes
7 no
8 yes
9 yes
10 yes
11 yes
12 no
13 no
14 yes
15 no
16 no
17 no
18 yes
19 no
20 yes
21 yes
22 yes
23 no
24 no
25 yes
26 yes
27 no
28 yes
29 no
30 no
31 yes
32 yes
33 yes
34 yes
35 no
36 no
37 no
38 no
39 yes
40 yes
41 no
42 no
43 no
44 no
45 no
46 yes
47 yes
48 no
49 no
50 yes
51 no
52 yes
53 no
54 no
55 no
56 no
57 yes
58 yes
59 no
60 yes
Total: 30 yes's, 30 no's
First 30 minutes: 17 yes's, 13 no's
Second 30 minutes: 13 yes's, 17 no's
With the data I collected, I noticed a pattern that the individual tended to nod her head after the other individual finished speaking as a way to show her acknowledgement of what she said. The head nod was also typically partnered with the subject saying "yes" or "correct" or something similar. I also noticed that there were more intervals during which the behavior occurred at the beginning of the observation compared to the end, which may indicate that there was a decrease in engagement in the conversation toward the end of it.
The strengths of the interval coding method in this scenario was that it was easier to make observations in a naturalistic setting, because if the behavior occurred at the beginning of the minute interval, then the individual didn't need to be directly observed for the rest of the minute. This made it slightly easier to observe the individual naturalistically without directly watching her the entire time. Another strength of this method was that it was easier to measure discrete behaviors. A head nod typically doesn't last longer than a couple seconds, so it was easier to collect discrete data on this behavior than if I used something like a duration coding method.
A weakness of this method is that it didn't take into account how much the behavior occurred within the minute interval. During some intervals, the behavior occurred more frequently than others, but both intervals had an equal result in the data - it either occurred or it didn't.