Human Behavioral Observation

I observed one person while they were studying in the library. I wanted to measure how many times this person touched their face during a 60-minute interval. I defined this behavior as putting their hands on any part of their face for at least three seconds. To do this, I utilized a partial interval coding method where I broke the 60 minute alloted interval into 6 ten-minute intervals and marked how many times the behavior occured within those intervals. 

Interval I: yes (4)

Interval II: yes (8)

Interval III: yes (1)

Interval IV: yes (3)

Interval V: yes (10)

Interval VI: yes (4)

The strength of this method is that I was able to quantify the amount of times this behavior occured within a span of 60 minutes. The disadvantage is that having to both observe the person and record the data can be difficult to do alone.