300005 UE Direct behavior observation, digitization and analysis (2016W)

The course gives an introduction into the fundamentals of behavioral observation and its statistical analysis as an interactive training course. The topics include observation and categorization, time-structured data collection techniques, empirical and statistical behavior analysis. Using film material of sea gulls, chimpanzees and human children together with predefined sampling and recording schemes, the students will learn to record behavior systematically via paper-and-pencil as well as with The Observer®. The latter is professional software for collection, analysis, presentation and management of observational data. This way, an understanding of the basic sampling and recording rules will be built up. The aim is to teach the skills to choose among the basic sampling and recording rules as well as analyses the best fitting ones for a given research question and to design one's own configuration for data collection and analyses using the Observer.