
Although you should keep in mind that you might come across things that you did not expect. Selecting a smaller number of videos can give you your set of common codes to look for in the rest of the data. You don’t want to do this with all your videos, since that is very time consuming. Select a few videos to find common codesĭepending on the size of your sample you can select, for example, 10% of your videos to get a first impression what emerges from your data. Keep in mind that once it’s ready, you will benefit a lot from the energy you put into drawing up the coding scheme.ģ. It often requires quite some thinking to define the perfect scheme for behavioral coding. However, creating a scheme for behavioral coding is not as straightforward as it may seem. In addition, you give the other members of the research team insight into which behaviors are coded and how. A coding scheme helps keep you organized throughout the data analysis process. Use a coding schemeĪs you code more and more data, it can be hard to remember all of your codes off the top of your head. Constantly keep referring back to your research questions. Not all behaviors that your participants show on the video will be equally good for this purpose.īe sure to make considered choices in what is important and what is not. To keep focused and to prevent doing work that ends up not being used in the analysis, it is wise to stick to the components which will answer your research questions. Tips to make coding behavioral data more effective and a bit more enjoyable are therefore more than welcome.

7 tips to make coding behavioral data more funīut let's face it, coding isn't much fun to do and it takes a lot of time. It categorizes your data meaningfully and helps to understand what it represents.

Behavioral coding supports quantifying qualitative data and gives sense to your raw data. You will be looking for frequencies, durations, sequences, similarities, or differences with respect to what participants say or what participants do. Why is coding behavioral data important?Ĭoding videos will help you summarize and highlight important pieces of information that are essential for the analysis of the observed behavior. Especially the coding part is a time-consuming, but necessary activity.


As a researcher who works with children and their parents or caregivers, you know that part of your job is to record the experiment, review the sessions, and code numerous videos of your participants.
