Abstract
The Observer is a general-purpose software package for event recording and data analysis in behavioral research. It allows any IBM-type personal computer to serve as an event recorder. In addition, The Observer can generate dedicated event-recording programs for several types of non-IBM-compatible portable and hand-held computers and transfer files between the PC and such computers. The user specifies options through menus. The configuration can be either used directly for event recording on the PC or passed on to a program generator that creates a program to collect data on a hand-held computer. Observational data from either type of computer can be analyzed by the program. Event-recording configurations can be tailored to many different experimental designs. Keys can be designated as events, and modifiers can be used to indicate the limits of an event. The program allows grouping of events in classes and distinction between mutually exclusive versus nonexclusive events and duration events versus frequency events. Timing of events is accurate to 0.1 sec. An on-line electronic notepad permits notes to be made during an observation session. The program also includes on-line error correction. User comments as well as independent variables can be stored together with the observational data. During data analysis, the user can select the level of analysis and the type of output file. The Observer calculates frequency of occurrence and duration for classes of events, individual events, or combinations of events. For analysis of concurrence, one can select the number of nesting levels and the order of nesting. Output can be generated in the form of sorted event sequence files, text report files, and tabular ASCII files. The results can be exported to spreadsheet and statistical programs.
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The development of The Observer was initiated at the Department of Entomology, Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. Many people contributed to the development of the system. The author is indebted to colleagues and students at the department and to M. F. Wallis de Vries (Department of Nature Conservation, Agricultural University, Wagemngen), E. L. H. M. van de Loo (Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Leiden), R. M. Michiels van Kessemch (PC-Slide, Amsterdam), o. P. J. M. Minkenberg (Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis), and P. H. A. Timmers (Philips Data Systems, Apeldoorn). Special thanks to the critical beta testers M. L. Boccia (Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver), W. A. van Giessen (Institute for Horticultural Plant Breeding, Wageningen), D. R. Papa) (Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson), and R. P. J. Potting (Noldus Information Technology). K. Storey (Allegheny-Singer Research Institute, Pittsburgh) kindly provided unpublished materials. The manuscript has further benefited from the comments of R. T. Cardé, M. Dicke, M. van Helden, J. C. van Lenteren, P. Roessingh, J. M. Schmidt, J. H. Visser, and three anonymous reviewers.
Note: The author has a direct financial interest in some of the software or hardware described in this paper.—Editor
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Noldus, L.P.J.J. The Observer: A software system for collection and analysis of observational data. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 23, 415–429 (1991). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03203406
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03203406