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114 PART II: Descriptive Methodsthrows a book at Marian. The teacher asks Marian to leave. Marian kicks David,then leaves. David cries and screams, “Get out of here, they’re just gonna teaseme.” (p. 339)Hartup instructed his observers to use precise language when describing behaviorand to avoid making inferences about the intentions, motives, or feelingsof the participants. Note that we are not told why David might want to throw abook at Marian or how Marian feels about being attacked. Hartup believed thatcertain antecedent behaviors were related to specific types of aggression. Bystrictly excluding any references or impressions of the observers, individualswho examined the narrative would not be influenced by the observer’s inferences.Thus, the content of the narrative records could be classified and codedin an objective manner.Not all narrative records are as focused as those obtained by Hartup, nor donarrative records always avoid inferences and impressions of the observer. Narrativerecords also are not always meant to be comprehensive descriptions of behavior.For example, field notes include only the observer’s running descriptionsof the participants, events, settings, and behaviors that are of particular interestto the observer, and may not contain an exact record of everything that occurred.Field notes are used by journalists, social workers, anthropologists, psychologists,and others, and are probably used more frequently than any other kind ofnarrative record. Events and behaviors are likely to be interpreted in terms of theobserver’s specialized knowledge and field notes tend to be highly personalized(Brandt, 1972). For example, a clinical psychologist may record specific behaviorsof an individual with knowledge of that individual’s diagnosis or particularclinical issues. The usefulness of field notes as scientific records depends on theaccuracy and precision of their content which, in turn, depend critically on thetraining of the observer and the extent to which the recorded observations canbe verified by independent observers and through other means of investigation.Practical and methodological considerations dictate the manner in whichnarrative records are made. As a general rule, records should be made during or assoon as possible after behavior is observed. The passage of time blurs details andmakes it harder to reproduce the original sequence of actions. In addition, decisionsregarding what should be included in a narrative record, the degree of observerinference, and the completeness of the narrative record must be decidedprior to beginning a study (see, for example, Brandt, 1972). Once the content ofnarrative records is decided, observers must be trained to record behavior accordingto the criteria that have been set up. Practice observations may have tobe conducted and records critiqued by more than one investigator before “real”data are collected.Selected Records of Behavior• When researchers seek to describe specific behaviors or events, they oftenobtain quantitative measures of behavior, such as the frequency or durationof its occurrence.• Quantitative measures of behavior use one of four levels of measurementscales: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio.