Contents

CHAPTER 4: Observation 119monitor on two “typical” school days, including a day with an exam (Dolan,Sherwood, & Light, 1992). Participants also completed questionnaires abouttheir coping strategies and daily activities. The researchers compared bloodpressure readings for different times of the day and as a function of copingstyle. Students who exhibited “high self-focused coping” (e.g., “keep to themselvesand/or blame themselves in stressful situations,” p. 233) had higherblood pressure during and after an exam than did those who did not use selffocusedcoping strategies.Another electronic method is the “Internet daily diary” in which participantslog on daily to a secure Internet site (with e-mail reminders) to reporton daily events. Park, Armeli, and Tennen (2004) used this method to examinecollege students’ moods and coping. Each day, students reported their moststressful event and how they coped with it. Results of this study indicated thatpositive moods were linked more with problem-focused coping strategies thanwith avoidance strategies, especially when the stressful events were perceivedas controllable. Other researchers have asked participants to carry hand-heldcomputers and to make “electronic diary” notes when prompted (e.g., McCarthy,Piasecki, Fiore, & Baker, 2006; Shiffman & Paty, 2006). Undoubtedly, as Internetaccess with cell phones becomes commonplace, electronic methods for datacollection increasingly will be used by researchers.Electronic recording methods often rely on participants’ self-reports of moodand activities, not on direct observation of their behavior. As such, it is importantthat researchers devise techniques to detect biases in data collection (e.g.,possible misrepresentation or omission of activities; see Larson, 1989, for a discussionof possible biases). These problems can be weighed against the timeand costs sometimes required to obtain a comprehensive description of behaviorusing direct observation (e.g., Barker, Wright, Schoggen, & Barker, 1978).ANALYSIS OF OBSERVATIONAL DATA• Researchers choose qualitative data analysis or quantitative data analysis tosummarize observational data.After recording their observations of behavior, researchers analyze observationaldata in order to summarize people’s behavior and to determine the reliabilityof their observations. The type of data analysis that researchers choosedepends on the data they’ve collected and the goals of their study. For example,when researchers record selected behaviors using a measurement scale, thepreferred data analysis is quantitative (i.e., statistical summaries and analyses).When comprehensive narrative records are obtained, researchers may chooseeither quantitative or qualitative analyses. We will describe qualitative analysesfirst.Qualitative Data Analysis• Data reduction is an important step in the analysis of narrative records.• Researchers code behaviors according to specific criteria, for example, bycategorizing behaviors.