Observation Tools Overview and User Guide

Observation ToolsOverview and User

Guide

Does the need to determine the impact a student's ADHD is having in the classroom or quantitatively describe a student's noncompliance sound familiar?

Do you need a count of how many times a day or class period a student is out of her seat without permission or know how long a student's average tantrum is in order to monitor effectiveness of an intervention?

Why Observation Tools?

Why Observation tools? (continued)

Regardless of specific behavior of focus, in almost all cases data collection sets out to measure the rate of behavior (i.e. the frequency with which the behavior occurs over a given period of time)

And the goal of the intervention will be to reduce the frequency of the inappropriate behaviors and increase the frequency of appropriate behaviors.

Observation Tools OverviewRobust observation tools custom-designed for School Psychologists

Event, Duration, Interval, and ABC recording

User-defined Behaviors

Allows for optional peer comparisons

Easy to Use and Customizable

Save time by more efficiently and effectively observing students

Easily create summaries and reports of observational data

Customize target behaviors, observation techniques, and report options

Event Recording Overview

Simple counting of how many times a behavior occurs during a specific period of time (i.e. minutes, hours, days, weeks, months)

Best for behaviors that are discrete and short in duration such as curse words, getting out of seat without permission, or spitting

A second grade teacher approaches you with concerns regarding a student named Evan who is in her reading group.

She states that Evan "frequently gets out of his seat without permission during the 30 minute lesson and that this behavior is disruptive to the learning environment."

His teacher explains that Evan typically wanders away from the table where reading group takes place for a brief period of time (seconds) and then willingly returns following a verbal prompt

Event Recording Case Study: Evan

Before you and Evan's teacher can brainstorm intervention ideas and strategies to address this concern, you must observe and quantify Evan's behavior so that you can:

Since Evan's behavior is described as discrete, short in duration, and as having a clear beginning and end, you decide to use Event Recording to gather this quantitative data

1. determine if the behavior is actually indicative of a problem, meaning that it is happening as frequently as his teacher thinks it is and more often than his peers are displaying this same behavior, AND

2. to measure progress over time and evaluate whether the interventions you put in place are in fact effective


Before you can begin your observation, you must decide upon a clear operational definition for exactly what will be counted as Evan's out of seat behavior

You and Evan's teacher agree to call the target behavior "out of seat without permission" and define an occurrence of this target behavior as "physically moving more than three feet from the area where reading instruction is taking place."

You decide to include "more than three feet" in your definition so that if Evan is standing briefly next to his chair this is not counted as an occurrence of the disruptive behavior



Since you plan to observe Evan during reading group and collect data over the course of several sessions both before and after interventions are put in place, you are concerned that since different lessons will be taught on different days, his interest and engagement in the various activities may likely impact his out of seat behavior and this may affect your ability to judge if an intervention is really effective or if the lesson was just more engaging that day

For this reason, you decide to control for the changing lessons by gathering data not only on Evan's out of seat without permission behavior but also that of a peer in the same reading group

Gathering this peer data will also help you address the question of whether or not Evan's behavior is truly indicative of a problem in terms of whether or not it is happening more frequently than his peers

There are five other students in the reading group and you decide to rotate which peer you will also collect data on during observation sessions to minimize bias and so that the comparison is reflective of the whole group


Now that a clear operational definition and other parameters are established, you will use Event Recording to determine the number of times Evan and a peer display the out of his seat without permission behavior during a 30 minute reading lesson

1. Tap the NEW OBSERVATION button from the Observations Main Screen to begin. You will next be asked to select the student you will be observing from a list


2. Tap EVENT RECORDING to continue the configuration of your new observation recoding session

3. Turn PEER RECORDING "On" so that you can also observe a peer during this session for the purpose of comparison and control

4. Tap START RECORDING to review your configuration, take a note, or begin your recording


5. Tap RECORD to begin your recording. The observations' running time begins after you tap RECORD.

6. Tap BEHAVIOR OCCURRED when Evan or his peer is observed out of seat without permission


7. Choose "Type a custom behavior" and input "out of seat w/o permission"

8. Each time the behavior is observed, tap BEHAVIOR OBSERVED button for Evan or his peer


You may record more than one target behavior during a session. In fact, there's no limit to the number of behaviors you can add and record during a session.

To enter a new target behavior, simply tap BEHAVIOR OCCURRED and choose from the list or enter additional custom behavior as described previously in step #6


The REPEAT LAST button is a quick way to record an additional occurrence of the most recently observed behavior

You can also press PAUSE at any point to take NOTES during the observation


To take a note, after taping pause, select the yellow "NOTES" button and then use the keyboard to type your anecdotal observation


Event Recording Case Study: EvanAfter tapping

"STOP" you can review the two most frequently observed behaviors, create a report, write notes, or continue recording

To create a report, tap "+Report"

Event Recording Report

Choose to include data from specific observation sessions, all sessions, or choose the date range you would like the report to include

In this example, we will include the data from the one observation session completed


Tap the Chart Type to toggle between a Bar chart or Line graph

Bar charts are best used for a single observation session like in our example

Toggle Peers "ON" to include peers in the report


After tapping "done," a table summarizing behavior frequencies is displayed

Bar chartTable

• Toggle between table and chart to view results

Event Recording Print/Email Report Tables, Charts &

Graphs can be emailed or printed by tapping this icon and making your selection

Tables are sent in .html and charts & graphs in ..jpeg for easy insertion into your documents without special software

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Observation Tools Overview and User Guide

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