Technical Note: Behavior Observation Software

When I interned at the BBU/Children's Seashore House in the '90s, we used a simple but effective program there that, I think, had been either written or adapted by Mike Shea in Basic and ran on these super-heavy Grid laptops. I've periodically hunted around for similarly simple, low-cost (i.e., free) software I could use for behavioral observations -- something which would basically record when a key was entered, give me a display at the end of what was entered when on a second by second basis, and give me summaries of what keys were pressed how many times. Ideally, there would be an option for duration as well as frequency recording. Even better would be software working on a handheld device.

I knew Mark Dixon had published on how to program a Pocket PC for this purpose, and had even kicked around the idea of getting a used Pocket PC, but did not want to purchase another device. (I already own a Nokia 810 internet tablet and a couple of old Palm devices, as well as a 10 year old Mac Powerbook.) I also doubted I had the time to learn and to program in Visual Basic.

Well, Whoo hoo! I finally managed to find some software that fits the bill.

It turns out that field researchers in animal behavior (not necessarily behavior analysts) tend to write their own programs for observations, so the following resources, should you go on to check the links, are written about by their authors in that context. However, for free programs, they look capable of doing the job (or have appeared so, so far).

EZ Record and Pen Record are PalmOS-based programs available here. I currently prefer EZ Record because the program creates buttons on the Palm's touch screen which one hits to record when a behavior or other event has occurred. Aside from recording duration, the program accomplishes the functions mentioned above. Pen Review then reads the file produced by EZ Record and produces a second by second record of the session, a summary graph, counts of what keys were hit how many times, a figure showing distribution of events recorded across time in the session, and a matrix showing how often events followed each other. Right now, I'm copying down the length of the session and event frequencies from the screen due to difficultly in exporting the data file.

There are several other observation programs on the site, including Windows-based programs -- please consider trying them out and posting further information in the comments to this post.

The PalmOS-based programs look simple enough to run on older palm devices which may be relatively inexpensive on the used market. Although I have a couple of old Palms, I've been using the programs using a free Palm emulator called GarnetVM. It looks like a Palm emulator for other mobile devices is available here, but I haven't tested it. (Hint, hint.) The same folks may have an iPhone/iPod Touch version in beta.

If you have a Windows or Mac machine, JWatcher looks like another behavior observation software option. JWatcher appears has more functionality than EZ Record, allowing for event and state recording. To be honest, I could get quickly over my head with the various options for sophisticated data recording. I was able to run the program on an older (about 600 mhz) Windows XP laptop and the old Mac Powerbook (266 mhz, OS 10.2). The learning curve and set-up time on this program appear to be higher, as one needs to create related several files and relate those files to each other before observations can start. Although the program is free, the book with detailed instructions needs to be purchased. One might be able to get by with the pdf of less instructions available on the site. Again, comments regarding others' experience with JWatcher are welcome.

Not having an iPhone or iPod Touch, I haven't looked into software on these devices -- so, once again, others' information is not only welcome, but requested.

Hope its been a helpful post!