BEST-PRACTICE Examples

The sheer endless number of possibilities INTERACT offers to realize any type of observational study are not that obvious at first glance.

This chapter contains several of best-practice examples that try to convey the vast amount of different implementation possibilities and address some common situations that can be quickly resolved if you know what feature was designed for that situation.

Most examples presume that you understand at least the basics of creating a Code Definition file and the principle of logging generic observations.

oZero Configuration Approach - This methods doe NOT use any of the typical coding routine features. It allows you to use INTERACT like an Excel that controls your video. This method is great for first time users that want to get started without any pre-defined coding system, or want to collect some first impressions before a coding system is chosen.

oLogging Behavior that Overlaps in Time - In INTERACT we focus on collecting exact timing per behavior. This section explains how to capture partly overlapping behavior in a single pass.
Coding in multiple passes through the same video to collect simultaneous behavior is ALWAYS possible.

oCollect Nested Observations with Different Duration - This examples explains how to accurately observe complex activities with sub-ordered modifiers that require individual timing.

oObserve Multiple Subjects this section explains some of the possible approaches for observing multiple subjects.

oTranscriptions in INTERACT - With INTERACT you can do transcriptions as well as import them from third-party tools. You can extract Codes from these transcriptions and categorize transcriptions with Codes.

oExplorative Data Collection - For Grounded Theory and other explorative and inductive observation methods, this chapter offers some practical tips.

oRate Multiple Subjects per Task - offers a complete description of the initial setup, the coding process and the various restructuring possibilities to get the most of your data for analysis.

oCode Facial Expressions (FACS Coding) offers a collection of possible implementations for FACS coding with INTERACT.

oVideo Offsets & Alignemets - If your video file contains multiple sessions or you just do not want to observer the first part of the video, you can specify an offset that virtually cuts-off the first part of the video. A generic overview of the possibilities can be found in the section Synchronize Multiple Multimedia Files.

oJoin Subsequent Videos - If your recording system chops your session in separate video files, this is how you can collect your observations and be able to analyze all data as if it was collected from a single observation. The possible functionalities to be used for this setup are described stand-alone in the topics Adjust Multimedia Time Value (if you realize the possible problem BEFORE you started data collection) and Concatenate DataSets (if you realized the issue after all data has been collected).

IMPORTANT: Each of the solutions for the situations described can be adjusted, tweaked and turned to fit your purpose. Do not hesitate to contact us at support@mangold-international.com if you have trouble with your final implementation.