Nonstandardized Tasks
- Hypothetical
- Narrative
- Analog
- Direct   Observation

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Direct observation is the most naturalistic nonstandardized procedure because it occurs in the natural environment. Direct observation refers to sampling behaviors as they naturally occur. The clinician does nothing to alter the environment; the goal is to observe spontaneous performance as it is naturally occurring. Behaviors are free to vary.

This "uncontrolled" and "unstructured" context typically demands immediate responses from the participants in situations that are rich with competing stimuli. The processing demands could be quite high, since the child is performing in a situation that requires creative planning with the possibility of highly emotional content. For some children this could create problems for performance. On the other hand, the natural environment is rich with cues and prompts. With such high redundancy to support performance, for some children this context might seem easiest for social interactions. The greatest concern about natural contexts is that they do not insure sampling of specific behaviors; however, at the same time they do insure a high degree of ecological validity.

Direct observation can allow for quantitative or qualitative data collection. Quantitative data collection can reveal the occurrence or nonoccurrence of specific behaviors, or frequency of occurrence. Several checklists have been created to examine the pragmatics of language. You might wish to examine these references:

• Bedrosian (1995)
• Bishop (1998)
• Roth & Spekman (1984)
• Prutting & Kirchner (1987)
• Damico, (1985, 1992)
• Damico, Oller, & Tetnowski, (1999)
• Fujiki, Brinton, Isaacson, & Summers (2001)
  (playground observation code)

Qualitative data can also be collected during a direct observation. Qualitative data are collected via ethnographic methods. These methods attempt to describe behaviors in their natural context. The focus is on the process of performance, that is, how an individual seems to arrive at a particular act. The emphasis is not merely on whether a behavior occurred or not, but rather how that behavior occurs in context.

Ethnographic, qualitative data involves the clinician observing the behavior within the environment, witnessing the antecedents that lead up to the display of the behavior and seeing the results or consequences as well. Detailed, descriptive notes of performance in context are taken. These data are useful in supplementing the quantitative data gathered from checklists. Guidelines for collecting ethnographic, qualitative data are available from a number of resources. The following have been useful to us:

• Bogdan & Biklen (1992)
• Patton & Westby (1992)
• Ripich & Spinelli (1985)
• Secord, Wiig, Damico & Goodwin (1994)
• Westby, Stevens-Dominguez & Oetter (1996)
  
  

Advantages:

• Direct observation allows an examination of functional language in real time.
• Behaviors can be isolated or observed in relationship to what is occurring in the environment as they are being produced.
• Checklists can be used to examine the occurrence of specific behaviors, yielding quantitative data.
• Ethnographic methods can be used to provide enriched, qualitative data about behaviors in context.

Limitations:

• Difficult to decide where, with whom, and when to observe. Each sampling condition will yield ecologically valid though slightly different information.
• Run the risk of not sampling sufficient numbers of behaviors of interest.
• Decisions about data collection and data reduction: How do you exactly observe? Do you follow the child around, making a log of behaviors as they occur, or recording a predetermined set of behaviors? Do you audio or videotape the observation? How much time do you observe? How do you fit this form of data collection into an already busy schedule? On the data reduction side, a clinician will need to decide how to best manage all of the data that has been collected. Can the data be summarized in a time efficient manner? Is the summary sensitive to change?

Video Segment [currently in development]

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