Life Span Development
Instructor: Jackson
How We Study Children: Observation and Experimentation
Please fill in the blanks as you watch the video. This assignment is worth 10
points.
1) Many of the studies generated by debates on preschool education have been
based on __observational__ methods.
2) Kathy Sylva used the observational method to categorize play among
preschool children into two types, ___observational___ and
___experimental___.
3) Sylva’s team of researchers noticed that the pattern of play changed based on
whether children were playing ___alone___ or ___with others___.
4) With so much going on in the preschool environment, the challenge is how to
reduce observations to manageable proportions without losing the crucial
___details___.
5) The use of descriptors to capture common classes of behavior across many
subjects is called ___coding___ the data.
6) Some of the behaviors are ___ambiguous___, and this is all part of the
challenge.
7) One way to improve the reliability of data is to have __two or more__
researchers code the data at the same time.
8) Researchers aim for ___80-90%___ percent agreement between observers.