<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  START YOUR OBSERVATIONS > EVENT SAMPLING - Log Behavioral Events > Coding Consistently & Sequentially > Sequential coding

Sequential or seamless coding, i.e. without any double codes succeeding one another, can be important for the following reason:

If you are interested in the frequency of occurrence of certain Observation Codes, or if you want to put Codes into correlation at large, the following Code combination are invalid (here schematically with single characters per code):

... A-B-C-A- ... B-B-B ... -C-A-C ...

Each Code represents and Event. A string of Codes like this, implies that behavior 'B' occurred 4 times in total. In fact, it only occurred 2 times:

oThe first time at the start of the codings

oA second time as a threesome (B-B-B)

Whereas this chain of three evidently is a coding error. In fact, this chain should be coded as one single Event that lasts for as long as the total duration of the three B's. In this case, the frequency of occurrence calculated in the statistics, is wrong (e.g. "a test person did not make an error 4 times, but only 2 times").

Presume, the total duration of all B's is one hour. While calculating the average duration of behavior B, it does make a considerable difference whether you divide this hour by 2 or by (the incorrect) 4!

This can be one of the reasons (depending on your coding system), that a Code is NOT allowed to succeed itself seamlessly.

Example: Presume you are coding the direction of a gaze. This direction can be either  [l]eft, [r]ight, [u]p, [d]own or [s]traight ahead.
None of those Codes can be used twice in a row, because only a change of direction needs to be logged. INTERACT can warn you if you accidentally pressed [r] for the second time in a row, instead of the [s] indicating the change of direction.

If those Codes do indeed repeat themselves, because in between 'nothing' happened, the statistics are correct. But for clean sequential coding, your Events need to be consistent as well. That is why it is better to use an additional Code for all the gaps.

Note: To make this work continuously, you need a Code for every situation. If not every situation is covered by Codes, you have to think of closing the last open Code manually, every time it is followed by a none covered action. Solution: Invent a code like 'other behavior', 'Error' or 'NIL' or something, so you can keep your coding rhythm!

INTERACT offers the coding option Warn if consecutive codes are the same, as described in Check double Codings, to help you detect sequential coding errors.

IMPORTANT: This type of coding only works for Codes that belong to the same Exclusion list, as is described in Define mutually exclusive codes.