Observing A Group Of People
- Observing a group of people
- A group of participants is sitting around a table solving a task (planning, problem solving, assessment center test, design and invention session etc.) One or two camcorders document the whole situation including audio.
- An observer is sitting next to the group recording comments / annotations and doing some coding using the Mangold INTERACT coding software suite. He/she can start both camcorders in sync using his/her laptop computer – but this is not recommended in mobile lab situations, because this would require some cables through the room which might cause accidents. Using Mangold INTERACT the videos could be synchronized easily after the recording session, even if recording has not been started in sync.
- In case the camera has a hard drive or memory card, the video can be copied easily to e.g. a USB hard drive. In case a Mini-DV camera has been used the video needs to be converted using a MPEG converter box or a software converter. The video can then be stored as a file onto a computer's hard drive.
- Both videos can be opened up simultaneously within Mangold INTERACT. Based on the previously made coding and annotations the researcher can now quickly navigate in the recorded videos and add more coding and annotations to get a full picture of the recorded situation.
- Statistics, reliability analysis, statistical charts, and other visualizations can easily be done based on the collected information.
- All this output can be used to create reports easily by copying and pasting numerical output and charts into Microsoft Excel / Word or Power Point or any similar program.
- The researcher can copy all video files and the Mangold INTERACT coding documents to external hard drives and hand them out to research assistants who should do further coding, transcriptions or analysis by using their own copies of the Mangold INTERACT software package. Findings and analysis results of different analysts can be easily integrated into a single Mangold INTERACT coding document. This means that you will finally have all information of your studies at your fingertips to create comparative statistics and great looking charts easily and quickly.
