View behavior broadly. To make this a more systematic process, build into your recording system methods for recording when and where a target behavior occurs and what happens after it occurs. This...

View behavior broadly. To make this a more systematic process, build into your recording system methods for recording when and where a target behavior occurs and what happens after it occurs. This will allow you to evaluate environmental factors that might be affecting the target. Similarly, on whatever form you do decide to use to record information, you can simply add extra columns to record the behavior, what happened right before, and what happened right after, as in. (This and all of the behavioral observation forms discussed and illustrated in this chapter are in the “Word Documents” folder on your CD-ROM. Feel free to use and modify these as needed.) Most word processing programs allow you to easily create such forms. Be sure you give clear instructions as to what is to be placed in those columns, especially that the recording be brief and that it include what happens immediately before and after the behavior occurs. Finally, increasingly, computer hardware (desktop and handheld computers and Personal Digital Assistants [PDAs]) and software are available for the direct observation of behaviors and their antecedents and consequences (Dixon, 2003; Ice, 2004; Hektner, Schmidt, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007; Richard & Gloster, 2006; Sidener, Shabani, & Carr, 2004; Stone, Shiffman, Atienza, & Nebeling, 2007).