Discovering hidden recurring patterns in observable behavioral processes is an important issue frequently faced by numerous advanced students and researchers across many research areas, including psychology, biology, sports, robotics, media, finance, and medicine. As generally, themany powerful methods included in statistical software packages were not developed for this kind of analysis, discovering such patterns has proven a particularly difficult task, due to a lack of a) adequate formalized models of the kinds of patterns to look for, b) corresponding detection algorithms and c) their implementation in available software. The research described in this book is based on the application of such pattern types, algorithms and software developed from the late seventies to the present in the context of research in collaboration with human and animal behavioral research teams at internationally leading universities in the US and Europe, thus testing the usefulness and validity of the pattern types, algorithms and software in numerous research areas. With the (scale independent statistical hierarchical and fractal-like) T-Pattern at its heart, a set of proposed pattern types, called the T-System, forms the basis for the search algorithms implemented as the software THEME (TM) (vs. 6), which is easily available in free educational and full commercial versions.

This project was inspired in the sixties by primatologist D. Morris’s “The Naked Ape”, Niko Tinbergen, K. Lorenz, and K. von Frisch ethological research rewarded in 1973 by a shared Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology and E. O. Wilson’s 1975 opus “Sociobiology”. Other important inspirations were B. F. Skinner’s work on probabilistic real-time contingencies, N. Chomsky’s on syntactic structure and creativity, H. Montagner’s on interactions in social insects and children, S. Duncan’s on turn-taking in human dyadic interactions, and Richard Dawkins’ on behavioral hierarchy and detection algorithms. Structured animal mass-societies (>104 individuals) are only found in insects and modern humans and understanding their similarities and differences became a major aim through a search for hidden interaction patterns. Existing multivariate and artificial neural network methods and models lacked adequate description and detection of complex real-time patterns requiring new mathematical time structure (1-D) models, now the T-system, with detection algorithms and software (THEME™).

This Handbook provides a compendium of research methods that are essential for studying interaction and communication across the behavioral sciences. Focusing on coding of verbal and nonverbal behavior and interaction, the Handbook is organized into five parts. Part I provides an introduction and historic overview of the field. Part II presents areas in which interaction analysis is used, such as relationship research, group research, and nonverbal research. Part III focuses on development, validation, and concrete application of interaction coding schemes. Part IV presents relevant data analysis methods and statistics. Part V contains systematic descriptions of established and novel coding schemes, which allows quick comparison across instruments. Researchers can apply this methodology to their own interaction data and learn how to evaluate and select coding schemes and conduct interaction analysis. This is an essential reference for all who study communication in teams and groups.

Video data is transforming the possibilities of social science research. Whether through mobile phone footage, body-worn cameras or public video surveillance, we have access to an ever-expanding pool of data on real-life situations and interactions. This book provides a flexible framework for working with video data and understanding what it says about social life. With examples from a range of real video research projects, the book showcases step-by-step how to analyse any kind of data, including both found and generated videos. It also includes a non-technical discussion of computer vision and its opportunities for social science research. With this book you will be able to: · Complete each step of the research process fully and efficiently, from data collection to management, analysis, and interpretation · Use video data in an ethical and effective way to maximise its impact · Utilise contemporary technology and accessible platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Tik Tok and Facebook. This book is an ideal toolkit for researchers or postgraduate students across the social sciences working with video data as a part of their research projects. Accessible and practical, is written for qualitative and quantitative researchers, newcomers and experienced scholars. Features include interactive activities for different skill levels and ‘what to read next’ sections to help you engage further with the research mentioned in the book.

The Routledge Reviewer’s Guide to Mixed Methods Analysis is a groundbreaking edited book – the first devoted solely to mixed methods research analyses, or mixed analyses. Each of the 30 seminal chapters, authored by internationally renowned scholars, provides a simple and practical introduction to a method of mixed analysis. Each chapter demonstrates "how to conduct the analysis" in easy-to-understand language. Many of the chapters present new topics that have never been written before, and all chapters offer cutting-edge approaches to analysis. The book contains the following four sections: Part I Quantitative Approaches to Qualitative Data (e.g., factor analysis of text, multidimensional scaling of qualitative data); Part II Qualitative Approaches to Quantitative Data (e.g., qualitizing data, mixed methodological discourse analysis); Part III "Inherently" Mixed Analysis Approaches (e.g., qualitative comparative analysis, mixed methods social network analysis, social media analytics as mixed analysis, GIS as mixed analysis); and Part IV Use of Software for Mixed Data Analysis (e.g., QDA Miner, WordStat, MAXQDA, NVivo, SPSS). The audience for this book includes (a) researchers, evaluators, and practitioners who conduct a variety of research projects and who are interested in using innovative analyses that will allow them to extract more from their data; (b) academics, including faculty who would use this book in their scholarship, as well as in their graduate-level courses, and graduate students who need access to a comprehensive set of mixed analysis tools for their dissertations/theses and other research assignments and projects; and (c) computer-assisted data analysis software developers who are seeking additional mixed analyses to include within their software programs. Chapter 24 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Assessment in natural contexts through observation is unquestionably complex. Systematic observation grounded in observational methodology offers a wide range of possibilities to the rigorous study of everyday behavior in their natural context. These possibilities have been enriched in recent decades with the explosion of information and communication technologies. In this eBook we assemble 23 articles from several researchers who have made important contributions to this evolving field. The articles included in this eBook has been organized with a first part on general methodological developments and a second part with methodological contributions that emphasize different application areas. Considering the enormous possibilities of the systematic observation in the study of daily life, we hope this eBook will be useful to understand innovative applications in different fields.

Spatial presence is a state in which media users temporarily overlook the mediated nature of their experience. This study discusses stimulus-dependent structure in spontaneous eye-blink behavior as an alternative to presence selfreport measures. To this end, theories and empirical evidence on presence, spontaneous eye-blink behavior, and existing approaches for presence assessment are used to link antecedent processes of presence, especially attention, to presence and structure in blinking behavior. Three experiments in different media environments relate three different methods for quantification of stimulus-dependent structure to an established presence scale. The results are not conclusive, but raise questions on presence and its measurement, and advance the understanding of stimulus-dependent structure in spontaneous eye-blink behavior.

Through the development of psychoanalytically informed film interpretation, Andreas Hamburger provides new insights into the experience of watching films and their influence upon our internal lives. Building upon a relational understanding of psychoanalysis, this volume develops a methodical procedure for psychoanalytical film interpretation, discusses individual aspects of the medium – such as editing, spatial and temporal design – and puts approaches to film psychoanalysis and cinema theory into a systematic perspective. Hamburger exemplifies his arguments in a detailed analysis of numerous film examples and demonstrates how an in-depth encounter with the medium can provoke new and surprising understandings. Providing an interdisciplinary perspective that crosses the study of popular culture with psychoanalytic theory, this book will be required reading not only for students and scholars of film, but also for psychoanalysts in practice and training.