Guidelines for designing and conducting a study that applies observational methodology

Observational studies that use a combination of complementary methods can provide key insights into everyday behavior in natural settings. Many elements of human behavior are perfectly perceivable -and hence observable- in a multitude of everyday activities and settings, ranging from low-intervention programs to interactive studies analyzing different aspects of family life, social relations, performance in sport or at school, etc. Human behavior, however, also has elements that are only partially perceivable but that can be captured through indirect observation and subsequent analysis of oral behavior or written text or graphics. In this article, we present a schematic overview of the mam steps involved in an observational study.The aim.