Compare methods

	Behavioral Observation Coding	Body Mapping
Field	Anthropology	Anthropology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1974	2017
Originator	Behavioral sampling tradition (Altmann), adapted to anthropology (Bernard)	Arts-based and participatory health research tradition (codified in Bernard)
Type	Systematic procedure for sampling and coding observed behavior	Arts-based visual method for externalizing embodied experience
Seminal source	Altmann, J. (1974). Observational study of behavior: sampling methods. Behaviour, 49(3–4), 227–267.	Bernard, H. R. (2017). Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (6th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN: 9780759112421
Aliases	Behavior Coding, Systematic Observation Coding, Behavioral Sampling and Coding, Observational Coding	Body Maps, Body-Mapping Storytelling, Body Map Drawing, Embodied Mapping
Related	4	4
Summary	Behavioral observation coding is the systematic practice of recording who does what, when, by applying an explicit sampling rule and a predefined coding scheme to observed behaviour. Rather than jotting impressions, the observer commits in advance to a rule — focal-individual, scan, ad libitum, or continuous sampling — and to a list of mutually defined behaviour categories, so that records are reproducible and comparable. Because two trained observers should code the same scene the same way, the method also requires measuring inter-observer reliability before the data are trusted.	Body mapping is an arts-based, participatory method in which people draw life-size or templated outlines of their own bodies and fill them with images, symbols, colors, and words that externalize embodied experience — illness, pain, identity, trauma, or healing. The body becomes a canvas on which interior states that are hard to put into words are made visible and shareable. The resulting body map is analyzed not as a picture alone but as a visual narrative, read together with the story the participant tells about it.