Compare methods

	Behavioral Observation Coding	Participatory Mapping
Field	Anthropology	Anthropology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1974	1994
Originator	Behavioral sampling tradition (Altmann), adapted to anthropology (Bernard)	Participatory rural appraisal tradition (Chambers)
Type	Systematic procedure for sampling and coding observed behavior	Participatory method in which community members produce maps of their own space
Seminal source	Altmann, J. (1974). Observational study of behavior: sampling methods. Behaviour, 49(3–4), 227–267.	Chambers, R. (1994). The origins and practice of participatory rural appraisal. World Development, 22(7), 953–969.
Aliases	Behavior Coding, Systematic Observation Coding, Behavioral Sampling and Coding, Observational Coding	Community Mapping, Participatory GIS, PGIS, Counter-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.	Participatory mapping is a family of methods in which community members themselves create maps of their territory, resources, land use, and boundaries — sketched on the ground or paper, drawn to scale, or built in a geographic information system. Rather than the researcher mapping the community from outside, local people hold the pen, so the map encodes their own spatial knowledge, categories, and claims. The products range from rough sketch maps made in an afternoon to participatory GIS (PGIS) layers that can stand in formal land negotiations.