“Quantitative vs. Qualitative”  (found in ‘Developing an Ethogram’)

Scenario 1: A vet is interested in the food consumption of a recovering cat. He asks the owner to monitor whether the cat is eating less than normal, a normal amount or more than normal. The owner reports that the cat is eating less than normal (qualitative) so the vet advises the owner to weigh food given and food left to calculate the weight of food eaten (quantitative).

Scenario 2: A behaviour scientist is interested in behavioural variability within a litter in domestic dogs. When investigating confidence, she records how confident the puppies are on a scale of 1 to 10 (quantitative).

Scenario 3: An ecologist is interested in migratory patterns in birds and records the name of the nearest city to each bird’s destination (qualitative). In addition, he then calculates how far in km the birds have travelled (quantitative).

Types of measures

Latency to capture of toy – 4 seconds

Latency to first “sit” cue – 13 seconds

Latency to full sit – 21 seconds

Latency from sit cue to sit – 8 seconds

Frequency for left front paw standing fully on the piece of paper positioned on the floor -7 /43 seconds

Duration of scratching  -6 seconds

Proportion of time spent scratching -40%

Duration of kitten’s head in physical contact with the adult cat - 30 seconds

Proportion of total video time – 46.9%

Discrete vs. Continuous (found in ‘Analysing the Data’)

Examples of discrete variables: gender of cat, breed of cat, type of food cat eats, number of kittens in a litter

Examples of continuous variables: age of cat, height, length of tail, amount of food eaten in a day.