Improving behaviour classification consistency: a technique from biological taxonomy

AARE2002: Paper CHO02101

(b) No - go to 2

2. Is the child exploring or examining play objects or the play partner ’s play?

(a) Yes - Exploratory

(b) No - Non-play

The purely physical use of play objects characterises both functional and constructive play,
and provides a suitable next decision in the key:

1. Is the child obviously playing?

(a) Yes - go to 3

(b) No - go to 2

2. Is the child exploring or examining play objects or the play partner ’s play?

(a) Yes - Exploratory

(b) No - Non-play

3. Does the play consist only of play objects being used in a physical manner?

(a) Yes - Functional or Constructive

(b) No - Pretend or Game with Rules

Now we can simply complete the key:

1. Is the child obviously playing?

(a) Yes - go to 3

(b) No - go to 2

2. Is the child exploring or examining play objects or the play partner ’s play?

(a) Yes - Exploratory

(b) No - Non-play

3. Does the play consist only of play objects being used in a physical manner?

(a) Yes - go to 4

(b) No - go to 5

4. Are the play objects being organised spatially?

(a) Yes - Constructive Play

(b) No - Functional Play

5. Are rules obviously being followed?

(a) Yes - Game with Rules

(b) No - Pretend Play

The categories into which the play is now to be classified are not the same as the original
categories. We note that the original definition of the game with rules category specified that
the child plays with the play partner. This is not a requirement of the new category. If we
were to use the original set of category definitions, it would not be overly difficult to imagine
plausible behaviours that would, for example, simultaneously fit the pretend play, game with
rules, and constructive play categories. If the coder works from the definition list, they must
judge which of the categories the behaviour should be classified into. The key removes this
ambiguity - in this case, the behaviour would be classified in the game with rules category. To
code any observed behaviour using this key requires only two or three decisions to be made,
depending on the particular behaviour. To code observed behaviour from the definition list
requires six decisions, each with multiple sub-decisions, to determine whether or not the be-
haviour fits each category, or more, if ambiguity forces a second round of choices to determine
the most appropriate category.

The key can be given either in one of the traditional list formats (Metcalf (1954) discusses
the advantages and disadvantages of a variety of list formats), as shown in figure 4, or as a
graphical tree, as shown in figure 5. The graphical tree format is only practical for short keys.
Since the key is intended for use by various observers, with minimal specific training, the key is

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