A description of micro- and mainframe-computer programs to summarize frequency, duration and sequences of behavior

Abstract Computer programs were developed to hasten the summarization of behavioral data. Behavioral data may be collected by hand (pencil, paper and watch), strip-chart mechanical event recorder, electronic event recorder or by a computer. These behavioral data, in raw form, enter (electronically or manually) a microcomputer (IBM-PC, 128K) or mainframe computer. The microcomputer version summarizes the number of occurrences (frequency), duration and sequence of each behavior. As a microcomputer memory is limited, a program to summarize larger data sets containing more behavior patterns was developed on our mainframe computer (CDC Cyber 730/760). This sequential analysis program can accumulate up to 10 behavioral sequences (9 orders of transition) of up to 50 behaviors in a data set containing up to 10 000 elements. The computer-summary of each treatment may be combined to determine if treatment differences exist. An example data set is provided.