coding parent-child interactions

2018 – 2019

University Medical Center Groningen, Interdisciplinary Center Psychopathology & Emotion Regulation

This project was a collaboration with the Tracking Adolescents Individual Lives (TRAILS) Next Generation team at the UMC Groningen. A part of the data collection of TRAILS Next is a home visit, where mothers and fathers are recorded playing with their infants. To get detailed information about what is happening while they play, such as how much they are talking to each other or how many times they smile, we use software that allows coders who watch the video and mark when they see a behavior (from a coding scheme) with a click!

TeamJennifer S. Richards, Charlotte Vrijen, Yugyun Kim, Tina Kretschmer, Anoek Sluiter-Oerlemans, Maria Wiertsema

The project consisted of three parts: 

  1. Developing a micro-coding scheme of parent-infant interaction behaviors (e.g. facial expressions, vocalizations, and touch) based on previous research and existing coding schemes. 
  2. Developing an extensive training program for student coders, and teaching students what these behaviors look like and how to code them in The Observer during a 2-day workshop.
  3. Supervising student coders. Across these two years, I supervised 4 Master and 14 Bachelor students during observational coding of parent-child interaction videos, and conducted the coding reliability analyses for their theses.