File:Sunday Morning Observation Schedule.doc

An example of an Observation Schedule used in a study of what languages were used during church activities in the Republic of Congo, and how they were used. This is an English translation of the French version used in the study.

The team realized that they needed a way to direct the attentions of each member of their multi-national, multi-cultural team so that they were all recording information about the same components of a given scene or event. They needed a way for researchers to record information quickly, consistently and legibly, and in a way that their heads and eyes didn't stay lowered to the page for very long. The survey team then distributed the forms and explained their use to a network of friends and colleagues so that each of them could report their observations back to the team. It seems to have worked well, and was especially valuable in corroborating self-reported language use behavior.