What observational method helps identify the duration of target behavior in a therapy session?

Duration recording is a method specifically designed to measure the length of time a particular behavior occurs during a therapy session. By using this method, a therapist can not only note whether the target behavior happened but also capture how long that behavior persisted. This information is crucial for understanding the intensity and impact of the behavior within the context of therapy.

For example, if a therapist is focusing on improving a client's ability to remain engaged in a task, duration recording would allow the therapist to chart how many minutes the client stays on task during a session. This provides a clear, quantifiable measure that can be analyzed for progress over time.

Other methods, such as frequency count, focus on how many times a behavior occurs within a specified timeframe, which provides different insights but doesn't give information about how long the behavior lasts. Similarly, a reliability coefficient is used to assess the consistency of data but does not directly measure behavior duration. Anecdotal records capture qualitative data about behaviors but lack the precise timing aspect that duration recording offers. Hence, for identifying the duration of target behaviors, duration recording is the most suitable observational method.