ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the body chart system which designes to measure frequency, location, and, to a lesser extent, duration of touch. Aside from utilizing observations of actual tactile interaction, researchers most often use one of two disparate operationalizations of touch involves they use self-report measures of actual touch such as Jourard's widely reported body accessibility scale, and researchers employ self-reports of attitudes toward touch. Greater success has been obtained with diary studies, which correlate reasonably well with actual tactile behavior. A good method of recording actual tactile behavior is to make a videotape of interaction. Studies employing the body chart have produced a series of interesting findings that both have significance for communication theory and demonstrate the validity of the body chart methods. The Body Chart Approach has been used successfully in a series of studies to obtain reliable and valid data on touch in live human interaction and in an unobtrusive manner.
