ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the general issues of data coding and temporal display of nonverbal behavior. Coding is a procedure of representing the behavior stream as an abstract set of symbols that maps selected subsets of the behavior stream into a set of symbols. Specifically, three basic distinctions need to be made in coding and data representation which include: categorical versus continuous codes, codes versus variables, and degree of inference in coding. In addition to coding, the second set of choices that the interaction researcher faces concerns when and how frequently to observe/code the events under study. Arundale points out that when precise temporal timing is crucial to one's research questions, then preliminary studies should be undertaken with a variety of observational time units, which decrease in size. The quality of data depends on the coding of variables and the conceptions of time implicit in the coding and selected explicitly by the researcher.
