Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Corticospinal Excitability Modulation During Action Observation
Published on: December 31, 2013
The effect of incorporating covert observation into established overt observation-based hand hygiene promotion
Eunwoo Yoo1, Louella Ursua2, Romart Clark2
1Infection Prevention and Control Team, Sheikh Khalifa Specialty Hospital, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates; Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Background:
Covert observation (CO) is reliable for measuring hand hygiene compliance (HHC). However, the benefit of adding CO to overt observation (OO) is uncertain. We evaluated whether incorporating CO into an OO-based hand hygiene (HH) promotion program improves HH rate.
Methods:
Health care worker's HH activities were observed through 5 monitoring sessions (2 in phases 1 and 2 and 1 in phase 3) of simultaneous CO and OO. An intervention was applied-barrier identification interview-only in phase 2.
Results:
Overall HHC was 91.0% for OO, and 49.3% for CO. HHC in phase 1 was not changed by repeated CO (34.7% and 34.0%, P = .70). HHC based on CO increased to 66.9% in phase 2 after the application of an intervention (P < .01), but decreased to 57.5% in phase 3 (P < .01). HHC based on OO increased significantly between only the first and second sessions in phase 2 (90.8% and 94.5%, respectively, P = .01).
Discussion:
Although CO did not significantly change behavior, HHC with CO responded promptly to the application and cessation of a new intervention.
Conclusions:
CO reflects HHC change more reliably than does OO. However, it is uncertain whether CO will improve HHC.
More Related Videos
06:44Development of a Novel Task-oriented Rehabilitation Program using a Bimanual Exoskeleton Robotic Hand
Published on: May 20, 2020
14:05Behavioral Assessment of Hearing in 2 to 4 Year-old Children: A Two-interval, Observer-based Procedure Using Conditioned Play-based Responses
Published on: January 23, 2017
Related Concept Videos
Hand hygiene
Hand washing...
Naturalistic Observations
Observational Studies
There are three types of observational studies – Prospective, retrospective, and cross-sectional.
Prospective Study
Prospective studies, also known as longitudinal or cohort studies, are carried out by collecting future data from groups sharing similar characteristics. One...
Observational Learning
Actor-Observer Effect
Data Collection by Observations
An astronomer viewing the motion and brightness of stars in the sky and recording the data is an example of observational data collection. A botanist recording...