Direct assessment of social behaviour from videotape recordings

A number of frequency and duration measures, and also general ratings, were made to assess specified aspects of interpersonal behaviour. These were taken from videotape recordings of interviews, or informal conversations, involving psychiatric patients. The frequency and duration measures were found to have high inter-rater reliability. Pearsonian correlations were in the range of 0-88--0-99. The general ratings were less reliable (0-42--0-86). The patients were divided into two groups. The first were patients whose major difficulties were interpersonal problems. The second contained patients with other psychiatric problems. Comparisons between these groups revealed a number of significant differences in the behavioural frequency and duration measures. Significant differences were also found in the general ratings, but there were disagreements between the two raters which made the interpretation of these differences difficult. When, within the interpersonal problem group, informal conversations were compared with formal interviews, it was found that subjects spent longer looking at the other person during the conversation. No other differences were evident. The implications of the results for social skills research are discussed.