Movement analysts have a range of options for recording the movement parameters they have chosen to observe. As I describe in Beyond Words, recording options include written descriptions, stick figures and do-it-yourself notes, coding sheets of various types, and simplified and formal notation systems.
While there are plenty of choices, recording methods either help or hinder the process of making sense of what has been observed.
For example, in my first job as a movement analyst I was asked to analyze videotaped improvisations as experimental subjects responded to different colors. I chose to use effort phrase writing (mostly because it was considered an “advanced” skill).
Unfortunately, the poor graduate student who hired me had a hard time with the data I provided. He needed to compare the responses of different subjects to different colors. But this was almost impossible with the complicated phrases I recorded.
As it turned out, the grad student had to re-run the experiment. The second time around I used a simplified coding sheet. This mode of recording made subject-to-subject comparisons much more transparent.