observerhour

Observerhour is a unit of measurement used in research and fieldwork to quantify the amount of time an observer spends performing active data collection, recording, or analysis. It is analogous to a person-hour and is typically defined as one hour of an individual’s active observation.

Measurement and definition: One observerhour equals 60 minutes of a single observer engaged in specified activities, such as direct observation, coding of data, interviewing, or logging records. When several observers work simultaneously, their contributions are additive; for example two observers for one hour yield two observerhours, and two observers for two hours yield four observerhours.

Contexts and usage: Observerhour is used in planning, budgeting, and reporting labor in projects with substantial observation components, including ethnography, usability testing, wildlife fieldwork, and environmental monitoring. It helps compare effort across studies with different team sizes.

Examples: In the field season, researchers documented 320 observerhours, distributed among three teams.

Advantages and limitations: The metric is simple and scalable, but it assumes equal effort across observers and activities. It does not account for cognitive load, downtime, or the quality of observations. Clear definitions of active versus passive time and task categories are essential to maintain comparability.

See also: Person-hour; Work measurement; Research effort metrics; Observer effect.