WayTracer: A mobile assistant for real-time logging of events and related positions

In addition to logging observation categories and their timestamps, researchers sometimes wish to record observation-related positions. Such data are relevant for research in human spatial cognition, market research and behavioral biology, to mention only a few. Another desideratum is to avoid time-consuming video transcriptions by logging in real-time, both inside and outside the lab. With frequent events, these requirements cannot be met in combination by a single experimenter using paper and pencil. Thus, we developed the logging software WayTracer. It allows for logging positions by hand where and when observations or events occur independently of external signals like GPS. GPS data is added automatically in case they are provided by a receiver. We report an extensive test that confirmed the feasibility of logging in real-time with WayTracer in field-use. Trained observers yielded high percentages of inter-observer agreement and temporal intervals of behaviors they had recorded in the field correlated above 0.99 with data extracted from the video recording of the test. Besides introducing a new software optimized and tested successfully for such performance, we report requirements and limitations of logging in real-time to be considered when configuring other software for that purpose.