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    Introduction to Statistics in the Psychological Sciences

    Reviewed by Scott Frankowski, Assistant professor, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley on 11/15/22

    Comprehensiveness rating: 4

    This textbook covers all of the material I cover in an intro psych stats class. I'd like to see a statistics software program integrated into the text - JASP or R would be great, keeping in line with being an OER.

    Content Accuracy rating: 5

    I haven't found any issues with accuracy in the text.

    Relevance/Longevity rating: 1

    In Chapter 2, there are graphs with iMacs from the 1990s. I've seen this graphic in other texts and it always throws me off because most students were not yet born when these computers were out. Also, I've found that psych stats books don't actually have examples from psychology. This book is no exception. Very few examples, if any, that I came across were from the psychological sciences.

    Clarity rating: 5

    I found no issues with clarity.

    Consistency rating: 5

    I saw no issues with consistency.

    Modularity rating: 5

    I like that the chapters are short and each cover the aspects of one type of test used.

    Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

    Organization is good and is fairly standard for the flow of a stats class. Personally, I'd prefer to start with correlation and regression, but how it is works.

    Interface rating: 1

    The is not indexed for a pdf reader making unusable for a course. Adding bookmarks to each chapter and chapter sub-sections would make the text much more usable.

    Grammatical Errors rating: 5

    I saw no grammar issues.

    Cultural Relevance rating: 3

    I didn't see anything offensive in anyway, but there was no intentionality in using psych examples or cross-cultural examples either.

    Comments

    Overall, if you're looking for an OER psych stats book, I would recommend Cote et al., 2021. It's very similar to this book in that it provides a good foundation and reference from which to build your course off of. The primary difference is that Cote et al. is indexed for a pdf reader which makes it much more usable. Cote et al. also provide critical value appendices for all the test types which this book does not have. Granted, I have just point students to online z, t, F, and r p value calculators, but it is nice to have analog versions as well so I can quickly take a snapshot to include in a slide.

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